Podcast 67 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 67: Dam.

Pronoiac set up a Fanscribed page, and most of this transcript came from there.

Transcript

jingle: (theme song)

mathowie: It's episode 67 of the Metafilter Podcast! Whoo-hoo!

jessamyn: Whoo!

mathowie: So this is everything from November, pretty much, end of -

cortex: Yeah, the last one was the last week of October, I think.

mathowie: October 21st. So, a bit of October and November.

jessamyn: It's been a while!

mathowie: We'll ban December from discussion.

cortex: We're busy people.

jessamyn: We could talk about AskMe December.

mathowie: Oh, okay.

cortex: Yeah, we just don't want to step all over the December post contest with early raves.

mathowie: Right, so, we should just say, there's a December post contest going on. It seems like when I wake up there's like eighteen new posts every morning and lots of them are great, so I'm stoked.

jessamyn: I have been having the exact same feeling, that a lot of the usual suspects are really bringing out their A-game [laughter], making posts that are super interesting to read, although

who's got time, clicking all these links, but but there have been some things that have been really fun to read.

mathowie: Sweet.

jessamyn: It is sweet.

mathowie: So why don't we jump right into Projects? What are your favorite projects of the month of October-ish, November-ish?

jessamyn: Let me see what I favorited...

cortex: There's one that just went up a couple of days ago from The Whelk, "Time to Travel", which is a collaborative thing, it's a bunch of other people so far, but they're doing basically

CouchSurfing advice for broke time-travelers [mathowie and jessamyn laugh], so it's like little guides on when and where to do what if you're trying to see the space-time continuum on five bucks a day or whatever.

cortex: This is so one of those projects where I don't even feel nerdy enough to understand what's going on [cortex laughs], but I can tell a lot of effort went into it, and it's probably funny to someone, so I just approved it.

Well, it's one of those things that everyone has their own little take on

how to approach that general concept, so it's fun having all these different--

jessamyn: Come on, Matt, you've got to understand the top five food carts of Mesopotamia. That's not hard.

[laughter]

mathowie: Well, in thirty seconds on my phone just to approve it, while I'd woken up in a daze, trying to figure out make heads or tails of what these things are--is this a board game? Or is this a MineCraft thing? Like, what is this even... And I just approved it. Now it's funny. Now I understand.

[laughter]

That reminds me of a

non-Metafilter project--I'll have to dig it up. Did you see there was a fashion blog of World of Warcraft characters?

cortex: No.

mathowie: Someone took screenshots, and broke down everything the thing is wearing, like, "Oh, you got those arm things from this land for this many shekels or whatever."

jessamyn: Shekels are real money. [laughter] I mean, they were at some point. I don't know, what

is the money in World of Warcraft?

mathowie: I don't know.

cortex: It's gold.

mathowie: Gold! That's right, gold

cortex: They just--they went straight forward.

jessamyn: Gold is also real money

cortex: Also, copper and silver, I think, it's been a while.

mathowie: My productivity hack for LifeHacker--I need to write up a post about this--was this thing called SpeedNotes, done by [???]--so this is basically, get this, like the iPhone Notes application, where

you just make text files, and you write stuff them in them, but the text files live on DropBox. So you can walk over to your computer and--

jessamyn: It's the synced notes application we have always wanted!

mathowie: Yeah, and if you open it up in TextMate on your computer you can add new notes, waltz over to your phone, and it pulls up your DropBox and you have your new notes, like, it's this awesome phone/computer text files, it's so simple, dead simple, it works so awesome, I think it was only a dollar in the

App Store, or something.

jessamyn: You should totally leave it in this Ask Metafilter question, if someone didn't already, for having a shared thing, shared note with somebody else, because if you share a Dropbox you can share these lists, right?

mathowie: Yeah, it makes a new Dropbox folder called Notes, and I guess you could just share that, yeah, I guess you could share that, I mean, it's just a dumb text list, it doesn't have to-do--

jessamyn: Dude, you'd be surprised at how much dumb text lists are what everybody wants, because the whole thing

--everything tries to upsell you to not-dumb-text lists.

mathowie: Yeah. And I started using this thing just to write down little bits, like, oh, my confirmation number for that hotel room is blah, or something, and then I just found myself--I use it a few times a week, all the time--

jessamyn: Nice!

mathowie: It's just great for like, I'll start a note, oh, hey, I need to, there's a three-item to-do list, and I get to my computer, I'll do those things, or I'll add paragraphs of text, or if I'm going to go ship something I'll add

a ton of addresses to it--

jessamyn: When you can actually go type it.

mathowie: Yeah, yeah. It's an awesome little bridge that should have existed eons ago.

cortex: I clearly just don't do enough notetaking on the computer, I just like--

jessamyn: You don't do enough leaving-the-housing, is what--

mathowie: Don't you use a text editor, like, constantly?

cortex: I use a--I always have a text editor window or two open on my laptop and my desktop, but those don't need to go anywhere too often, what I do is put it in a draft in Gmail.

jessamyn: I mean, that's honestly the truth for me too. Most of my stuff takes place in Gmail, because I'm very rarely just working from my mobile, almost never.

mathowie: I guess I'm thinking I don't want to clutter up Gmail too much with a billion drafts, so.

jessamyn: I just cleared four hundred megabytes of shit out of Gmail thanks to FindBigMail.

mathowie: Man, it didn't work for me, if you saw my comment, it didn't work for me.

jessamyn: I did see your comment. Why didn't it work for you?

mathowie: I guess I have way too much

bullshit in my Gmail, I don't know.

cortex: Your Gmail's just a bullshit parade.

jessamyn: I mean, you've got to have, like, Powerpoint decks or something, I mean, did you try it to see it what your big stuff is?

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: And it's all important?

mathowie: I removed all the big stuff. I think I have an enormous amount--

jessamyn: Did you empty your trash?

mathowie: Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is, I think it's the--like, I'm on some mailing lists that are set to skip my Inbox--

jessamyn: That's fine!

mathowie: --and I looked at them the other day, I had, like,

170,000 messages from the last six years, and this one--

jessamyn: But they're each 1K, right?

cortex: Well...

jessamyn: Unless people are sending files back and forth. Are you on one of those pirate things--

cortex: [laughs]

mathowie: No, no!

jessamyn: --where everybody just sends each other the Super Bowl over e-mail?

mathowie: No, no, no. No, I don't know. I'm always at 50% use. Yeah, I'm at 4.4 gigabytes, and I have tried everything, I don't know.

jessamyn: I cannot believe you have tried everything.

mathowie: Let me go to my big mail,

two-megabyte box.

jessamyn: [laughs]

mathowie: It's just, I don't know, didn't work.

jessamyn: This was just, somebody recommended this in Ask Metafilter, and I was like "What? That is a thing?".

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: And I found, like, all these articles I've written that had these two-megabyte images that went along with them, and just, delete, delete, delete, delete, delete, you know, from four years ago, no one needs that, delete, blah.

mathowie: Yeah. Well, I mean, I heard about that, I don't know, six months ago, and I thought it sounded like the most amazing thing, because I've always wanted that, like, "Gmail, just let me

sort my archives by size, or something--"

jessamyn: Or biggest, right!

mathowie: Because I get pissed off when someone sends me a ten-megabyte PowerPoint deck with one image that they could have sent as a gif, you know.

jessamyn: I had a student who had a holiday invitation sent as a Microsoft Publisher file.

mathowie and cortex: [laugh]

jessamyn: And it was, like, four megabytes, and it was basically like, "Come to our house next week," and I was like, "Oh, your friends hate you."

mathowie and cortex: [laugh]

mathowie: Oh, I get a family reunions as a giant Word graphic. It's not even

Word text, it's WordArt graphics or--and I'm like, "You could have just wrote it in the goddamned e-mail!". And we just got a list of parents at our school, like, "Here's all the parents' phone numbers and e-mails if you wanted to contact other parents!", and I had to download a viewer for it.

jessamyn and cortex: [laugh]

mathowie: A Microsoft--

jessamyn: This is the Waldorf school, isn't it?

mathowie: No, Montessori. I had to do it myself, because that's Montessori.

