Podcast 8 Transcript

A transcript for Episode 8: jjg interview (2007-05-11).

Pronoiac passed the podcast to otter.ai.

Summary Keywords

filter, posts, people, question, metal, meta, bookmark, totally, day, page, asked, shirt, big, t shirts, crazy, read, idea, favorite, long, turned

Transcript

Unknown Speaker 0:08 paranoid when other girls walked by nervous that another look will one day catch my eye. Now why would I screw in when everything is fine a my job air base to chimp's me, but I'll never change my mind and I love a man

mathowie 0:49 they say is it that it's cool for me? Lenovo pipelay The new cortex theme, FOB song and then in cortex theme and then us talking welcome Jessamyn

Unknown Speaker 1:08 Welcome to the metal filter podcast.

mathowie 1:13 What was your favorites in www dot Metafilter this week,

Jessamyn 1:18 www another filter would have to be well,

mathowie 1:21 I think there's a lot of library stuff lately.

Jessamyn 1:24 Yeah, it was crazy. There was a whole bunch of library things. My favorite one was probably well sort of everybody else's favorite madam do two jobs things found in books? Yeah, posts. One of the things that's so great about her posts generally is she takes some like weird esoteric topic. And instead of like leaving it there, like Oh, y'all know about the bacon bookmark. Like she goes and like looks other stuff up. So the poems that she crafts have all sorts of great other stuff in them, like, oh, who knew there was a bookmark OF THE WEEK blog and who knew there was a bookmark collector page and the sample of smallpox that got down in the book like she combines like the best kind of newsy stuff with random blogs with like big content posts. And this was just another wonderful one of those. Yeah. Oh, everybody has a good story, which is, which is extra extra good about it? Yeah. But so yeah, her posts are just like delightful. And my favorite thing of that post was the I hold you responsible for the might return to chocolate chip cookie addiction letter, which was somebody saying that I found this in a book sale in Davis, California, a typewritten note, blaming somebody for their chocolate chip cookie addiction. It's just funny.

mathowie 2:42 It has nothing to do with the book. It was just random letters. off the table.

Jessamyn 2:47 Somebody was using for a bookmark, check out boy

mathowie 2:49 man at 711 is my witness.

Jessamyn 2:54 Well, and one of my favorite things is that there's lots of people who have like their funny little stories and they contribute or they just appreciate other people's stories. Like you know, I think the politically newsy things encourage people to be like, by disagree, the blind disagree, but this was a lot more like, oh, yeah, I found something to do. It's like the cooking posts, you know, they just make people happy. I kind of

mathowie 3:14 lose a bookmark OF THE WEEK blog.

Jessamyn 3:17 See? You had no idea. Yeah,

mathowie 3:20 these are real. I didn't know the artwork of the bookmark was still practice so well.

Jessamyn 3:28 And then the other one that I really liked is the scientific instrument. And you know, it's another another slam dunk of meta filters often like talking about crazy stuff in Antarctica. And there were the flash in the ice. For some reason everybody didn't love this post. It was from the eighth, so it was just barely in, in last week. But it's a it's a photodetectors under the ice in Antarctica to find neutrinos. And they have like pictures of the thing being built. And there's video. I used to see pictures of the

mathowie 4:02 Yeah, it's password protected.

Jessamyn 4:05 Bomber there's other there's other pictures.

mathowie 4:08 Let me see other pictures that are gone. They've killed it. They kill them all Science Daily probably just killed them. Here's a picture at least on the Science Daily as cool.

Jessamyn 4:22 Science Daily. Yeah,

mathowie 4:23 I didn't see this. That's pretty cool.

Jessamyn 4:25 Well, cuz you kind of miss it. Because it was just I mean, they have a big a big page of the Neutrino Observatory is still up and that's the part of it that I that I was sort of looking at.

mathowie 4:40 Oh, yeah. Ice Cube. There's been a whole bunch of heavy heavy days, and I've missed out on a lot of stuff.

Jessamyn 4:49 Just so what were the ones what was the stuff that what was the stuff that you liked this week?

mathowie 4:53 Um, I guess we haven't talked to like two weeks right? I think so. The Japanese balloon bombs was awesome.

