35: Overeducated and underpaid

December 8, 2008 8:23 AM

Episode 35 of the MetaFilter Podcast features all three mods talking about the last couple weeks on MetaFilter. It was recorded on December 3rd and after an unfortunate delay, it's finally up. There's a lot of music discussed and sampled and it runs a little more than an hour total.

direct link

Helpful links
Podcast Feed
MeFi Podcast on iTunes
Direct mp3 download (63Mb)


Music mentioned

Watching the Detectives by chococat

Music challenges

Country Death Song by chococat (with his daughter's scream)

My Own Personal Jesus and Are You Gonna Go My Way and Immigrant Song by mexican

Small Town News Affiliate Song by dagosto

Like a Rock by Jenny is Crafty

Together by Admira


Jobs

Redo Brad Sucks' website


Projects Mentioned

A blog about cufflinks

Public Radio Podcasts (mefi's own kathryn's podcast feed)

Internment Camp Research Project


MeFi Posts

d20 dice post

Cryptic CompSci thread about the halting problem (blasdelf's jokes)

The thread about delicious apples

The Abominable Charles Christopher comic (some faves)

5 Card Nancy based on an exquisite corpse (wikipedia, example). Random Nancy comic panels rearranged to make a new comic (1, 2)

Bunny Hopping

The Gobbler classic midwest hotel

It's the December Best Post Contest!

Jerome, Arizona post

Amanda Palmer joins MeFi

effugas pipes up on MeFi

Diplomacy games on MeFi


Ask MeFi Posts

What is "downstairs" on a plane? (a gallery of images)

What happens to my iTunes music that I share with my wife when I get divorced (answer)

What are some great public domain books & How to find new iPhone apps,

What do you splurge on? (trash can upgrade I agreed with)

Anon question: How to deal with the idea of my own impending death?

A reminder: the list of recent anonymous questions makes for damn good reading

How do I report an unsecure credit card database without being busted for hacking? features an answer from an attorney

Resolved: I went to the midwest and survived, I actually did love those tamales,

Cooking problem: how to make chocolate chip cookies with chocolate chip cookie dough (uncooked) still inside?

NaNoWriMo at MeFi

quantcast's MeFi demographics

posted by mathowie to MeFi Podcast at 8:23 AM (43 comments total)

Also, I think we may have briefly mentioned but forgot to really get into just how goddam awesome this Christmas Rhapsody parody is.
posted by cortex at 8:29 AM on December 8, 2008

... all three mods...

Poor pb & vacapinta. Even mathowie forgets them sometimes.
posted by Pronoiac at 9:04 AM on December 8, 2008

"There are three moderators here at Metafilter. They are Matt, Jessamyn and Cortex. That's it."
posted by ND¢ at 9:27 AM on December 8, 2008

quantcast's MeFi demographics

Whoa. So Metafilter is overeducated, poor, childless middle-aged white guys?
posted by dersins at 9:55 AM on December 8, 2008

Boy, that Quantcast interpreter is way off. Look at the money section again: 54% of mefites make over 60k!

But, since they binned it so that the bottom bin beats the rest, we're all "less affluent" A good example of lying with statistics.
posted by vacapinta at 9:59 AM on December 8, 2008

The lifestyle section is pretty odd and funny.

The "mccain will win" keyword is especially hilarious. Not only is that something completely unexpected given that most mefites tend to be on the left side of the spectrum, but I actually searched for that. It was a day or so after the election, and I was looking for blogs that had picked McCain to win in a landslide to read their weird alternate universe logic.
posted by burnmp3s at 10:12 AM on December 8, 2008

Poor pb & vacapinta. Even mathowie forgets them sometimes.