jessamyn: [laughs]

mathowie: --Microsoft XML

Viewer, it's some sort of hybrid of all Word plus Excel plus--it was horrible.

jessamyn: It sounds terrible. Maybe you need to take over the IT. [laughs]

mathowie: Yeah. I am the new website guy.

jessamyn: Yay!

mathowie: I just haven't gotten around to redoing the--

cortex: This makes me think there's something to be said for someone doing a folk art study of e-mail, like e-mail as sort of like a contemporary folk art, and the way people create these overwrought--

jessamyn: [laughs]

cortex: --unnecessarily overloaded e-mails. Take a real close academic look at Mom e-mail, that sort of thing.

jessamyn: Or an app that was called Textify It, and just takes your completely stupid evites and Microsoft Publisher documents and whatever--

mathowie: Yes.

jessamyn: --and just e-mails it to you as a text document [cortex laughs] with the text in it, so that you can search it.

mathowie: Oh, God, I'd pay for that service.

cortex: That'd be a nice addition to Labs.

jessamyn: Hey, that'd be a nice addition to Labs.

cortex: Someone get Google on the phone.

mathowie: Oh, you could use Google Goggles, they already have text recognition.

cortex: Well yeah, I'm sure they could do it; someone just has to make that a specific thing that happens.

mathowie: And then they could sell ads based on those texts, you know.

jessamyn: Well, exactly! You know, Gmail changed to its fancy look again in the middle of my class last night--

cortex: [laughs]

jessamyn: --and all my students were like, "Holy shit, what just happened?"--

mathowie: [laughs]

jessamyn: --and I was like, "Gmail's trying to force a new interface on me. But!" And I was like, "Don't even worry about it." But you can't tell people not to worry about it when, all of a sudden, your e-mail is turned into a lush green garden, which was the theme--

cortex: [laughs]

jessamyn: --that I picked when they forced it on me last time.

mathowie: This is what happens when you don't pay for stuff.

jessamyn: I was like, "Let's learn how to use the Finder." But! [laughs] We're not being concise at the fuck all.

cortex: Well, you know, another project that I liked [laughs]--

mathowie: Oh, sweet.

jessamyn: In fact, we had a lot of buddies with projects this month, so yeah, this one's awesome.

cortex: [laughs]

jessamyn: Go ahead, Josh.

cortex: Supercut. Supercut.org, specifically. waxy has put together a

proper site that's been steadily growing. I think it's gotten another 50 since it went up last month. But, just collecting together supercut videos, videos where someone takes one little specific thing and cuts together a whole bunch of instances of that into a video.

jessamyn: So Brad Pitt eating and drinking. Kanye West saying, 'ha'. Every time they say Sparta in 300.

cortex: Yeah, exactly.

mathowie: So, is this--this is kind of like, I thought they had tools or something, like a video editor

But really, it's just like a blog, kind of?

cortex: Yeah. I think it's really just a place to aggregate the super cuts, so they exist.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: I thought they created that as part of a hack fest a while ago. And that is not this.

mathowie: Yeah!

cortex: No, there was super super cuts. Yeah... or, yeah.

mathowie: Yeah he wrote some software. But there's no software here.

cortex: Yeah this is more .. this is more of just an aggregation, was the idea.

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: So if you want to go watch some super cuts. or submit one...

jessamyn: Of every hand job reference in Rushmore ...

cortex: [laughing]

mathowie: What? Where? What? That's hilarious.

cortex: [Laughing]

jessamyn: I don't even... I don't even remember that.

mathowie: Fargo: Every Yeah in Fargo! Like the uh ..

jessamyn: I just got a trivia answer correct because I could identify a screen grab from Fargo.

cortex: What was the screen?

jessamyn: It was like the car parked on like the big icy whatever when the guy's like overlooking the water or whatever. I was like (screaming), "OH YEAH! IT'S TOTALLY FARGO!"

mathowie: Sweet.

jessamyn: It was only two points but I am still going to get demoted in trivia this month.

mathowie: Why?

jessamyn: Because I am in the bottom half of the C League.

So I'm down to the D League.

mathowie: Oh.

cortex: Oh!

mathowie: Awww! (sincere) That sucks.

cortex: You had your shot at the big house, or the big town ..

jessamyn: Jim's happy in B League

cortex: What do you say about baseball? What's the Major Leagues? It's the ...

mathowie: Big Show

cortex: You had a Big Show anyhow. The Big House. You know? The ..

jessamyn: [laughing] Yeah that's prison, Josh. Right? Right.

cortex: When you go to jail for baseball .. yeah.. it's

mathowie: The Big Pad

jessamyn: Well and along the people who have been MeFites forever, ah .. Neil and Gina and Andy and Clay all made this thing called Think Up?

cortex: Oh Yeah.

jessamyn: Are any of you guys using it?

mathowie: I sort of have a test install on somebody's server that is sort of worked on, it was cool.

jessamyn: It's basically an open source thing, and you can track your activity on social networks, but the data becomes a thing that you actually get to hang onto, it doesn't--it'll get your data? I haven't used it yet, because I do not have a need for this.

mathowie: It's too complicated, the setup. I really wish it was a turnkey service, you could just--but it archives all your tweets ever, and

facebook and + and...

So if you're supremely popular - it's actually supposed to be amazing if you're like a famous person cause you can wade through like four million responses each day for like the four or five that are awesome.

jessamyn: Well that was the thing. I saw anil telling jsmooth on twitter (in a funny voice), "Like you should try this" So.. huh.

mathowie: Yeah it's pretty complicated on the set up. Even though it's supposed to be simple. (Laughs)

jessamyn: Got it.

cortex: Can I just say, I've been .. I've been using google+ more in the last month or two.

jessamyn: Really?

cortex: And we sort of got into it.

mathowie: I'm sorry.

cortex: And I am incredibly popular with people from Russia who I don't know.

mathowie: (groaning)

cortex: There are just tons of them and they love me. I don't know. They just ...

jessamyn: Ladies? The ladies?

cortex: A lot of them are ladies.

mathowie: Mmm

cortex: Some of them are ..uh .. men. Some of them are random clip art .. ahh..

jessamyn: (laughing)

mathowie: (laughing)

cortex: But they all have Cyrillic characters in their names. And they add a lot of me to their circles. So, you know. That's ..

mathowie: Sweet.

cortex: I got that goin' for me. That's a

jessamyn: Is it because possibly, josh, of your project, which I enjoyed and I am not sure if there is much to say about it.

Jesus Markoving Christ?

cortex: [Laughing] There is not a whole lot to say about it.

jessamyn: "An incoherent savior for an incoherent age."

cortex: [laughing]

jessamyn: It's kind of a one-off funny joke

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: [laughing]

jessamyn: And when I need a little pick-me-up, it makes me laugh.

mathowie: [laughing] I never saw this. This is awesome.

cortex: Yeah ..

jessamyn: You didn't see this? Oh My God!

mathowie: No cause Josh auto-approves his own stuff, so I never get to see it.

cortex: You do still get emails, don't you?

mathowie: Ahh! It's already gone ...

jessamyn: You auto-approve your own stuff??

cortex: I'm not gonna put something on projects that wouldn't get approved, so I figure, why not?

mathowie: [laughs]

jessamyn: You are so fired.

mathowie: [laughing] I put up anonymous questions once in a while

And Jessamyn has to say, "Yes" I think? I don't know.

jessamyn: But I know they are you.

mathowie: Yeah.

C: And here's the thing. If I didn't approve my own projects, I would sit around seething over whether or not I should bug (Jessamyn laughing in the background) you guys to go approve it.

Yeah!

cortex: Or that you think it's stupid so it's like, you know ..

jessamyn: [laughing]

mathowie: No! You should be in the mind of the user once in a while.

cortex: Yeah. Yeah. Now and then. Now and then.

jessamyn: Right? Sit and wait!

mathowie: Yeah. Don't forget your godly admin powers.

cortex: [laughing] [inaudible]

jessamyn: Which is actually a nice way to segue -- what? Sorry?

c, I was just going to day I just remembered what the Markoving Christ thing

cortex: blasdelb put together a dump of King James, which is better than the more New Age-y Canadian translation I used originally, and I need to insert that to get the Markoving Christ a little bit more properly old-school and archaic-sounding.

jessamyn: I am enjoying it very much, though. And since we're sort of in the "'tis the season" vein I also want to mention the mall--

mathowie: Oh, yeah!

jessamyn: --I'll mention it later. But the mall's got 40 or 50 people. It's linked up in the banner of the site right now.