Jessamyn 5:02 Another post about the Japanese balloon bombs.

mathowie 5:04 Somebody posts No Yeah, that was the one from like may 6. We haven't talked since like the 27th of April. So oh my gosh, yeah, so the Japanese balloon bomb for me that's because that's in Oregon, right? Oh yeah, that's true. But that's just the OS. This is like my favorite absolute favorite is post on metal filter total is when someone does like a really good background, Madam Juju Jive style. Post about something that happened eons ago, no one ever talks about nobody has any idea like even existed kind of like someone just it's kind of like just pulling out this jam out of the archives of a library. Just going Did you know, you know that the Japanese launch 10,000 balloons and killed six people in Oregon wants like,

Jessamyn 5:49 no clue. And great. Yeah, we had this huge balloon making factories like that happens to be like a trivia topic that I know a bunch of. Be just because it's that weird. Like, if you run like trivia nights, for example, like that kind of esoteric nonsense of stuff that you do tend to learn about because people don't believe it. Right? Like, what were the only deaths on American soil and World War Two, you know, people be like, Oh, Hawaii, and it's like, wow, the white wasn't really? Oh, you know, it was a colony. It wasn't really a state but the people in Oregon, those were them. The Japanese balloons and they're like no way.

mathowie 6:28 Yeah, interesting stuff around the edges of a major story like World War Two like subs in Santa Barbara in the Long Island stuff. Like that stuff's really cool. But I had no idea this blue thing even existed.

Jessamyn 6:40 My dad was one of those like, you know, look out guys, you know, who was trained, whatever it was civil, Civil Air Patrol or whatever, like trained to go sit around with binoculars and look for enemy aircraft. And took it really

mathowie 6:53 seriously stationed in the forest. A little.

Jessamyn 6:57 No, it was like it was like in New York, right? Like, when he was a teenager, but they all like, learned how to do that stuff.

mathowie 7:05 The blue thing reminded me of I just heard this crazy story from a Danish dude. Talking about Greenland, the ice one. Stuff had just

Jessamyn 7:18 been one. The Yeah, that's right. Never get tired of that. The

mathowie 7:25 ice think the Danish government just declassified this info and the US has denied it up until like two years ago that they ever had any air base on Greenland, to strike it Russia during World War Two. And afterwards, yeah. So he had heard about this from like, just some guy at a bar like oh, you should do like he's a he's, I think it was a web designer but had some aspirations to be a documentary filmmaker, and someone told him you should like research the story about Greenland so he kind of did and poked around, eventually met this like, in you it dude from Greenland, who had a video camera and was still alive. And just took all these videos in the 50s of American servicemen. They built the largest airbase ever built. They displace like 300 I entire villages, they moved to the south part of the island. Like overnight, they burned down all their houses. They kept a B 52. In the air loaded with plutonium bombs, 24 hours a day at all times, right? Yeah, during the 50s and 60s, and those planes, two of them actually crashed, one crashed on the island. And actually, a bomb blew up. And they had all the all the native people help them clean up the plutonium tainted snow that it landed on and put it in like trucks and took the shipping containers to New Jersey. And then half of the island got cancer in the next 20 years and died. So now, like one guy is suing the Danish government for hiding this for like 50 years and for not telling them what kind of plutonium it was because he's starting to get cancer and his doctors need to know. And they refuse to say that there ever was a plutonium bomb there. So it's this crazy thing. That'll be a really interesting movie in a few years. He's got lots of footage already.

Jessamyn 9:25 That was just this was a metal filter post or this was some guy,

mathowie 9:28 some guy from gel, but it reminded me that balloons like is this crazy thing you've never heard of? Is this crazy? The biggest airbase ever built in the world was a secret up until like two years ago and that you know they did all this stuff under everyone else everyone's knows without ever being found out. So like they

Jessamyn 9:47 say that it sounds like it's a guy you know from jail Nona guy you know in jail.

mathowie 9:52 Yeah, it was the guy gave a talk about it. But you know, if you search Wikipedia for Greenland and Danish info, there's nothing about there's Here's a page about World War Two. And they just did. There's nothing about like this,

Jessamyn 10:04 because Wikipedia requires you to have, you know, sizeable sources and there's nothing published.

mathowie 10:09 Yeah. What's your read? It really requires the I guess, what's your favorite AskMe Metafilter posts this week?