Yeah MeFi has gotten big enough that there are people who work here whose job title isn't Moderator. pb does a lot of awesome coding and some troubleshooting and keeps the machines running but he rarely answers email and almost never does moderator stuff. vacapinta explained what he does in that comment ND¢ linked to. He is wonderful but he's not a moderator. cortex and I do moderator stuff mainly (and not much else MeFi-wise) and mathowie does moderator stuff and all the other overhead stuff the site requires (dealing with paypal, advertising, legal/money stuff, celebrity appearances etc). We never, ever forget those guys, they're just busy doing other things for the site.
posted by jessamyn at 10:29 AM on December 8, 2008

celebrity appearances

I now have a mental picture of Matt cutting the ribbon at the opening of a Key Food in Kew Gardens.
posted by jonmc at 10:32 AM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite]

pssst...hey mods...re: age of precocious übernerd...try checking profile
posted by Sys Rq at 10:39 AM on December 8, 2008

BLASDELF IS HOWEVER OLD WE DISAGREE THAT HE IS
posted by cortex at 10:46 AM on December 8, 2008

wow, Laurie Andersen meets Peter Gabriel is the perfect description for that Personal Jesus cover.
posted by shmegegge at 10:57 AM on December 8, 2008

I think that Scott Adams is greatly dada-ist -- do not forget the dilburrito.
posted by boo_radley at 11:02 AM on December 8, 2008

I really dug the last song. Admira's posted one other song in the same style.

I wasn't serious about pb & vacapinta, but I'm not sure I've seen the various roles articulated that well before. I almost put in a frowning emoticon but thought it would be gauche. :p
posted by Pronoiac at 11:18 AM on December 8, 2008

I don't need to "get" games. I have game.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:01 PM on December 8, 2008

For whatever reason I had gotten out of the habit of listening to the podcasts. This was really fun. Thanks, guys!
posted by deborah at 12:05 PM on December 8, 2008

I fit the basic demographics: white, male, older, no kids, broke, etc.

But I've never even heard of those other websites, lowcarbfriends.com and such, that we supposedly visit.
posted by jason's_planet at 12:07 PM on December 8, 2008

Wow! Very cool to hear your own name on the podcast. I'm glad you guys liked the public radio podcasts.
posted by mmascolino at 1:13 PM on December 8, 2008

I do owe everyone a cookie update; my friend and I are going to experiment over Christmas vacation.

Next I will try to figure out how to grow an apple with little bits of cookie dough inside.
posted by Metroid Baby at 2:11 PM on December 8, 2008

I think you meant the Open Group's jokes?

Or maybe, after I listen to the podcast, I'll feel silly.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 2:46 PM on December 8, 2008

Man, listening to Cortex while I'm cooking dinner is totally disorienting. I talk to myself while cooking and Cortex sounds exactly like the voice in my head and I kept thinking I was going insane while chopping radishes.
posted by The Whelk at 3:44 PM on December 8, 2008

KILL THEM ALL
KILL THEM ALL
posted by cortex at 3:52 PM on December 8, 2008 [2 favorites]

the radishes are fuckers.
posted by The Whelk at 3:55 PM on December 8, 2008

You hate the carrots. The tenderloin plots against you.
posted by boo_radley at 4:28 PM on December 8, 2008

MeTa should have a custom tag: <cortex>; it would be
font-size:small; text-transform: uppercase;
posted by boo_radley at 4:31 PM on December 8, 2008 [1 favorite]

That was not a pissing contest! It was a you-can't-say-something-is-true-"by-definition"-when-it's-a-major-unsolved-problem contest!
posted by grobstein at 4:34 PM on December 8, 2008

crud
posted by grobstein at 4:35 PM on December 8, 2008

Ha! I love it! I actually had no idea there was a 'Best Post' contest going on when I made my FPP, but it's rad to hear my name mentioned alongside the contest, especially since it was my first post and I was really nervous putting it up. I was trying to pile on some awesomeness, but not to win the contest: I was just trying to win your hearts. Then I was going to see if I could crash on your couch for a few days.

I'm a him too, for the record.
posted by Bageena at 5:43 PM on December 8, 2008

You should really make that image on your home page into your profile photo, we've got sort of a gun thing going on.
posted by jessamyn at 6:03 PM on December 8, 2008

Ha! I love it! I actually had no idea there was a 'Best Post' contest going on when I made my FP

That's what they all say. Hmph.

caresses FPP, it's okay honey. I still love you. You're beautiful ! really, shhh. Don't cry.
posted by The Whelk at 6:36 PM on December 8, 2008

this podcast was alot of fun to listen to. thx.
posted by metastability at 6:37 PM on December 8, 2008

