173: No That's A Different Penguin

June 1, 2021 9:21 AM

My dog ate my podcast synopsis. It's me, it's Jessamyn, it's a podcast recorded in the deep past of before the long weekend, it's about 90 minutes.

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posted by cortex (staff) to MeFi Podcast at 9:21 AM (9 comments total)

Here's a link I didn't have at the time: Black Birders Week is this week!
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 9:46 AM on June 1, 2021 [2 favorites]

Thanks for the shout! I did write one of the pieces, but for Reasons the group is variously pseudonymous so I am not claiming it publicly. We're working on a second issue that should be out in the next couple weeks, with a romance theme rather than horror.
posted by restless_nomad (retired) at 10:01 AM on June 1, 2021 [1 favorite]

You can cut a cake into 8 pieces with 3 cuts, though, if you're not restricted to "every cut must pass through the top of the cake".

Also, eeeeee! I think this is the first of my posts to the Blue to get talked about in the podcast.
posted by hanov3r at 2:19 PM on June 2, 2021 [2 favorites]

Fun podcast. I'm glad to see it continue. One of these days, I expect I'll meet our hosts. I'll try very hard to remember that even though I've listened to them chat for hundreds of hours, they have no idea who the fuck I am. I'll behave appropriately.

After the discussion in askme thread about long books, I bought an audio book copy of Anathem, without realizing that I already had a slightly different audio book as well as a paper book. We'll see how the new one turns out. I'd argue it's the best SF book in the century, and easilly among my favorite 20 works of fiction. At least the first 95% of it. The end is okay too.

I was kind of surprised by the idea that it included lots of technical stuff and have absolutely no memory of an important math equation, despite having read it at least three times. I have no doubt both are true. But, I'm a spectacularly poor judge of such things. (I teach grad classes closely related to stuff in the last half of the book, and the main character is so similar to me as a young adult that it makes me a bit embarrassed.) To me, it's all about the world-building and the details of the monastic instution. That book delivers what I always hope to get from steam punk fiction, except that the details aren't disappointing.

But, I definitely understand feeling annoyed by reading a book that one's friends like. For me, it's Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. I really like the author. I have great respect for people who love it. The abstract is right up my alley. But, it took me 2000 pages to gather the courage to quite reading it. Every page just left me feeling angry. Cheers to those who either love or hate long books.
posted by eotvos at 8:58 PM on June 2, 2021 [1 favorite]

(To be clear, the main character is similar to me except for saving the world, changing our understanding of the universe, etc. He's awkward and obsessive like me. My mentor was great, but he just taught me to solder well. But, he's not yet a thousander.)
posted by eotvos at 9:25 PM on June 2, 2021

cortex - what was the bird your friend saw?! You can’t leave us hanging like that!
posted by hydrobatidae at 10:18 AM on June 4, 2021

“Poohniverse”
posted by q*ben at 10:52 AM on June 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Turns out I was thinking about a completely different number of fireflies.
posted by ckape at 1:55 PM on June 6, 2021

I was caught completely off-guard by the phrase "they found a man buried in trousers" because my brain interpreted it as "...buried under trousers".
posted by plinth at 7:39 AM on June 14, 2021 [1 favorite]