Jessamyn 10:16 Let's see. Well, of course, there's the there's the playing to the crowd. How can I paint my living room wall with a smooth gradient from x color to y color?

mathowie 10:25 Oh, did you see that? No. Oh, it

Jessamyn 10:28 was awesome. I mean, it was just basically like, I'm painting my house and I want a gradient

mathowie 10:33 gradient in the house. That's pretty cool. Well, don't you think it would look awesome. And I would do it besides spray paint? Like,

Jessamyn 10:39 we'd ask that a filter.

mathowie 10:42 There's so many questions. I just didn't see that one.

Jessamyn 10:46 Yeah, people were talking about, you know, you can, you can use a PE sprayer and you can gradually add more and more pigment. A lot of people were like, dude, professionals will totally do this. You can make a halftone stencil pattern. You can basically, somebody was like, ask Carmen user, Carmen was like, I asked my sister if this could be done. She said, the short answer is no, the long answer is hire somebody

mathowie 11:10 what like the people you hire do though, like spread,

Jessamyn 11:13 they would take a really long time. And use a sprayer and then like Gen Gen. So what I'm thinking of gradually, you know, gradually add more and more pigment and spray it in this very like, you know, tight way. And I guess you could do it. I mean, cool. I mean, if you're into gradients, obviously, if you hate gradients at all, it'll look like

mathowie 11:35 oh, I've never even seen anything like that. I have no, I have no, I have no idea if it would be a good idea or not.

Jessamyn 11:43 Yeah, it's mysterious to me, too. And then the other question I liked was just kind of a sappy wasn't even sappy. It was basically somebody like, hey, 10 years ago, when I didn't know what the hell I was doing with my life, I got a pep talk from somebody who told me that I would that I had promised, and I would go do something useful. And now I want to say, thank you, for that person. Yeah, 10 years later. And it was just, I don't know, I just liked the story. And a lot of people had like good ideas of how to how to say thank you, or they talked about people who were important to them. And it was just, it was just me like, it was a neat, happy. How to how to how to thank somebody.

mathowie 12:30 Yeah, I saw this I didn't read. I saw the question is read any of the rest of them. But

Jessamyn 12:40 people who were important to them, because his whole point is like she probably forgets that she ever said this. He probably just didn't, you know, didn't didn't register necessarily, but it was meaningful to me. How do I think

mathowie 12:53 I have two good stories about that one good. One bad beat when I was younger one of them. I still feel awful to this day that I had this art teacher it was like the most amazing teacher in the world. But I was like 16, and like totally all crazy hormone doubt. And I was such an asshole to everyone, you know, bipolar or something like that. I was crazy. And I just made his life a living hell. And like years later, I still feel bad about like, and actually went back to the high school site. He's gone. And he has such a general name. I've no idea how to find it. His name is almost John Smith. I mean, it's just impossible to find him. I have no idea what how to find him at this point. To be like, Hey, I

Jessamyn 13:33 turned out okay. Oh, I

mathowie 13:34 totally want to say I totally turned out okay. Mostly because of you. You kept my sanity through high school, what little sanity I had in high school. And like, I'm so sorry that we are such an asshole to you every day. Every day of the year. We are assholes to you. And like it was just a weird way of showing you know that I actually liked you.