I love that picture too, but it's not me - it's my friend Aaron. I'm much more.... un-thin than him. I'll have to make a photo for my profile tonight with me and a buttload of AKs or something. Is the gun-in-the-profile-picture thing the way we jump people into Mefi?
posted by Bageena at 6:40 PM on December 8, 2008

Screw it - I put it up anyways Jessamyn. I'm in the gun club.
posted by Bageena at 6:48 PM on December 8, 2008

thanks for the mention, guys. I'm glad that people are liking my shitty covers. I was going to do something different for the Personal Jesus cover, but it was going slowly and then I heard the Here Comes Your Man cover by ORthey and decided i'd try and do something "african" sounding. I wanted to used a really syncopated afrobeat-funk voice for the vocals, but my voice doesn't do that, so i just tried singing the melody normal and dropping the pitch an octave because i didn't think my unaltered voice sounded right. And i wasn't high while i was working on this, just tired.
posted by mexican at 2:37 AM on December 9, 2008

Any of the mods email me their physical address and they get a Christmas present.
posted by gman at 5:30 PM on December 9, 2008

"This isn't rocket surgery!"... I like that.
posted by abc123xyzinfinity at 5:31 PM on December 9, 2008

There is no way to make diplomacy not sound hopelessly nerdy.
posted by empath at 7:56 PM on December 9, 2008

There is no way to make diplomacy not sound hopelessly nerdy.
posted by empath at 3:56 AM on December 10

I haven't played Diplomacy in years but I used to play it all the time. And I've never played it online.
I used to play it with a group of friends every summer. One of them had a huge yard with a swimming pool and we'd have all sorts of people over, swimming, barbequing, playing music. The Diplomacy board was in one corner of the yard and every hour or so, the arbitrator would announce that everyone needed to have their turn in. So, between turns, alliances would be formed while swimming in the pool, while inside the house, grabbing snacks.

What many people liked about Diplomacy is that it wasn't a game where the biggest geek automatically won. One of the best players was a guy who wasn't particularly good at analysis but just had...charisma. He somehow made you want to help him, ally with him, believe he'd never turn his back on you. And for the most part he did play honorably, and when it was time for him to stab you in the back, he already had the knife prepared and you forgave him because he carefully and smoothly explained why he *had* to do it.

Sure, if you try to analyse a game you can make it sound hopelessly nerdy but the game itself, played in person, face-to-face is one that rewards sociability and a cunning that derives not from logic and strategy but from the ability to persuade others.
posted by vacapinta at 5:00 AM on December 10, 2008

I'm surprised no-one's mentioned it, but I thought this podcast was really tremendous; it had me chuckling on my way home on the tube tonight, and I think having the three of you on at the same time really kept things lively. Bravo!
posted by adrianhon at 4:43 PM on December 10, 2008

It was definitely the most fun podcast we've done in a while. I like just chatting with mathowie, but the random element that is having a third person there, esp someone as animated and funny as cortex, makes it that much more interesting. Plus I like having a Music recap guy.

"This isn't rocket surgery!"

That was my favorite line in the whole thing, I think.
posted by jessamyn at 4:57 PM on December 10, 2008

It's just, it's just that mathowie and cortex sound really alike in the podcast!
posted by grobstein at 6:58 PM on December 10, 2008

"Canada has a Thanksgiving in October, doesn't it? I mean, a virtual Thanksgiving..."

What the heck is so virtual about it? This totally lost me... While I don't really partake in Thanksgiving myself, I'm pretty sure people up here actually meet up to eat - it's not some sort of weird internet holiday. ?!!
posted by tamarack at 5:55 PM on December 16, 2008

somehow didn't manage to comment until now
thanks for including me!

strangely, in the Costello song for some reason I can't help hearing what I sang as "red dogs under illegal eggs." I swear I didn't sing that.
posted by chococat at 11:38 PM on December 19, 2008

I'm glad the tamale thing worked out, mathowie. The guy was super nice to me, too, until he suddenly really wasn't, in a weird bipolar passive-aggro way. I wouldn't have mentioned it if others hadn't had the same experience. Figured you should be forewarned, happy it didn't prove necessary.

On the subject of grapple, cortex, if the idea of a hot grape pie doesn't appeal to you, maybe you just haven't had the right hot grape pie. It's good stuff.
posted by mumkin at 10:50 AM on December 20, 2008