189: Snowperson Trauma

December 11, 2022 1:53 PM

Cortex and I decided to make up for lost time after the delayed previous episode by knocking out another one quick-like, and here it is! Catching up on what we can of the last couple of months of MeFi, and also ranting and philosophizing a little bit about recent seismic changes in the social media sphere and also about design skeuomorphism and the semiotics of interfaces? That last bit is probably overselling it a little? Anyway, runs about 90 minutes.

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Misc
- Do some last minute holiday shopping at The MeFi Mall
- Jessamyn's hone game memory was Kubrix

Jobs
- Setting up and moderating a Mastodon instance (but not hosting) by Shepherd
- Business Process Automation Specialist by chiefthe
- Software development guru by Dansaman

Projects
- Daily MRRP! by ignignokt
- Finishing my grandfather's work: stained glass menorah by cortex (MeFi Post)
- Part I of my graphic memoir "Growing In My Gray" by DMelanogaster (MeFi Post)
- Get Blogging! by bwerdmuller (MeFi Post)
- You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All by adrianhon
- More “More Info” for Netflix (desktop web) by staggernation

MetaFilter
- Dear Twitter Advertisers by autopilot
- Subterranean birdsite blues by nthdegx
- a comment by mark k
- Cohost, a new social media site by brainwane
- Mastodon is having its moment in the sun by toastyk
- Sick of Musk? by dobbs
- PSA: do not use services that hate the internet by mecran01
- We knew this was coming 😭 by May Kasahara
- Advent Incremental by juv3nal
- No, that can't be done.... WHAM!!! by Pendragon
- To a Nacreon in Heaven by Rhaomi
- Yummy: Spammer on Toast! by rcade
- Colonel Mustardle in the Yardle with a Petardle by taz
- The Great Purpling by Etrigan
- Explore Quasi-Periodic Tiling by gwint
- Everything in Conway's Game of Life can be constructed from 15 gliders by automatronic
- "we were, in effect, rewriting our own childhoods" by jessamyn
- The State of Ketchup in 2022 🍅 by Fizz

Ask MetaFilter
- What's your Check Please hand signal, and what does it signify? by cortex
- Help me give myself the gift of freedom by rebent
- MeFiGiftGuide2022 - The Metafilter Gift Guide by rebent
- Comparing apples and oranges by Just this guy, y'know
- What is up with these old french cars? by selenized
- Sci-fi Survey Course by darchildre
- Carnivorous Lamp by Just this guy, y'know

MetaTalk
- Mefi Mastodon server? by Pronoiac
- MeFi Posts for "Sale" by jessamyn
- What The MeFi BIPOC Board Does by brainwane

MeFi Music
Snippest of tracks this episode, at the beginning and end respectively:
- Death Scene Music for an Imaginary, Low-Budget Cyberpunk Movie by thatwhichfalls
- 73 Keep It Beautiful by chococat

posted by jessamyn (staff) to MeFi Podcast at 1:53 PM (8 comments total)

…assuming On is up is a universal experience.

Light_switch#Orientation:

The direction which represents "on" also varies by country. In the US, Canada, European countries, Russia, etc., it is usual for the "on" position of a toggle switch to be "up", whereas in many other countries such as the UK, India, Australia, New Zealand (Commonwealth countries) and Ireland, it is "down".

posted by zamboni at 9:42 PM on December 11, 2022 [2 favorites]

Ah ha!
posted by cortex (retired) at 10:51 PM on December 11, 2022

Away For Regrooving is probably yanked from The Firesign Theatre, specifically this one sequence, picturing a satirical future US government and social situation from the vantage of the late 60s. The reference is really early, but the whole thing only runs about 7m20s.
posted by hippybear at 1:56 PM on December 12, 2022 [1 favorite]

Nice MP3 Comment tag in the last podcast.

cortex, if you want low hanging easy fruit... write up something (a spec as it were) about putting MP3 metadata tags into the final .mp3 so it will be searchable in media players by something other than the filename.mp3. This one had no metadata tags.

(end of idea guy rant)

But it is nice to have podcasts again.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:30 AM on December 13, 2022 [1 favorite]

Heh, I am the one responsible for producing this particular mp3 because I just wanted to crank it out real quick. If there have been tags on any recent podcast mp3s, it's been the work of other more diligent people.
posted by cortex (retired) at 6:51 AM on December 13, 2022

Nice MP3 Comment tag in the last podcast.

That one was mine. I'll try to make sure we've got actual useful metadata in the next one.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 8:20 AM on December 13, 2022

I posted an automated transcript from Otter, including its (probably not helpful, but amusing) summary keywords.
posted by Pronoiac at 6:55 PM on December 13, 2022

I was surprised to see my podcast app show "Jessamyn West and Josh Millard" as the podcast authors for the first time! (Also weird that the field is "author". I guess that's part of podcasts' RSS lineage.) Nice sign fixing!

And thanks for the cat appreciation. I'm just doing my part to make sure the web has enough cat pictures.

Re: Moving to Jessamyn's sister's town: We tried! But in the end, we couldn't. Hit me up if you want details, but basically, the housing market was bizarre in the summer, and a maximum of 1-2 houses were on the market at a time in that town. Regardless, it's really neat that MeFites can just run into each other and chat in that place!
posted by ignignokt at 6:25 PM on December 14, 2022 [1 favorite]