Jessamyn 13:53 Right. Right, that I wanted to relate to you.

mathowie 13:55 Yeah. And the other one was like I had this neighbor I hung out. Looking back on it's just really weird. I hung out with his like, late 20s, early 30s neighbors like all the time, talk to him for hours every day, just neighbors sitting on their porch, talk to him every day for you know, whatever, 10 years or something. And then when I graduated high school, the like wife wrote me this long letter about like, she had a rocky past, you know, like with Coke, and I think it was cocaine that probably fucked up her 80s experience for this big long letter about like, you know, I'm so proud of you. You're so smart. You're gonna go on do great things. But let me tell you my story of coke addiction and don't ever do this. And I was like, to just say no guy and never even touched anything at that point. It was like absolutely ridiculous. It'd be like, someone write me a letter to say, you know, don't be gay or don't suddenly turn black or something like that. It was just

Jessamyn 14:50 like, lecturing me on the dangers of prostitution.

mathowie 14:52 Yeah, and I was like, you know, I, you know, and I was like, 1617 I wasn't really I didn't have any tax. So I think I was just like, wow, this is weird because I'm not gonna do coke ever in my life. I see no reason to so you know, it's fine it's I'll be okay. And she like just took it the wrong way and like so pissed off at me she's like stuck out you know she this huge vulnerable your

Jessamyn 15:18 neck out, but you were also like a frickin kid. You know, I don't know why anybody expects 17 year olds to be able to deal with anything. I'm always pleasantly surprised when they do. But I remember be 17 I was good for nothing. Oh, yeah,

mathowie 15:31 I'm glossing over. You know me at 17 when I actually says pipe. Well, this is fucking stupid. Like, that's probably what I said to her face. Like, totally awful. And she was like, she didn't talk to me for a while.

Jessamyn 15:47 When I when I published my first book, when I edited my first book and published it I wrote my fifth grade teacher a letter. Because he's now like, the principal of the school where I where I went to elementary school and I was like, you know, you were the only person in all of school who didn't make me feel like a dork misfit. Do we loser? And thanks. You know, I turned out okay. Also, same, same kind.

mathowie 16:11 I once jokingly when I got my first New York Times byline. I wanted to send it to God, I can't remember who it was someone in college taught English. I had to take some dummy English class and was like, asked me if I English was my second language. Like, that's how bad my writing was. That's a little rude. Yeah, I kind of like want to send it like fuck you.

Jessamyn 16:39 published in the New York Times,

mathowie 16:40 what did you ever do you loser? I marked a whole bunch of like useful stuff and asked medical. There's my personal favorites. I didn't I had no idea. There were American Indian Native American blog. Communities. I had no idea. Someone's asking the culture of, you know, are there a whole bunch of blogs and community politics? You know, around that? And there apparently is?

Jessamyn 17:06 Yeah, no, they're totally are we have I think I told you this before the incoming president of the American Library Association. Library Association is Native American, like, this is the first Native American president the ALA has ever had. And so the Library Association has been and she has on her own been making, like a big effort to raise awareness of online, you know, social tools for for Native American populations. It's been really, really interesting. Oh,

mathowie 17:33 that's really cool to see, like, grow up on reservation and all that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

Jessamyn 17:37 totally. And the annual conferences in DC, and you know how there's the new Native American museum. They're doing an honor dance for her. Because it's such I mean, it's a big deal all around, right. Like, she's awesome. She's a library professor. And, you know, this is a high honor. And so in the in the native community, it's kind of a neat big deal. Yeah, I saw that post, too. I was really psyched about it.

mathowie 18:00 Yeah, it's, it's always cool. I love. Uh, Neil used to be a good source of this, he would say like, check out the knitting metal filter and check out the Kottke of knitting. But there's all these sub genres of blogging that you don't even know about. They're huge. And there's 10s of 1000s of people involved in them. And they've created these humongous structures, like Metafilter style, and central points.

Jessamyn 18:21 And I was learning that about the Indian community, like not Native American community, but the Indian community. Somebody had asked a question about it a couple of weeks ago, and somebody was like, Oh, the Desi whatever. And I was like, the what? And there was a long explanation about like, that's sort of the designation of Indian Indian community this then you don't have to figure it out. It was like some sort of maybe video blogging or something like that. I think it was a, it was an individual who was over like a relationship filter question had to do with parents and whatnot. And people were like, Oh, if you're Indian, you're going to need to get help. Here. They are the other place because

mathowie 18:59 there are a lot of cooking questions that are super popular.