You can browse shops by Metafilter members. Some people have Etsy shops, some people have webpages they've made, some people are in Amazon or the iTunes store, the little sidebar has pictures of stuff, pictures of loot, and there's a whole bunch of people who are offering discounts. And so if you're one of those people who likes to shop for the holidays, this is a great place to get started with that. I'm in it, my book is in it.

mathowie: I think I've owned something from each of these categories

from people.

jessamyn: Good.

mathowie: I have a Devil's Ranchers shirt he made--

jessamyn: I do, I have some cards from him--

mathowie: I got some turtlegirl yarn, as a gift, a couple of Christmases ago, I gave it away, and the person loved it.

jessamyn: I was going to say, what do you do with yarn, Matt?

mathowie: I gave it to a friend--

jessamyn: Nice!

mathowie: --to a sister-in-law who knits, and she loved it.

jessamyn: Their stuff is really nice.

mathowie: Yeah. Oh, man, this is cool. Sweet.

Oh, and one of the items is one of my favorite Projects, the "Oregon is Awesome" poster!

cortex: Oh! [laughs]

jessamyn: Oh, yeah! Because the guy who's doing the maps--the big maps--the big, big maps--big print-em maps--what the hell is it called? SuperMaps?

mathowie: [laughs] What are you talking about?

jessamyn: Isn't the Oregon is Awesome thing from the historical map prints, or something else?

mathowie: No, no, it's a thing made by Amanda Erickson, check it out. It's just a poster she made in Illustrator this year.

It's a timeline of January at the top to December at the bottom, of all the cool things that happen in Oregon, and there's concentric circles that represent how long something lasts, so strawberry season is a whole bunch of circles, but a one-day event is a dot.

jessamyn: Oh, neat!

mathowie: And it was just sort of, I looked at it, and I was like, "Eh, it's a cool project, I live in Oregon, I should just buy one, support the users," and it showed up! And it was breath-taking, it's awesome, and I'm reading it, I just didn't--she doesn't show a full size, you know, she's trying to sell it.

jessamyn: Sure.

mathowie: So she doesn't show a full-size preview, and it's just like everything

I look forward to, everything I think of as June, is on there, everything I think of as August is there, like, every little thing I love is on this poster.

jessamyn: And you say her name is Erickson? She may be my secret quonsar person.

mathowie: [laughs] Hey, that's not a secret, then!

jessamyn: [laughs] I got soap from Portland--

mathowie: Mmm.

jessamyn: --and it smells really good, and I really like it, but it didn't really have the name of the person, it just had the name of the shop, and like,

jessamyn: somebody Erickson, but her name isn't--now we're totally outing her against the rules.

cortex: [laughs]

mathowie: I don't think she owns soap shops, but--

jessamyn: Maybe it was somebody else. Alright, whatever.

mathowie: Long-time user--yeah.

jessamyn: But it's beautiful. And she put a picture up, and it's in the mall.

mathowie: Yep, yep, that's all safe.

jessamyn: And the little sidebar has pictures, and we're still accepting people who want to be in the mall, so if you hear this, and even though it's late in the season, drop me an e-mail, there's a MetaTalk thread that talks about it.

mathowie: Yup.

cortex: Another sort of artsy one--

jessamyn: I have one--

cortex: Oh, please go.

jessamyn: No, go ahead, that's you.

cortex: I was just going to say, Avería, this font

cortex: project by iotic--

mathowie: Oh, God.

cortex: --that got turned into a front-page post too.

jessamyn: Oh God, this was brilliant.

mathowie: When the e-mail came in saying, "approve this post", I went, I want this--

cortex: [laughs]

mathowie: --on the front page of every site on Earth. This is the best project ever. Go ahead, call her. [laughs]

jessamyn: [laughs]

cortex: You know, it's just--he took a whole bunch of fonts, and basically went through a couple different iterations of trying to figure out how to essentially average them, and came away with this very gentle

averaged-looking friendly sort of--I'm remembering--

mathowie: It's actually kind of beautiful. That's the strange part.

jessamyn: It's soft.

cortex: It's like a soft serif, you know, it looks almost like something that would have been really big in the '70s.

mathowie: Well, it looks something--well, yeah, it's a little Cooper Black.

jessamyn: [laughs]

mathowie: But it's slightly serif, but not much, but it looks like something that's, like, weathered in a piece of wood from a hundred years ago.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: Or like old lead type that wears off--

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: --on the corners. Can I ask you guys a tech question? So the website is actually in this font.

cortex: Yes.

mathowie: Ohh.

jessamyn: How does that happen? That's an HTML 5 thing?

mathowie: Yeah, he probably embedded it somehow.

cortex: Yeah, I haven't really gotten into that because I didn't care enough.

mathowie: I haven't made my own font, I just use font services, like, you know, TechKit--

jessamyn: Sure.

mathowie: --or Google. Where's--I'm not seeing the call--I'm looking at the source.

cortex: [laugh]

jessamyn: Did you notice that Firefox 8

moved "View Source" to the contextual menu--

cortex: Yeah!

jessamyn: --instead of under the View menu where it always was before?

mathowie: What happened?

cortex: And I've gotten used to it now, and it's fine, but it really, I was like, "What the fuck is going on?" when I couldn't find it.

mathowie: So if you view page source...

jessamyn: "View Source" always used to be under the View menu--

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: --and now it's a contextual menu option when you click.

mathowie: Oh. I always right click.

jessamyn: Although it does "View Selection", which I've been using to populate the Metafilter Mall, so I just highlight something in Gmail, right-click, "View Selection Source," and then I copy it right over.

cortex: Nice.

mathowie: Nice!

cortex: See, I've always--I've had Firebug or whatever it is installed forever, so that's less of a win for me, because I could already get at stuff when I wanted to, but that was a nice little detail.

mathowie: Damn, this font is good.

jessamyn and cortex: [laugh]

jessamyn: It is. And I didn't read the thread. Did either of you guys read the thread on Metafilter Projects?

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: Yeah, yeah. I don't remember the details, but iotic showed up and talked about how he did it some, and then people were talking about fonts and stuff. It was a nice little thread.

jessamyn: That's cool!

mathowie: This wins the Best Project Contest of the year.

jessamyn: We don't have a Best Project Contest!

mathowie: I just made it up.

jessamyn: [makes an exasperated noise] You're the worst.

cortex: Winning it involves Matt saying that in the podcast.

mathowie: I'll send them a pound of lead--

jessamyn and cortex: [laugh]

jessamyn: You know that's poisonous, right?

mathowie: Exactly, it makes them crazy! Mad Hatter.

jessamyn: Mad Hatter. That's mercury, bud.

mathowie: Ohh.

jessamyn: You are the worst.

cortex: Because they used the mercury for hatbands--

mathowie: [laughs] I have a sixth-grade education, you know this.

jessamyn and cortex: [laugh]

jessamyn: Well, you also have, what? A six-year-old, a seven year-old?

mathowie: Yes, yeah.

jessamyn: So the rule is, keep her safe from everything

because it doesn't matter if it's lead or mercury. She doesn't get it!

mathowie: Ohh. So why don't we move on to... Metafilter!

jessamyn: Wait!

cortex: We got more--

jessamyn: I just had one little one that I liked!

mathowie: Man, these people have been productive.

jessamyn: Classified Humanity--random bits from past Seattle newspapers, helmed by crasspastor and gluechuck, in continuing our old-school Metafilter people.

cortex: Oh, nice.

jessamyn: It got one vote--

mathowie: [chuckling] One vote only!

jessamyn: Shut up, it's good.

cortex: No, I totally missed this this, this is great.

jessamyn: Everybody missed it.

mathowie: Yes. Did they scan it, or what?

jessamyn: You know, I

don't actually know how they made it, I didn't--

cortex: They may just be pulling straight from existing scanned archives. There's a lot of this stuff available.

mathowie: Yeah, I wonder what the bridge is between scan and Tumblr, like, what makes it as easy as possible.

