131: Today. Server Time.

August 4, 2017 2:10 PM

Jessamyn and I carve out about 80 minutes to talk about MetaFilter and our respective weird busy months, including side threads on having too many dictionaries, what exactly qualifies as the greater Boston area, and questions about bathroom stuff. We cover pretty much all of July. Also, hey, we had a best post contest last month!

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Helpful Links

Podcast Feed
Subscribe with iTunes
Direct mp3 download

Misc
- Long Live Gopher (with some MeFi mentions)
- Community Signal on the Photobucket thing
- a cache of West family photos

Jobs
- Pick up 27 books and ship 12 of them to me. by Malleable
- Digital Library Internship by mfoight
- Ride to and from the dentist by blnkfrnk
- Senior UX Designer by Snacks

Projects
- I trained an A.I. to Ask Metafilter... by danhon
- "Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life" by adamgreenfield
- Mk Mrc Grt Gn! A Disemvoweling Twitter Bot by snortasprocket
- Rassler, an 8-bit pro wrestling RPG by zerolives
- Secret Spaces by brecc

MetaFilter
- Photobucket thread by current resident
- danhon's AskMe neural net thing by Monochrome
- That's Ms. Badass to you by bq
- I grew up wanting to be a superhero by Mchelly
- “All the dads here just are queer in some way—and that’s that.” by Fizz
- Stay outside the circle? You'll die. Go inside the circle? Probably die. by cortex
- Happy 18th you big blue beast by cortex
- Wooowww! by OmieWise
- I try to remember not to sleep in full armor by Wordshore
- Birdhouse in Her Soul by rangefinder 1.4
- The lane is built to help you. by hippybear

Ask MeFi
- Is silent farting a skill everyone can pick up? by sciatrix
- Keep out (please) by dreamphone
- gimme chompers by komara
- Accessible elevators by Literaryhero
- Would anyone want shoes from 1909? by MsDaniB
- "Am I going to die?" "Probably not, but I wouldn't bet my life on it." by pintapicasso
- In Whose House Was Robert Gould Shaw's Sword Found? by Mrs. Pterodactyl

IRL
- A-Ping, A-Pong, A-Pingity-Pong, A-Ping Pong Pingity Pong by Greg_Ace
- BarberQue by garlic

FanFare
- See what's hopping at the Watercooler
- You better believe it's Game of Thrones season again

Music
Featured in this episode:
- Camp Meeting on the Fourth of July by hades
- Elvis Presley Slow Down by TheCoug
- But the moderator, while insisting he was not intoxicated... by bondcliff

MetaTalk
- July Best Post Contest! FINAL AWARDS by Eyebrows McGee
- 2017 Holiday Movie Club by the man of twists and turns
- mathowie transfers ownership of MetaFilter to cortex by cortex
- Help build MetaFilter’s savings by cortex
- Metatalktail Hour: Favorite Words by Eyebrows McGee

posted by cortex (staff) to MeFi Podcast at 2:10 PM (33 comments total)

I do live by a candle pin place.
posted by French Fry at 3:24 PM on August 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm famous!
posted by Literaryhero at 3:46 PM on August 4, 2017

Great pod. Made my time cleaning my bathroom (something I'd been ignoring for two weeks) go by much more quickly.
posted by Fizz at 3:47 PM on August 4, 2017

shit.
posted by bondcliff at 3:53 PM on August 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Enjoyed that late night poddie-woddie cast; now time for the fast train to SnoozeVille Central. Thanks.
posted by Wordshore at 5:51 PM on August 4, 2017

Just for clarification, I believe Maciej is pronounced mah-cheh
posted by Going To Maine at 7:44 PM on August 4, 2017

Polish guy's name? Yeah, something like mah-chay (or mah-check to his friends).
posted by pracowity at 5:14 AM on August 5, 2017

I believe Maciej is pronounced mah-cheh

Thanks!
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 6:29 AM on August 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Whenever I listen -- since I've met cortex and rub virtual elbows with jessamyn often enough -- I feel less like I'm listening to a podcast and more like I'm on a three-way call with friends and I just can't unmute my phone. But it's OK because my friends are so cool I don't even need to say anything. (And in my regular life, I NEVER feel like I don't need to say anything.)
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 11:56 AM on August 5, 2017 [3 favorites]

Yes, we Chattanooga-based MeFites loved it when you came to visit us, cortex. You and Secretariat should do that again, even when you're not Huntsvilling. (What, why can't that be a verb?)