Jessamyn 19:04 There's always I don't know. Yeah. Oh, JD Roth's helped me piss off my wife with the sexist lyrics. CD.

mathowie 19:12 Oh my god. I see that. I didn't see that. What was that? Oh, there it is.

Jessamyn 19:18 Sexist songs, jazz and lounge edition.

mathowie 19:21 Oh, wow. Well,

Jessamyn 19:25 and the thing that was nice, is that what the hell is going on? Oh, I had loaded the Desi Music Videos page and playing all this music. You know, people didn't show up in their like bar or you know, I don't want to fly like nobody gave him a hard time where they were like, Oh, I get it. You love your wife, but you're trying to irritate her. So it didn't get totally derailed.

mathowie 19:51 Yeah, it wasn't like show me the most misogynistic lyrics and less violent rap lyrics.

Jessamyn 19:57 It's not totally different from that. Yeah. No, it was really clear. You know, this is why I'm doing it. This is what I'm looking for. I

mathowie 20:05 think the annoying is wife is tongue in cheek, because I know, he likes a lot of music. Nobody around him likes like I remember, he thanked me once for turning him on to Nelly Mackay. And she's a, you know, oddball jazzy young person. And you'd played at work and everyone just hated his guts. And it became, it became this punishment. If you lose a bet JD gets to play that, you know, for everybody. This sort of reads like a extension of that.

Jessamyn 20:38 And that was like that with the replacements I was only allowed to listen to the replacements when I want to bet.

mathowie 20:44 So I think that's probably about it.

Jessamyn 20:47 That's That's it for your for your AskMe unfilter any other? I'm trying to think if there's any other like trends, I noticed favorite things, what have you it was just I mean, it was a busy week, you get the feeling? I mean, I know it's not true, right. But with the weather, I always feel that whatever weather is in my house is the weather everywhere. So I'm like, oh, yeah, it's spring. So of course everybody's Yeah, thinking about thinking about this, that or the other.

mathowie 21:11 Well, in the dead of summer, everyone leaves metal filter to go outside, but it's just starting to warm up everywhere. Metal filters, seems to be skyrocketing. Metal stocks. Everything's just scrolls off the page every day now. And someone a couple days ago said, Hey, we're having a really great day, I just want to say thanks. I just feel like an amazing day that day. All the posts

Jessamyn 21:32 that person linked to were were incredible. And I've been thinking the same thing like wow, like, I've been like reading tons of stuff on Metafilter. And it's been making me really happy. And oh, did you want to mention anything about the T shirts that you've got in case everybody doesn't read metta talk all the time?

mathowie 21:48 It's on the front page of metal filter for everyone to Oh, is it? So these T shirts are sort of a one off? It's sort of a test to see if I should do I've been wanting to do real silkscreen T shirts myself for years and years and years. Mostly, the thing stopping me was figuring out how to ship them to people. So

Jessamyn 22:13 right, you don't want to be a fulfillment center cortex was having a fun enough time doing that with the Nephi CD.

mathowie 22:18 Yeah, exactly. And yeah, I would I wouldn't want to I just remember when I had to make custom shirts, that it was just a drag when I get in the water. And how do I get into the same place where they're like, oh, there it goes. 20 minutes of my day. Today, I'm used to there and stuffing envelopes while I watch TV tonight or something. So I never streamline the shipping process. I've no idea how to figure out how much it costs to ship a shirt. I've heard horror stories from friends that did small runs of T shirts where they just show up at the post office with like, 50 t shirts and then the Lopes dressed with no postage. And the post people just freak out. They're just like, Ah, it's like bringing in 10,000 pennies to the bank like,