Wow, did you see the Star Wars contest one?

jessamyn: I know, that's what I'm saying, it's fascinating! And it's just using the eye of gluechunk and crasspastor to--remember crasspastor?--to make an interesting Tumblr blog

of Seattle newspapers. That's it; I'm being concise. It was cool.

cortex: And now it has two votes.

jessamyn: Yay!

cortex: I had one other that I'll mention real quick which was--just, I always like it when people do this sort of stuff--a Greasemonkey script to collect links from Metafilter comments that Flunkie put together. So people who wanted to just get a, "I want only to see the links," thing--

jessamyn: Oh, right!

cortex: --boom!, this is just another way to play with that, so.

mathowie: Oh, yeah--

cortex: So that was neat. I liked it.

mathowie: That's a sidebar thing that's always been on Slashdot, and people have asked me for it for the last ten years.

cortex: Yeah. And it's one of those things where--

jessamyn: It just gives you the links from a page?

mathowie: Links mentioned in this post, or, yeah, from this page.

jessamyn: Oh, yeah, it is nice. Nice!

cortex: Yeah. It's a neat idea. It's one of those things that it doesn't really feel like it should be a feature on the site, but I love it when people solve that stuff by saying, "okay, well, it's a feature if you want it, go get the script," so.

mathowie: Very cool.

jessamyn: Cool, man!

mathowie: Is that all the projects?

cortex: I'm out of projects.

jessamyn: I'm out.

mathowie: Sweet. Why don't we go to Meta-fil-terrrr. [he draws out the pronunciation]

jessamyn: How do you spell that?

mathowie: Meta-fil-tarr. [he is pronouncing it again, not spelling it]

jessamyn: Let me see what I favorited from that.

mathowie: See, I've got--I'll go first, then--

jessamyn: See, everybody knows, like, if jessamyn favorites you she's voting for you or it's showing up on the podcast. I feel like I'm a little too transparent.

mathowie: [laughs] Well...

cortex: You should flag [fleɪɡ] stuff as noise that you like.

mathowie: [laughs]

jessamyn: Flayg.

mathowie and jessamyn: Flayyyg!

mathowie: Worse.

Uh, let me see, the first--

cortex: [laughs] flag? flag? [still saying fleɪɡ, although with the vowel perhaps a little closer to æ than before]

jessamyn: Flag. [flæɡ]

mathowie: Flaaag. Flaaag.

cortex: I keep my flags [fleɪɡs] in a bag [beɪɡ]--

mathowie: Ohhh.

cortex: --and when it spills I use a rag [ɹeɪɡ]. Get over it!

jessamyn: [laughs] I want this as a song.

cortex: [laughs]

mathowie: Josh, what happens if sound slowed down for you. Would it have lag [leɪɡ], or would it have lag [læɡ]?

cortex: Yes, it would in fact have lag [leɪɡ].

mathowie: [laughs] Oh God.

jessamyn: Do you say bagel [ˈbeɪɡəl]?

cortex: I do.

jessamyn: Not bagel [ˈbæɡəl].

cortex: Nope.

mathowie: [laughs] Bayg.

cortex: Who says bagel [ˈbæɡəl]?

jessamyn: People from the Midwest, people from Wisconsin.

mathowie: Wow, that's weird.

cortex: Really? I mean, I totally understand rag [ɹæg] and lag [læg] and bag [bæg], but bagel [ˈbæɡəl]?

That's just fucked up.

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: I think so. I think it's just--

cortex: That for some reason is viscerally upsetting to me in a way that the different pronunciation of the vowel--

mathowie: It's anti-Semitic on some level. I don't know why, but it just is.

cortex: Yeah, yeah, that's what it is.

Alright.

jessamyn: Did you guys see my picture of the menorah at school?

mathowie: Yeah, that was awesome, totally like a Post-It note, practically--

jessamyn and cortex: [laugh]

mathowie: --"Oh yeah, that's right, Jews."

jessamyn: [laughs] "Oh, that's right, Jessamyn," is actually what it is--

mathowie: [laughs]

jessamyn: --because it's only--and I don't really care, it's become this long-running joke

jessamyn: because they're just so terrible about it, but yeah, I though it was a little funny.

mathowie: [laughs] But what has the high school done for the Jewish community, Jessamyn? What do you think?

jessamyn: At the school? I'm the only one. Here's the picture, we can put in the podcast.

mathowie: That's an old joke, like, "What does the black community think?" and someone goes, "Oh, you mean Carl?", like, for a very Oregon town.

jessamyn: [laughs] Terrible.

mathowie: Wow. Is that a Post-It? Is it that small?

jessamyn: No, no no, that's a full-scale diorama, so it's an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper

which, as near as I can tell, printed out a menorah from a coloring book and taped it to the window. They didn't even color it.

mathowie: Oh God. Wow.

cortex: It's pretty great.

jessamyn: I'm going into work today and work it all out [?].

mathowie: Should the color be blue?

jessamyn: Blue and white, yeah.

mathowie: Blue and white would be the team colors?

jessamyn: I'm going to go in today, I think, and record the principal explaining to me why it's this way and put it on YouTube--

cortex: [laughs]

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: --except I'd be afraid that it might actually rain actual angry Jews on them, and that might be a problem.

mathowie: Yeah. Small-town goofiness, but it doesn't deserve Anti-Defamation League.

jessamyn: Right.

mathowie: But this is crazy, I've never--yeah, crazy.

jessamyn: Alright, sorry, go on.

mathowie: My favorite Metafilter post the day after we recorded a podcast--nope, that wasn't it [chuckle], it was the Chinese--I had no idea, since I have a sixth-grade education in history!--the most amazing Chinese

seafarer story is incredible. It was very long. It's this article out of Cal Berkeley's alumni magazine or something.

jessamyn: Is he really a eunuch?

mathowie: Yep! That's what it sounds like. It just goes on and on--it's a 2,000-word recap of the history of a guy who grew up a slave from central China suddenly becomes in charge of the navy, and

the Chinese navy became the most powerful thing in the world. And it all ties back to this one item this guy has, this very old cup that was from a ship that crashed, and when you read it it's just like--I mean, it's been a month and a half since I read this--it's like, 1402, this stuff happened, and we're talking ships that were ten times the size of any ship anyone had ever seen out of Europe. And this was all stuff of legends, but then they actually pulled up a beam

that was, like, 600 feet long or something out of the mud a few years ago, and everyone just lost their shit about, like, where the hell did this come from.

cortex: Huh.

mathowie: And those stories must have been true. It was just amazing. And a lot of the angle on the story is like, a guy from a farm in the middle of China should not have been the greatest sea admiral ever, but he was. And, uh, let me see... oh yeah, there was this awesome map in National Geographic of his travels, it's like

mathowie: - he covered half the globe, from China to Africa, over and over again, no problemo. Oh, and he'd take - the awesome thing is, they'd have these humongous ships and then they'd run a bunch of humongous ships together, so they'd basically have a floating city -

jessamyn: Flotilla!

mathowie: Yeah, a flotilla of thirty thousand people!

jessamyn: I can't get my head around it.

mathowie: Yeah! In 1400s. How many times do you ever see thirty thousand people together?

jessamyn: Burning Man. Burning Man. Every year. Burning Man.

mathowie: If they encountered anyone, they could basically completely just dominate any sort of battle, because they just had so many people. And it's just crazy. Shit I didn't know.

jessamyn: That's cool! Super cool!

cortex: That is neat.

jessamyn: Today's the seventh, so this post just closed, uh, today? I was looking at it -

jessamyn: - like "why is it not, why can't I leave a comment?" This is just kind of a one-off link from November, which is "1500 AIDS education posters from around the world." I like other countries' advertising, generally - it's interesting to look at how you sell stuff to people from other countries and this University of Rochester and this is their library, their special collection, and they put together this archive and it's cool. That's it. I liked it.

mathowie: Sweet!