And thank you, Jessamyn. I just wish I could have driven right over to your mom's house to work on everything with you.
posted by The Wrong Kind of Cheese at 12:32 PM on August 5, 2017 [1 favorite]

Everyone should definitely check out the best post contest, it was a lot of fun! I read a lot of posts I might otherwise not have engaged with!

Also my kids call cortex "Mr. Josh" and they got all mad when I turned off the podcast a couple minutes in to listen to later because they want to hear all the Big Adult Talking.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (staff) at 11:14 PM on August 5, 2017 [5 favorites]

Variation. Huh - the warm words link in that ended up being a little prophetic.
posted by Wordshore at 4:54 PM on August 6, 2017

...the text I got from bondcliff... so funny. He cussed me out for dating a moderator thereby getting our WKRP parody included.

I gave him the Nelson Muntz laugh.
posted by not_on_display at 6:37 PM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

jessamyn, I am very sorry to hear about your loss. I know everyone handles bereavement differently and I appreciate you talking candidly about your experiences, regardless of whether or not other people might think something is funny or not funny, for instance. I'm glad you're able to have some time and be in a place where you can process at your own pace (I hope). And I hope the gathering you're putting together goes well.

In browsing your mother's flickr albums, I keep thinking "wow these are really great pictures." There's one sort of mini photo essay I liked that I thought was sweet, and sort of got me in the gut even though I didn't know her: Why I Love Books.

And cortex, congrats. This is definitely one peaceful transfer of power I can get behind, and I'm happy you're happy about it!

Everyone should definitely check out the best post contest, it was a lot of fun! I read a lot of posts I might otherwise not have engaged with!

The Best Post contest with MeFite categories is one of my favorite things about MetaFilter and I am so glad that you brought it back, Eyebrows. Thanks again for running it. I love seeing all the other categories and what I might have missed.

Jada Fitch's birdfeeders was honestly the best topic I could have hoped for, for a first post. restless_nomad had a helpful critique that made me rewrite/delete some stuff which improved the post, I think. Also it was super interesting to go through the MeFi posting form workflow, which I'd never used before, and witness the logic / error handling / other features there even though I've been reading posts for 14 years. I must have used the preview function a hundred times -- it's really nice!
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 6:39 PM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Also meant to say: the snowboarding-and-collecting-llamas game got me intrigued. Is it Alto's Adventure? It looks like the type of game I might enjoy. I used to play an online Flash downhill skiing game where there was a setting to run the course for practice without the clock running, and it was surprisingly calming to ski down the mountain and hear the sounds of the skies turning and sliding on the snow.

The 2D aspect of Alto's Adventure is vaguely reminding me of the old Windows game SkiFree, which I also played a lot back in the day (could be fun but definitely not calming after a while).
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 7:08 PM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

YES. Alto's Adventure is the best. Worth the money. No clock running, just little achievements to do to get past every level. Nice music. Nice whoosh whoosh noises. Nice llamas.
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 7:12 PM on August 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

Excellent! The skiing and llamas part got my attention and now the promise of whoosh whoosh noises and nice music has me sold. Thanks, I know what I'm doing with some of my free time, then. (n_o_d, don't worry I promise I will also keep working on our music collab.)

And I can't believe I spelled "skis" earlier as "skies" - I won't bother the mods to edit it because it's not a big deal, and because the show "Says You" once had a definition card with the same typo.
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 7:29 PM on August 6, 2017

alto is even more addictive than crossy road. it feels gooooood.
more pls thx
posted by not_on_display at 8:06 PM on August 6, 2017

Metafilter: The skiing and llamas part got my attention.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:58 PM on August 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

Here's the disemvowelling thread. Seven years!
posted by Chrysostom at 8:38 AM on August 7, 2017

WOW. Look what I'm looking at as I listen to this podcast.