Jessamyn 22:57 right? Well, and the rates are changing, like, what, this week and it changes even the whole structure. So there's like,

mathowie 23:04 so many people. Yeah, there's so many people selling T shirts, though. You think it'd be pretty systematic. They'd be like, Dude, you weigh one shirt or, or Fruit of the Loom. and extra large is always gonna weigh this with this kind of envelope. And you might as well just pre pay the postage and print them out here. Like there should be an entire system to streamline this and I haven't figured it out yet. So for now, I'm going with coudl partners. I know this guy, Jim coudl, who runs this thing, and I actually bought a few like I bought little sketchbooks that some dude in Portland made that there. They're awesome little things. And he said, Hey, you know, we did a t shirt for another site. We were thinking of doing a t shirt from NFL turn. I was like, Oh, sure. And he wanted to do like a crazy baseball tee and two different kinds of blue that didn't look anything like metal filter blue. And I was like, let's just do something simple and straightforward. And if this goes well, I'll do like crazy AskMe Metafilter shirts that say asked me anything or, or we could throw a design contest or

Jessamyn 24:06 like a design contest. I would like ask me anything. I told you. I got that many t shirt from Davey darling When he had them for his orientation where he teaches Yeah, there was a picture of him and I was like, Oh, do send me one. So it comes down to my knees like I was gonna wear the meetup last weekend. But it looks ridiculous on me. So I'd like

mathowie 24:26 to do girls shirts and crazy triple Extra Large shirts. Like if I had control over if I had a connection with a screen printer. I can basically order small runs batches of these things. And I'd like him to be cheaper. I'm a little bummed it cost was shipping it's it's like 24 bucks a shirt so it's kind of insane. It's it's 19 bucks a shirt I'd probably sell them for 15 In the next run. Best selling cheap bones to bones again, K down Sookie Today we're talking to Jesse James Garrett, co founder and president Adaptive Path. You coined the term AJAX. You helped with a few meta filter architecture, things like ASP meta filters, category system and future projects. And you're probably the oldest member of metal filter that still active. Oh,

jjg 25:25 yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, I

mathowie 25:28 don't think anyone comes close. Yeah. So my first question for you was, why on earth do you still visit or use metal filter?

jjg 25:41 That is? That's a question I find myself asking myself all the time. stubbornness, sheer kind of habitual inertia? I don't know. I think that if metal filter had was still just the blue, I probably would not still becoming a metal filter. Because I hardly ever go into the blue anymore. I mean, I'll look at the top page. But I'll very rarely dip into a thread. Yeah. So past meta filter is really kind of become the reason that I go to the site these days.

mathowie 26:22 So do you just sort of scan the front page and jump in anything looks interesting? Are you watching tags? Or how? How are you?

jjg 26:28 I'm just Yeah, I'm just scanning the front page, I, I don't have any kind of sophisticated system for my Metafilter consumption?

mathowie 26:36 Well, it's just asked Metafilter sort of feels like metal filter felt to me, you know, three, four years ago, where it's, it's kind of like just overwhelming, right? There's just so much I see why people, there's so much attrition, because people can only keep up with it for so long. But the AskMe edit filter is sort of like double or triple the output of meta filters these days. So I haven't my RSS reader, and it's the first one to just fill up, like, every time I hit refresh every few hours. And, you know, I've taken the like, now I'll just watch tags or categories, just to keep the levels down.

jjg 27:13 But the thing about asset filter, as opposed to better filter classic, is that there's kind of this, there's this obligation, for clarity in what people write for the front page. Whereas meta filter, if anything, what it rewards is being obscure. So as a result, it's a lot easier, I can scan AskMe and filter pretty quickly. You know, I can probably scan as meta filter at five to 10 times the rate that I can scan metal filter. And know if I'm going to be interested in something or not. You know, everybody's trying to be clever with how they compose their front page posts on the blue, whereas AskMe medical are really, it's all about integrity. Yeah. Well, there's no I think that there's a strong kind of social pressure to come on get to the point. Yeah. I love the the meta talk thread recently about should we require somebody to actually ask a question in their question, I think. I think that's exactly what we need. Right?

mathowie 28:17 That's what the postpaid says, right? I've cleaned it up. But yeah. postpaid is a nightmare, but it's like this was shows on the page, try and ask your entire question, please.

jjg 28:31 Yeah, or you have these these these great big long posts. I mean, especially you like these, these relationship questions? Yeah. Where, like, they they tell his whole story. And you can't find a question in there anywhere? Like, what is it? Exactly? What is the thing that you want some advice about? Because this is a great big tangled mess of your personal life here?