cortex: Neat!

mathowie: So they had these, and they just scanned them?

jessamyn: They were given to the rare books people by a guy who, I guess, collected them, and they decided to make them all available, which, you know, is gratifying to be a person who gives something to the library and they actually make it so people can actually look at it.

mathowie: I don't live in Rochester, yeah. It's awesome.

jessamyn: Yeah! A lot of people, you know, give things to the library and they're just like "thanks! thanks so much! yeah, we'll totally -

jessamyn: whatever, but then it's only available to researchers, and the internet really lets us do better than that, so it was nice to see them do it.

mathowie: Especially something populist like a poster that was designed to be seen by everybody.

jessamyn: Exactly, exactly! There's no tricky... you know, advertising is a lot less tricky in terms of rights and whatnot, um

mathowie: How awesome, how awesome is this Swiss poster I sent you. Swiss poster, they pick up a Matterhorn, they put a condom on it, it's brilliant.

jessamyn: Condom Helveticus?

mathowie and cortex;[Laughs]

mathowie: Yeah, it's awesome.

jessamyn: Love it. And it's actually got a picture of something that almost looks like a dick in the corner, which is the reason

jessamyn: all of our page posters in American are awful.

mathowie: A hot rubber? It's a hot rubber, rubber company. Awesome. Very funny.

jessamyn: I like this one that is uhhhm... Indian, just because I like the colors.

mathowie: Red

cortex: [Laughs]

jessamyn: I don't even know it's

mathowie: Red blood drop on a yellow rectangle. In Hindi.

jessamyn: Someone who could translate would be great. And they're crowdsourcing some of the translations and stuff like that which is also, ah

jessamyn: also cool.

cortex: Neat.

jessamyn: Yeah. At any rate, I just thought it was a kinda neat single link, I enjoyed it... Go ahead.

cortex: I liked the music ngram viewer post from, uh, escabeche, back near the beginning of November. Basically just someone took together, scanned and parsed out the musical information from a whole shitload of sheet music, I think they said something like 60,000 scores and created

jessamyn: Is this another like giant music database thing, or is it

cortex: Yeah, yeah

cortex: it's kinda like, it's

jessamyn: Ten million songs? Link?

cortex: It's not, yeah, it's not that big because it's hard to get your hands on stuff that's rights available, but uh.

mathowie: What does ngram mean?

cortex: ngram is just a way of saying a string of n tokens, so like, if you do Markov stuff you break down sentences

mathowie: Uhhhhhh

cortex: into two or three or four words in a row

jessamyn: Matt's making that sise? break bob noise

mathowie: [Laughs]

jessamyn: Uhhhhhh

cortex: So a two gram is two words together, a three gram is three

mathowie and jessamyn;Uhhhhhh

cortex: You people are terrible.

jessamyn: No, I'm totally good, I'm making fun of

cortex: You

jessamyn: Matt, not you! I'm not making fun of you!

cortex: [Laughs] But yeah, so that's what

jessamyn: I'm interested!

cortex: an ngram is, it's just n as in a number, so a four gram would be four words, or four notes in a row

jessamyn: You might say x

cortex: Yeah. Except for people say n in this case so, so yeah, that's what an ngram is. So this is kinda like a frequency table stuff except for musical information instead of words.

mathowie: Ohhh!

cortex: So you can study where the same sort of series of notes has appeared throughout the years.

jessamyn: This is the same day as the post I did. November 6th was a great day in Metafilter history.

cortex: [Laughs]

mathowie: Never forget.

mathowie: 11/6.

jessamyn: It was good. Super good.

mathowie: Sweet.

jessamyn: Um, I have to say, I loved - only because I, you know, wave the flag around here - the 'Eat More Chicken' thread? About, I assume you guys saw this but you didn't

mathowie: Oh yeah, Eat Kale

jessamyn: Yeah. Chick-Fil-A corporation. Great, not only are they jerks because they're total homophobes, but they go after this hippie who lives in Vermont who sells 'Eat More Kale' T-shirts and stickers, like he's a T-shirt and sticker

jessamyn: guy, and they're like, no way man, our poster - which incidentally rips off Gary Larson as near as I can tell - which says 'Eat More Chicken' is going after the 'Eat More Kale' guy and leelo, who's a buddy of mine, made this post about, about that thing.

mathowie: Ugh, man. Yeah, that, they have a trademark on the phrase 'Eat More Chicken' or whatever? Is that the legal angle?

cortex: Yeah, looks like it.

jessamyn: Yeah, and they have to protect it.

mathowie: But this is so outlandish!

cortex: Yeah, there was a, uh

cortex: oh god I can't remember what it was, but there was some, I think there was a, a... place in a... this story starting terrible. A friend of mine in college, his dad lived in Stroudsberg, Pennsylvania and I think they had a coffee shop or shop or something that had a like 'Mc' in its name, some guy like MacIntyre or McDuff or something, and I think they actually got grief from a McDonalds over the

mathowie: Oh man

cortex: 'Mc' in their name

cortex: when the McDonalds was trying to site in Stroudsberg and led to something like everybody in town renaming their businesses with a 'Mc' or something, ah

mathowie: [Laughs]

cortex: I can't remember the details, this is terrible, but it'll be fun when you cut this part out of the podcast.

mathowie and jessamyn;[Laughs]

mathowie: Did, is it, I've never eaten Chick-Fil-A in my life, like even, is it kitschy-good, is it good at all, is it some dumb retro thing, like, is it at all good, at all?

cortex: I've never had it.

jessamyn: Uh, I've eaten

jessamyn: it once in the midwest, it's like, it's like Jack in the Box-level fast food, very

mathowie: Ugh

jessamyn: cheap, very fast,

mathowie: But like in Southern California one opens up and it's like, there's a line around the block and people don't stop talking about it.

jessamyn: It's very inexpensive. Maybe White Castle?

mathowie: Well. Yeah. OK.

jessamyn and cortex;[Laughs]

mathowie: Did you guys see the... moving on... did you guys see the one about the Waffle game at the Waffle restaurant?

cortex: Yeah! That was awesome.

jessamyn: I did not. Let me see this.

mathowie: So great. So, there's a restaurant in Eugene, Oregon that does nothing but waffles and they do Liege-style waffles, those are the thin, crispy kind of waffles, not the floppy, slim ones that are like pancakes, but they do sweet and savoury waffles that are all crazy. And some artist people were eating there one day and they noticed the owner there does weird stuff in trade

mathowie: and had like photos on the wall of crazy stuff he'd traded like waffles for. So they uh, they put their heads together and started building a videogame completely from scratch. They built like a main cabinet, but then they actually programmed and they taught like some kid that hung out at their artists' studio loft, taught himself how to programme, they made like a whole bunch of minigames, like so they showed some screenshots, it looks like it's Tapper plus, like there's a whole bunch of classic videogames they've made

mathowie: with the actual owners of the Waffle shop set in the videogame and stuff and the Waffle house is inside the videogame. They made one unit running this one, you know, one version of Linux that just boots up this game, and they made this beautiful cabinet and they just dropped it off one day and they gave - the owners ended up giving the kid, uh, lifetime free waffles in exchange for the videogame. So it actually exists in Eugene, Oregon and you can go play the videogame and eat some waffles.

cortex: And yeah, it's the only place, I love that, I love the idea

cortex: of 'videogame cabinet' as a one-off piece of art.

mathowie: Yeah. And there's only one copy of this videogame, and it's only in one place.

jessamyn: It's like a William Gibson novel.

mathowie: [Laughs] It's just an awesome story, it's a really long story to read the whole thing, it's really cool. And it's like, the artists have all disbanded and they live in LA and Seattle now and they rarely go back for waffles but it's pretty cool. And I've heard the waffle place isn't half bad from someone that lived there, they said, 'Eh, it's pretty

mathowie: good'.

jessamyn: There is no such thing as a bad waffle place.

mathowie: I know, pretty much.

jessamyn: I even like Waffle House.

cortex: [Laughs]

jessamyn: And that's where I need to eat in the South now that Chick-Fil-A is off limits, so...

mathowie: [Laughs]

jessamyn: In fact, wasn't there a Waffle House thread?