My mother manages a tooth factory.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:02 PM on August 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

Go on....
posted by jessamyn (retired) at 12:05 PM on August 7, 2017

Yes, my mother is the sitting Tooth Fairy and I do hope to inherit the title but I don't know when she's going to retire what with the skyrocketing prices demanded for baby teeth these days putting the squeeze on the biz.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:13 PM on August 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

The podcast sold me the adamgreenfield book
This site is getting expensive!
posted by DigDoug at 9:24 AM on August 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Great podcast again! The description on my podcast player lists Matt first if that was a thing you would need to change too.
posted by ellieBOA at 11:13 PM on August 8, 2017

Oh heck, yeah, we probably gotta update some pod description metadata after all this time.
posted by cortex (staff) at 5:11 AM on August 9, 2017

Hiya,

I've just come back from vacation and haven't had time to listen to this podcast yet so I apologize if some of this was already covered but hey it's an auditory medium and what I have here to show you is visual so we'll just keep moving on.

You can color me surprised that my Ask about where to find teeth was included, especially since it had so little activity. I've ordered the teeth online before for art projects but was just kind of shot-in-the-dark hoping that someone would be like, "oh yeah hey while you're on vacation stop over here in this shady warehouse and they have boxes of 'em just waiting for you real cheap." I didn't truly expect a response.

But what I didn't expect even more than that was that some MeFite would be like, "I have access to those all loose, let me help you out." I'm already like super indebted to Ambrosia Voyeur for offering to send some to me. I'm curious to see how they compare to the ones I've been using.

so anyway hi, here's the visual part. If you're weird about teeth stuff you probably don't want to click any of these links. They're all Instagram posts and some have more than one image per post so use those little on-image arrow buttons to see the rest.

the test run of teeth, clay, and paint

the first sculpture - a phone holder for my desk (2 images) - at this point I'd remembered to add a glossy finish to the mix

some earrings requested by co-workers

earrings being modeled and looking far less creepy (3 images)

so ... uh ... yeah. If you were curious what I had wanted teeth for, there you have it. I guess.

[fun fact: if you're the kind of person who reads every Ask that there is then you might remember me asking where to get dentures a few months back. I wanted to make more sculptures like this one. Turns out I was just looking in the wrong place - too far up the dental goods hierarchy - and should have thought to start with the teeth themselves and just make whatever I needed. Next step will probably be revisiting this idea of putting full sets of teeth inside something that doesn't deserve them, and now I can customize just how many teeth that is, and how horrible they look.]
posted by komara at 8:52 AM on August 9, 2017 [5 favorites]

Time for an update because I sure do have a literal handful of teeth and man I can't tell you how happy that makes me.
posted by komara at 7:07 PM on August 11, 2017 [4 favorites]

komara, that is weird and wonderful. I especially like that the cat is looking at the teeth.

Speaking of wonderful (but not as weird) - I have been playing Alto's Adventure off and on this week. The game is fun and I enjoy meeting the goals. And zen mode! Zen mode and the music are super awesome. So relaxing. Thanks again for the recommendation, jessamyn.
posted by rangefinder 1.4 at 8:02 PM on August 11, 2017 [1 favorite]

Thanks so much for the Community Signal mention and kind words here, jessamyn and cortex! I look forward to having cortex on the show soon. Haha.
posted by patrickokeefe at 8:54 PM on August 11, 2017 [2 favorites]

okay I think I'll do myself a favor (or is it doing you all a favor?) and make this my last post about teeth stuff ... in this thread at least. I was inspired last night to make a stand for a bottle (3 images) and I here I am one last time saying that I can't thank Ambrosia Voyeur enough. This one's all her fault.
posted by komara at 1:30 PM on August 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I finished this podcast a couple days ago and now don't remember specific reactions, but I feel it's important to say I enjoyed it!
posted by ignignokt at 7:19 AM on August 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Well thank you for featuring one of my songs! Really enjoyed the podcast.
posted by Bluebird Wine at 4:23 PM on September 3, 2017