mathowie 28:52 Yeah, I guess the other problem with those is, even if they do have a really tight question, is the how can you get to it in a sentence or two? So the front page thing will be like, so I'm gonna dump my girlfriend. You know, there's a lot more inside like, and there's no question. And it feels like work. Those are the one that usually scan over, but I read it, I read the front page sort of have it in RSS. So I don't even get the benefit of the Should I jump in or not. I just sort of see it scroll past. You know, if I see something ridiculous in the relationship, I'll I mean, as much as I tell myself, I don't waste time on the relationship ones. I find myself just glomming onto those like crazy.

jjg 29:33 Yeah, well, it's this this kind of this deep human impulse toward gossipy things. But you know, those those questions that don't have a question in them are. Often what it is, is that this is somebody who isn't really looking for advice at all, but rather they are, like stating their position and then they're looking for somebody to validate it and that tends to not go very well in the threat.

mathowie 29:59 Yeah, that's a lot of using asthma filter serve as a surrogate therapy session. I think

jjg 30:06 I'm doing the right thing, right, or Yeah,

mathowie 30:09 I mean, half the relationship questions. They know what the right answer is, but they don't want to do it or, or they don't want to hear it. And I mean, the ones that aren't anonymous, when they mark best answers, you know, the way they're gonna go. It's often great when the audience revolts and they're like, No, you're marking the wrong one does a terrible answer. The only other thing I want to ask you was what on earth ever compelled you to think it was a good idea to put a live MagSafe cord in your mouth, like I want to, I want to walk through this go back. So someone was asking about the new, the new PowerBooks MacBooks from Apple have a nice magnetic connector that provides power. And you can walk by and trip on your cord without bumping your laptop or breaking it or breaking off the cord. Which is how everybody you know it, but it's this weird magnet that provides 120 volts of power or whatever. And I've always been careful not to drag my finger near it. And staff have always been wondering what it takes to get a zap. Someone asked. Were they worried about children? What was it?

jjg 31:28 Yeah, they just this is somebody who just had a new baby and they were worried about the baby being able to because they you can pull it out really easily. Yeah. And then you know, what happens if the baby puts it in their mouth? Which of course, babies explore the world by putting everything they can get their hands on in their mouth.

mathowie 31:45 Yeah. So then, yeah, it was an interesting question. I guess it's obvious what? how someone could answer it by just putting it in their mouth. But like, did you think Did you had you heard that? It was harmless that it was possible? Or did you have no idea going in? Like, did you just sort of like stick your tongue out? And carefully?

jjg 32:07 I didn't, I didn't have any idea. It was. I guess there are two things about it. First of all, I kind of worked myself up to it. Like first I touched it with my finger, right? And I touch it with my finger and nothing happened. And so I thought, well, you know, maybe it needs a little bit more conduction. So I licked my finger, and then I touched it with my wet finger. And still nothing happened. Wow. And I'm like, Okay, well, so this definitely is not like, there isn't a whole lot of juice coming through here. Yeah. And then I kind of I, I touched the edge of it with the tip of my tongue. And I and there was nothing I'm like, okay, so clearly, I have to complete a circuit here. And that was at that point that I put the whole thing on my tongue. And the first time I put the whole thing on my tongue, I still didn't feel anything,

mathowie 32:58 like lane that, like, flat on your tongue. Like all across it, I had to kind of get to get all three contacts, probably completely. Yeah. And so

jjg 33:09 what I had to do was I had to get like a little extra saliva there. To, to complete the connection. So So I worked my way up to it. But also, you know, it was kind of a calculated risk. I'm like, you know, this is I've been shocked before, by electrical current coming out of a wall and didn't kill me. Yeah, right. I mean,

mathowie 33:35 but listen, like, you know, jerk your head back and crack a tooth or something I'd be freaked out about. I just, oh, like, your whole.

jjg 33:45 I can't say that. I mean, all of this happened within the space of about, like, two and a half minutes. So I can't say there was a great deal of deliberation. Process.

mathowie 33:54 Oh, of course. So you're putting the chords in your mouth. There's no Planning Council meeting on that.