mathowie: Oh yeah, there's been a million.

jessamyn: No no, but like a recent one.

mathowie: Yeah yeah yeah

jessamyn: Keep chatting, keep chatting.

mathowie: Yeah, there was. There was a recent Waffle House, uh I think it was

jessamyn: A string of recent crimes!

cortex: Yeah, that's right.

jessamyn: Oh, it was a terrible thread

cortex: Yeah, so that was a thing.

jessamyn: But the thread was nominally about Waffle Houses

jessamyn: Yeah, Jim Gaffigan talks about them.

mathowie: Waffle Hausen?

jessamyn: Hausen? House? The plural of 'house' is 'houses'?

cortex: Yes.

jessamyn: [Laughs]

cortex: Yes it is.

mathowie: I was thinking of [laughs] I was thinking, plural of Waffle House might need a new name.

jessamyn: So, we don't want to talk too much about Metafilter because we've got the contest coming up

mathowie: Wait, I just got one last one!

cortex: I've got an older one.

jessamyn: You're the one who wants to keep it short, that's all I'm saying.

cortex: I've, I've, I've got an older one that just really needs pointing out which

mathowie: Oh right, yeah

cortex: is a guy who got his hands on this

jessamyn: This isn't that old, this is a week and a half ago

cortex: It's November, it's not December, so it's OK. Well, it's not in the contest, you know. Anyway.

jessamyn: Right right right!

cortex: Anyway I just thought it was awesome that this guy found a print of Manos, the Hands of Fate, a classic cult film, classic as much as anything for the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 take on it, which is one of those thing

jessamyn: I was gonna say, why is this, OK, OK

cortex: Yeah, MST3K did it. Anyway, this guy got his hands on, like, uh

cortex: an actual print, which looks a whole lot better than MST3K did, since obviously since they were on some generation of a generation, and yeah, he's just scanning in frames and looking at little details and it's actually really really awesome, it's just this random find. I don't think the guy was even a crazy like MST3K nerd, he just like found the film and 'Oh hey, this is awesome, I think I might make a little blog about it' and then the internet was like 'HOLY SHIT DUDE!'

jessamyn: And people were like Waahhh!

cortex: Yeah

mathowie: The funny part is

jessamyn: That's cool. I did not see that thread at all.

mathowie: I've probably only seen about, I don't know, maybe

mathowie: a dozen, maybe two dozen, tops, of the hundreds, you know, of MST3K shows and movies and when I saw that post go up, I was like, Oh, I saw that one. Like, I saw that MST3K, you know, I remember that

cortex: Yeah

mathowie: Hand of Manos

cortex: It's a memorable film.

mathowie: Yeah. Very quickly, last thing, uh, Timelapse of the Dam Exploding was pretty awesome from beginning of November. Uhh, there's not much you need to know except they blew up a dam in the

mathowie: White Salmon river in Washington and there's this awesome timelapse video of how quickly, like in eight hours, a lake drains and inundates the canyon, it's pretty cool. And there's a whole backstory if you wanna know why they're getting rid of a dam and stuff, but... it's just cool.

cortex: Neat.

jessamyn: Neat.

mathowie: Cool video.

jessamyn: Yeah, saw that one when it went up and made a mental note like, Woah, totally, and then... forgot. It's great. Super great.

mathowie: That's it. Ask Metafilter?

cortex: Ask Metafilter.

jessamyn: Yeah, uh...

mathowie: I don't have any favorites from November.

cortex: I have a favorite that happened in there, and I think this was after the last podcast so I probably didn't mention it. It's an older thread, like from months ago, someone was looking for the source of a screencap, and they were like, where is this from? And people took some guesses, but no-one could come up with anything firm, and people trying Google Image Search and whatnot and

mathowie: Wow

cortex: It looked it was maybe something out of the ??? cycle or

jessamyn: Oh god, I saw that!

mathowie: Haunting

jessamyn: A disembodied goat head lurking behind a plastic curtain while two men dressed

jessamyn: in formal white clothing prepare a child. Yeah.

cortex: Yup.

mathowie: That's weird.

cortex: And what the fuck is any of that, so no-one was figuring it out and finally then someone

mathowie: Oh my god

jessamyn: Whoa!

cortex: pulled it together, like months later

mathowie: Six months later!

cortex: Yeah

mathowie: Five months later. Wow

jessamyn: How did you, you saw that in the straggling comments thing?

cortex: Uh, yeah, but actually I saw that play on Tumblr first because I was following somebody who was following this, maybe I'm following hot soup girl's Tumblr or something.

jessamyn: I should join(?) Tumblr

cortex: Uh, but yeah, so I saw it show up on Tumblr and was like, What the fuck, it's that! And then I was like, oh, and yeah, and I came back to the thread, and bam

cortex: So yeah, it just totally, turns out that it was like experimental Italian theater, which was why no-one could figure out what film it was from, it's videotape of a theatre performance, so.

jessamyn: That's cool!

mathowie: Neat.

cortex: So yeah, so I thought that was super awesome.

jessamyn: So here's the, uh, thread that has changed my life recently, and of course it's about books and reading. But basically, I don't know if this happens to you guys, but somebody asks a question like, 'I like things like this, what else would I like?' and you're all set to answer it, but then you're like, oh wait

jessamyn: I like stuff like this, which means all the answers are gonna be stuff I like!

cortex: [Laughs]

jessamyn: So, it's, it's, you know, 'I like novels where characters deal with a past mystery, historical fiction, things about books,' and I was like, perfect, so I gave a lot of recommendations, 'I read this stuff, you might like it, blah blah blah,' but then I started reading the thread, and there were all these books I hadn't read, and so like I ordered them all on Paperbackswap and this last week I've been getting them all in the mail and starting to read them

and, you know, when it gets cold outside it's kind of important to have good books, otherwise you spend all your time yelling at people on the Internet, and so I got a bunch of books by--Gwendolen Brooks? Geraldine Brooks? Geraldine Brooks, I think? And a couple other books, and I've been reading them recently--and yes, "Give me your unresolved pasts," was the Ask MetaFilter question that started me down this path and made me really happy.

cortex: Nice.

mathowie: Sweet.

jessamyn: Yeah

jessamyn: And you literally have zero?

mathowie: I have nothing! I don't even--

jessamyn: I have a couple more.

cortex: I actually have two for once. This is, like, amazing.

jessamyn: [laughs] Okay.

cortex: This is actually via Secretariat, though.

jessamyn: That's fine.

cortex: She saw this and she liked it, so--

jessamyn: a.k.a. your wife, for people who aren't plugged in.

Oh, I loved this one!

cortex: "Help me ward off winter scurvy!: what do you do with frozen vegetables and fruits? (other than use them for ice packs?)" It was just like, people putting in all these ideas about, well, you could do this and you could do that, and there's a bunch of great ideas, and a few ideas that sound actually really gross

but I figure that's--everybody's going to find different things exciting.

jessamyn: Well, as somebody who hasn't really had any luck freezing fruits and vegetables in the past, and so their view of frozen vegetables is just these soggy, messy, shitty, disgusting, uneatable things--'inedible', I guess, is the word--and people gave a bunch of suggestions for what you can do that aren't just vegetable mush.

cortex: Exactly.

mathowie: Oh, there was one thing I wanted to mention--

jessamyn: I was going to say, you guys are still there?

cortex: [laughs] That was pretty much it, that was the [inaudible].

jessamyn: [laughs]

mathowie: There was one thing I wanted to mention, the crazy, "hey, can you help read the license plate?" story.

jessamyn: Oh, that was fun!

mathowie: Yeah, that was awesome. So someone has a blurry-ass photo of a license plate, and you can't tell what it says--well, you can kind of go, well, it could be five different things, what it could be.

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: And then someone answers it definitively using Mathematica with the power of science, by--it was awesome, they figured out the

light trail from the bumpy camera, and they figured out the math for that, and then they applied that to the image, and then it totally made the image readable. So, it was pretty awesome!

jessamyn: This thread had the largest amount of deleted and undeleted comments--

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: --because we would go through, and there was a whole bunch of people like, "WAY TO GO!", and we'd axe it, but then, like, six more people would say it, and we're like, well, maybe not, maybe we'll just leave it.

cortex: [laughs]

mathowie: I think that's the power,

yeah, it's just sort of a shrapnel, in a good forum thread there's going to be half the items are just, "Awesome, this is so great!"

jessamyn: Well, and normally we cut that stuff out--

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: --but bluh geh bluh geh bluh bluh. So, yeah, but no, that was really good. I think we side--if we didn't sidebar it, we probably should have. Two other ones that I really liked, and then one other comment that I forgot to mention. One of them was Supreme Court rules of thumb. So you know, like, the Miller Test for obscenity has, like this 1, 2, 3--here's you know how if something is obscene--

mathowie: Oh, nice!

jessamyn: And somebody just asked, "I'm looking for other tests or rules," and there's a bunch of them.

mathowie: Nice.

jessamyn: It's somebody who's writing a book, but they don't even have to say they're writing a book, because they're mostly talking about how you can test--three-part test for regulating commercial speech! three-part test for retroactivity! test for ineffective assistance of counsel! Like--you know, you have to be kind of a rules nerd. But if you are a rules nerd, here's a whole bunch of rules in one place that you can

learn about how certain things work.

mathowie: I like that one is called "The past 25 years is an era rich in three-part tests."

cortex: [laughs]

jessamyn: Totally, totally, right?

mathowie: Because everything has to be self-referential for comedy's sake. That's awesome.

jessamyn: And the etiquettefilter question of the month, which was, "Can I use the racial slurs in the song I've chosen in karaoke when I'm singing it in public?"

cortex: [laughs]

mathowie: Whaaaaat?! Wow.

cortex: That is a--that's a

complicated cultural dilemma there, actually.

mathowie: That is hard.

jessamyn: And which things are you allowed to say, which things-- And of course, like, before anybody gets all hopped up, like, this is culturally determined, right?

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: And so you have to decide what is and is not okay.

mathowie: It's culturally determined, that means, like, look at the audience [cracking up] and see if anyone gets pissed off or something?

jessamyn: Well, because the way you might say a joke in front of your three friends that was tasteless...

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: I mean, for a lot of people there's a line that isn't, "never say anything that might offend anyone," it's a lot

more, figuring out what's appropriate within which groups and, erring, I think manners dictates, erring on the side of not pissing someone off.

cortex: Yeah.

jessamyn: But, you know, when you're doing karaoke and everyone's sitting around drunk anyhow, what's okay and what's not okay? And so you get some people using their, "Well, this is what happened to me," and other people saying, "This is what other people decided."

The last comment is Ted Leo basically skipping some of the words when he sang "Fairy Tale of New York,"--

mathowie: Yeah.

jessamyn: --which is the Pogues thing that has the word 'faggot' in it, and yeah, I just thought it was a really interesting question.

mathowie: Here's a handy word, 'sucka' substitutes well for the n-word [laughs], in the future, if this comes up.

jessamyn: Wait, what?

mathowie: It's--someone wrote--

jessamyn: Oh, 'sucka', sorry, I thought you meant user Succa--

mathowie: No.

jessamyn: --and I was like, I haven't seen him on the website in a long time.

mathowie: You can substitute sucka! [laughs]

jessamyn: sucka!

jessamyn: And the only other thing I wanted to point out, which was just kind of cool, and I noticed it in cortex's notes but he didn't put it in the sidebar, 'cause I think he's allergic to the sidebar, was this essay about "the PC is dead," by jeffburdges -

mathowie: Oh! That's what I was going to mention!

jessamyn: - which was on Jonathan Zittrain's, and then John Zittrain shows up, and was actually super nice.

mathowie: He emailed me before it.

jessamyn: He didn't show back up again.

mathowie: He emailed me before it, going -

mathowie: - "should I?" He claims he signed up for Metafilter that morning, and then the post went up, or the post seems like it was up, and he said "oh! I didn't even know! I've been reading it for six years!"

jessamyn: I know he's a Metafilter reader, and always has been. 'Cause him and I have talked about it before.

mathowie: So he's like "Yeah, should I respond, or is that bad etiquette?" I was like "No, no, totally, clear things up, or say hi to everyone. People love that shit."

jessamyn: Well, and I thought his comment was really effective -

- and useful for our community, you know what I mean? There's a bunch of different ways to show up and be like, "you have it all wrong! I'm a Harvard law professor!" and he just totally wasn't like that. He was like "oh, good point!" or "oh, yeah, I didn't really know about that." I don't know if he's going to show back up. I mean, he's a busy man. But he left a comment, and I thought that was really cool.

cortex: It's totally neat, too, but you have to understand with the notes about stuff like that - that's the stuff I'm doing at six in the morning when I just got up -

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: - and I haven't really gotten through my first cup of tea, so I don't want to put anything on the sidebar, until I actually have my eyes open.

mathowie: Oh, yeah.

jessamyn: Well, you know, my sidebar ratios are not good. The number of ones that have typos or are bad. So usually you make the comments and then I find your comments and sidebar them after I've had lunch.

cortex: See, and that works well. It's a two-step process. We're filtering, you know?

jessamyn: Filter. The 'Filter filter.

cortex: Yeah, exactly.

jessamyn: Yup.

cortex: (laughs)

mathowie: I met Zittrain probably in 2003 or '04 -

mathowie: - and he was the funniest very smart man I've ever known.

jessamyn: He was the moderator on a panel I was on, and yeah, exactly. Total sense of humor for someone that brainy.

mathowie: It was Creative Commons-land for me, so I met all sort of powerful lawyer people. Nobody was fun to hang out with, honestly.

jessamyn: Grimmelmann. Grimmelmann.

mathowie: Oh! He was our intern at the time. He was a kid.

jessamyn: Oh, that's right. I keep forgetting that he's younger. (laughs)

mathowie: You know, I'm just used to old men who are wicked smart and who just want to get into arguments all the time so they can win the argument, and Zittrain was like a comedian, he was like hilarious

jessamyn: Seeing his talks are great.

mathowie: Yeah, you should, um... in general I would say anyone listening to the podcast should listen, read the sidebar, it's fucking gold, like this thing about Community getting sort of cancelled or put on hiatus is a brilliant like 'here's the crazy industry inside bullshit' you had no idea existed

jessamyn: Oh, from the whiteskull, yeah, that was really cool

mathowie: Yeah

mathowie: That was crazy.

jessamyn: And we try to pull out stuff that's from new people which is hard because we have a couple people who write kind of comment-essays... comment-fables? comment-essays? frequently, that are very very good, but if it's a couple of people you like you should just follow them directly and yeah, we try to toss new stuff up on the sidebar. Or stuff that's going on with the site, which is right now, what, the Malls, Secret Quonsar, uh, I don't even know what's been, what's been happening lately

jessamyn: the contest, that was it, I knew there was three things.

cortex: Yeah.

mathowie: Yup. Alright, are we done?

cortex: Oh

jessamyn: Check us out, keeping it short!

cortex: For once, for once I actually, you know, have a list of music. Maybe I'll just

mathowie: Whaaat!

jessamyn: Juh?!

cortex: quickly here, and then you can cut it in throughout the podcast

jessamyn: Yeah, mention it

mathowie: Yeah

jessamyn: Oh, we had our four millionth comment! Sorry to holler.

mathowie: We did?! Oh god. I slept through it.

jessamyn: For god's sakes, I hate you! It was on the sidebar!

jessamyn and cortex;[Laughs]

jessamyn: You wanted to talk about the sidebar!

mathowie: Really? I read the sidebar

mathowie: religiously, I missed that!

jessamyn: Ahhhhh!

cortex: It's the fucking flag queue

jessamyn: It's your website!

cortex: all of a sudden there's four million in the flag queue, in the four millions.

mathowie: Where? Where is it?

jessamyn: It's the big number four million on the sidebar, Matt!

mathowie: Aww, this was during my offline time from

jessamyn: Oh yeah

cortex: Fair enough

jessamyn: OK

mathowie: So there you go

cortex: You're excused.

mathowie: Ahh

cortex: OK, so here's a quick music from, I can't, I still don't know how to pronounce his name but daker? Dacre? Uh, something called Millimeters of Mercury

jingle: Millimeters of Mercury — Arabia/India by dacre

cortex: - which is a nice fusion/electronic thing that's pretty awesome.

jessamyn: "Dominant phrygian?" That's awesome. Phrygian is one of my favorites.

cortex: It fucking dominates that, uh, phrygian.

jessamyn: (laughs)

cortex: Also, there's a teeny sort of chiptune fugue thing from tmcw that's totally awesome. It's a minute long and it's pretty badass.

jingle: music

(music continues)

jessamyn: Listening to it right now.

cortex: There's this really atmospheric -

jessamyn: No I'm not.

cortex: - alt-country cover of a Matthew Ryan song, I guess, but I don't know the original, but I really like this cover by platinum, or I guess, by platinum's band.

jingle: (music - Dam by platinum)

(music continues)

jessamyn: Wait, do we have a post that's called "Dam" and we have a song that's called "Dam?"

cortex: We do! How crazy is that?

mathowie: I think we have a name for this podcast!

cortex: It's fucking syncronicity!

jessamyn: Well, I think we know the name of the podcast, then.