jjg 33:58 Yeah. But the funny thing for me is just that just the reaction that it got. Like, there was that great big long meta talk thread. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, man, I've been I've been I've been using the site since since it went up. I've been I've been participating on the sites from the very beginning. And you know, it's funny, I was going through some old email I actually found like, when you first put metal filter out you asked for, for feedback. Yeah, I found this this big long list of like, interaction design advice for you. Like, when you submit a comment, it should do this instead of that and all this kind of stuff. Oh, man,

mathowie 34:42 can you forward that back to me? Yeah, sure. I remember him so it was like spring or summer of 99. And I had been working on it for a month or two in my head and then I worked on it. I guess all spring is eroded and did a tiny amount of testing And then I said, Sir, when I was sort of ready to go public, I sent an email out to 20 people from web design lists that people I'd correspond with slightly or read knew it was with Arthur and Peter.

jjg 35:13 I already knew that you were working on it, because we were both living in LA at the time. Oh, right. Yeah. And, and we had gotten together. And you talked about the idea

mathowie 35:22 where it was, remember the LA meetup.

jjg 35:26 We went down to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. We had lunch down there, Jesus

mathowie 35:33 only remember that i All I remember is like Macworld, I knew you already. But then why did I know you? And

jjg 35:39 yeah, it was actually it was just before I left Los Angeles, it was like, I just gotten the job in San Francisco. And when we met for the first time, like, Hey, nice to meet you, I'm leaving town.

mathowie 35:51 Yeah, I do remember that. I remember probably emailing you and saying, Hey, I like your blog. I'm working on a blog or something. And,

jjg 35:59 yeah, well, we've been on a bunch of the same mailing lists for a while. So I only remember

mathowie 36:03 a lunch. I have no recollection of that.

jjg 36:07 Anyway, you know, one of the funny things about when Metafilter started was I was I was actually in Seattle, at a conference web design world when you sent that email out, and so I went, I was at the conference. And I had gone over to the, the internet cafe at the conference, which was, you know, a little table with four iMacs on it, to check my email and and, and I got the email from you saying that it was going up. But the other email that I got at that same time was that I was making arrangements while I was in Seattle, to meet Jessamyn, who I've been corresponding with by email. So, like, the day that you launched meta filter was the day that I met Jessamyn for the first time. And also, it was like, the day after I met Rebecca, who used to be a member of Metafilter. And now he's my wife.

mathowie 37:13 So you hadn't even Oh, you'd known her over email before? Yeah, yeah. But wow.

jjg 37:19 Wow. So it was it was an eventful weekend. Anyway, yeah. So all of this stuff that I've done for Metafilter over the years like like I You gave me your login when you went on on honeymoon? Do you remember that? Oh, no. Yeah, I was the site while you were while you were gone.

mathowie 37:41 I turned it off, though. While I was in Australia, but I think oh, I think that five case I was going to secret metal filter. I think I just gave you my login just in case you needed to do anything or something.

jjg 37:54 Yeah, well, I didn't I didn't use it. Like I didn't post as you or anything like that. But But yeah, I was I watched the site every day and you know, kind of kept everything going. The what was

mathowie 38:10 the other thing prototype? Just yeah,

jjg 38:13 that's right. That's right. And then you you moved on to the actual production model. Right,

mathowie 38:19 right. Yeah, we got the bugs out with you.

jjg 38:21 Right. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, I've done all this stuff. Okay, I created a category scheme for AskMe unfilter. And and I've done all this stuff and the thing that I'm known for now is being like the resident like Johnny Knoxville of metal filter like let's think of a stupid stunt I know Jesse will do so like you know when somebody asks is it possible to get a paper cut on your eye? You know, they'll put up the JJ G signal.

mathowie 38:51 Yes, exactly. And we've got sacrificial eyes we can test on so that's pretty good. It's probably about

Unknown Speaker 39:06 paranoid when other girls walked by nervous than another look will one day catch my eye. Now Wow when I screw in when everything is fine, a my child air base to Jim's me, but I'll never change my mind. And I do. John Macy