(laughs)

mathowie: Yup.

cortex: Dam it all.

mathowie: Share all the dam links you want.

Sorry.

jessamyn: So what is this, platinum?

cortex: And there is also another sort of acoustic-y thing with a lot of nice atmosphere, but more of a busier sort -

cortex: - of slow burn rock / shuffle with a bunch of builds and stuff. Change Your Way by pedmands.

jingle: (Change Your Way by pedmands)

jessamyn: Oh nice! pedmands has done some stuff in the past that I've really liked, also.

cortex: It's pretty consistently good stuff. I guess this is off the new EP, they're just finishing putting together.

jessamyn: We should mention there is a lot of really good music for sale in the, um, (pause) -

mathowie: Mall.

jessamyn: - Mall, including stuff by chococat, Madamina, Three Day Monk, motty, Soplerfo, and chimaera.

mathowie: I was just thinking we need a perma-Mall for Mefi Music, almost like a blog? Just say, if you came out with an album - unsane does an album, whatever, six months ago, it eventually scrolls off the screen.

cortex: It would be nice to have, almost, a catalog. You know, something like that. For anybody who's actually fulfilling orders or has a site -

cortex: - up where you can download or buy.

jessamyn: I'm not against having the Mall be a year-round thing.

mathowie: Yeah.

cortex: It could be. We'd have to talk to people about whether or not they're actually doing year-round fulfillment.

jessamyn: Sure, suresuresure. And have it be user-edited so I'm not copying all the HTML?

(mathowie and cortex laugh)

mathowie: There's a slight worry that those weird, dorky music producers would show up for an account just to show up on the whatever.

cortex: Well, and you know, we can just put something, you know, be clear about the guidelines, fill it out, someone just talk to the occasional guy who shows up with seemingly good intent but -

cortex: - also, ugh.

mathowie: It's like the Jobs site. That was done for Metafilter members to hire other Metafilter members, and then a job recruiter shows up, and goes "ooooh! It says the word 'job!' That's my job! Okay."

cortex: "There's a hundred and ten positions available! Inquire within!"

mathowie: Right, right.

jessamyn: I emailed some really nice person from the Midwest who basically was just finding jobs in her jobs search, and putting them up on the site, and I was like, "hey, thanks, it's really cool, but these are really not for this."

jessamyn: And she seemed unclear on the concept, so, I guess that happened.

mathowie: We should think of a way to do it, if it's not the Mall page. I dunno, the Mall page is kinda clunky, but, some integrated way in Mefi Music to have albums by musicians. We don't really have a space for a sideblog or something.

jessamyn: Wha?

cortex: We could really revisit what the sidebar looks like on Music. It's been pretty static for a while.

jessamyn: That'd be cool. That'd be super cool.

cortex: So yeah, no, I think that'd be awesome.

mathowie: Just like, if you - 'cause people do this. They put up one song, and then they go, "I got ten more, over at Bandcamp!"

- you know. And that's fine.

cortex: Yeah, and people don't want to spam, but at the same time, it'd be nice to be able to have a little bit better way to feature -

jessamyn: We could make a deal with Bandcamp.

(cortex & mathowie laugh)

cortex: I'll leave that to the business guy.

jessamyn: I dunno, does Bandcamp cost money?

cortex: I have no idea.

mathowie: No. Well, it's a - it's all free, but when you go to buy an album, it could be any price, from free all the way up to twenty bucks or whatever.

jessamyn: Neat!

mathowie: Yeah. It's cool - it's kind of the Flickr now, of recorded music, because it's so easy to upload stuff and sell stuff.

jessamyn: Cool! Okay! Great! Well, this seems nice! I hope you guys have a happy holiday. Maybe we'll do - oh! And we did the Metatalk queue -

cortex: Oh, yeah! Yeah!

jessamyn: - over the four days of Thanksgiving, and that worked out okay.

cortex: It went fine. I was pleased that that did, basically, exactly the right thing. And didn't lead to any big weird changes in how Metatalk functioned those few days. It just kept us from having a couple middle-of-the-night, not-very-good posts.

mathowie: Yeah, it was good. I don't want to do it year-round, but yeah, it was cool.

cortex: I'll pimp real quick the -

- research panel thing, from October.

jessamyn: Oh right! That was really great!

cortex: With DiscourseMarker and iamkimiam and lewistate. In case anyone missed that ??? research.

mathowie: You put this much effort into a Metatalk post, and you can't post to the sidebar? Sideblog?

cortex: Yeah, I should post to the sidebar more. It's a habit thing.

jessamyn: We got taz working the sidebar now, at least a little bit. So, I think it would be neat to have something there every day or two. That's my goal I never reach.

cortex: We could make it happen more often.

mathowie: The neat thing of the day.

cortex: I need to be more persistent about listening to Music regularly, too.

mathowie: If we made it a Tumblr blog, you'd post to it, I bet?

cortex: (laughing) Oh, shut up. I didn't say one word.

jessamyn: Oh, Josh has a new Tumblr blog! That's not even a Project yet, is it?

cortex: No, I put it up the other day, I think.

jessamyn: I'm enjoying it.

cortex: The square foot, yeah. It's fun. It's nice having an excuse to do photography. And I'm borrowing a couple of -

jessamyn: But I'm sorry. I was interrupting. You wanted to talk about the panel.

cortex: I just wanted to put the post out there, for anybody who missed it, since Metafilter research, I think, is really fun stuff, in general, so.

mathowie: All right! Awesome!

Everything good? Everything's great!

jessamyn: There was a post about my book! That's exciting.

cortex: Oh yeah?

mathowie: Sweet.

cortex: Oh oh that Metatalk post, right, yeah.

(overlapping with)

jessamyn: Instead of talking about you, we could talk about me.

mathowie: (laughs)

cortex: It's exciting. I don't have a book. I'm constantly impressed by the whole book thing.

jessamyn: You should get a book.

cortex: I should. But I'd have to write one and then get it published, and those are both kind of tricky.

mathowie: "Creating Four Dozen Tumblr Blogs for Dummies."

cortex: (laughs)

jessamyn: I think that's a great idea!

cortex: I could do a coffee table book that's nothing but single posts from fictional Tumblr blogs. It would be a good time.

jessamyn: Happy holidays to everybody -

mathowie: Yay!

jessamyn: - and we'll chat in the new year about the Best Post Contest.

cortex: Yay!

jessamyn: I think this is a wrap!

cortex: Rock'n'roll.

jingle: (music - Change Your Way by pedmands)

(music continues)

(music continues)

(music continues, then abruptly stops)

Credits

in alphabetical order

• Adrian Hon: 30:00 to 41:30, 50:00 to 51:30
• beryllium: 0:30 to 10:30, 12:30, 15:00 to 27:30, 42:00 to 47:00
• Pronoiac: 0:00, 28:00 to 29:30, 47:30 to 49:30, 52:00 to 60:30
• tangerinegurl: 11:00 to 12:00, 13:00 to 14:30