cortex + donuts = 🌈

November 7, 2017 2:34 PM

At the end of October our fearless and inimitable leader gave a talk called Keeping Web Communities Healthy in a Dark Timeline at a Donut.js meetup. It included copious amounts of swearing and the observation that "the web can be not shitty." I highly recommend that you take 17 minutes out of your week and watch. Warm fuzzies likely but not guaranteed.
posted by bendy to MetaFilter-Related at 2:34 PM (32 comments total)

Needs more swearing.
posted by The Great David S. Pumpkins at 3:08 PM on November 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Nice Counting Crows joke, though.
posted by ambrosen at 3:25 PM on November 7, 2017

Would also have accepted: November and Everything After
posted by The Great David S. Pumpkins at 3:28 PM on November 7, 2017 [4 favorites]

or Just Say No Vember
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:30 PM on November 7, 2017

...and there's reason to believe that maybe this year will be better than the last...

... oh. The talk was good though, and definitely gave me the warm fuzzies and reminded my why I'm here and MeFi is important and good.
posted by parm at 3:32 PM on November 7, 2017

"Enjoy stuff you like instead of just dutifully inhaling the stuff you feel like you're obliged to until suddenly you're short of breath."

This is a good reminder cortex. Thank you.
posted by zachlipton at 3:35 PM on November 7, 2017 [6 favorites]

This is great. Thanks for linking and boosting this.
posted by Fizz at 3:44 PM on November 7, 2017

This is really good. Watched it twice. It reinforced a personal feeling that joining this site and being active on it was definitely one of my better choices this last quarter century or so.

I feel that, as it's the site manager and owner going into some personal and deep detail about his philosophy re: MetaFilter, it should be highlighted more/somewhere on this site so all MeFites are aware of it, and can choose to watch.
posted by Wordshore at 5:17 PM on November 7, 2017 [5 favorites]

I generally don't watch videos that last more than a few minutes, but I watched the whole thing. Josh/cortex is an excellent public speaker who mixes tempos, registers, and cursing so as to hold your interest and keep you engaged. And by the end I actually felt better about the site. Thanks for posting it, bendy, and thanks for giving the talk and for being you, 'tex. (Towards the end I had a vision of you as a Wise Old Man, still cursing and being inspiring. Keep on truckin'!)
posted by languagehat at 5:30 PM on November 7, 2017 [9 favorites]

So it turns out that talking about politics on MeFi doesn't fill one with soul-crushing despair if the politics are good news. So if that can just happen more often, we can have lots more Lisa Frank shit everywhere. Save the country, improve MetaFilter. What's not to like?
posted by zachlipton at 5:46 PM on November 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

Like the character in the Kim Stanley Robinson book (New York 2140) who ran for congress and nationalized the banks all to save her local housing co-op?

I guess technically that was a spoiler but nobody really reads his books for their plots anyway.
posted by aniola at 5:53 PM on November 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I really appreciate the duality that Mefi provides: that it can be a place where the evils of the world can be discussed, AND be a place where the good things can be shared. I've learnt and am still learning heaps of stuff that the mainstream media and academia has not and can not teach.

Thanks for this. And as always, any opportunity to thank the mods for their Atlas-like dedication should be taken so Thanks Mods!
posted by Start with Dessert at 6:17 PM on November 7, 2017

"What happens after shit happens." Thank you, cortex.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:43 PM on November 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I just watched the video for the first time after watching it IRL (I’m the fidgety blonde in the center of the bottom) and it made me tear up all over again in a happy way. Also, the woman at the left end of the row in front of me is a lurker, the guy in the Hawaiian-ish shirt directly in front of the podium is a member, and the guy with the bug-eye antennae on his head who appears briefly to adjust something is also a member.

I generally don't watch videos that last more than a few minutes, but I watched the whole thing.

I also never have the patience to sit through a video longer than a couple minutes but this one is a pleasure.

“Note: Everyone needs a hug.”
posted by bendy at 8:32 PM on November 7, 2017 [8 favorites]

When I heard what the general topic was going to be, I thought it might be kind of depressing- but the talk is uplifting. I'm impressed sometimes by how thoughtful cortex is about the site, and it was fun to watch that come through as he was putting this talk together. Good job!
posted by Secretariat at 9:28 AM on November 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

It reinforced a personal feeling that joining this site and being active on it was definitely one of my better choices this last quarter century or so.

This. It basically sums up what it is about the site that's made it so important to me, and what's made it really the only place and community I come back to and want to interact with.

"You try to find those bits of oasis for people to catch their breath in."

This has been really important for me in the last year and a half as I flail my way through various mental health crap on top of all the politics, and I love how MeFi can be both my place to get deep into the politics and the way to ignore the politics. My thanks to cortex and staff for keeping us on that course, and to everyone here - without you that wouldn't work.
posted by nickmark at 11:21 AM on November 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Holy damn this is good.
posted by RolandOfEld at 1:42 PM on November 8, 2017

Speaking of which, I appreciated that the video is captioned (I think using the same professional transcription as the live captions that you can see on stage, to cortex’s left).
posted by mbrubeck at 4:50 PM on November 8, 2017

Wow. Cortex and the mods and frimble have all shown so much grace and humanity in difficult times. It is so evident from this discussion that the tone of the site is a constant wire act. Hugs to all.
posted by mightshould at 6:09 PM on November 8, 2017

Hey, thanks y'all. It was honestly kind of helpful just to put that all together and force myself to organize my thoughts about all this stuff a bit more, especially in a "how do I explain this to mostly strangers who don't know what MetaFilter is?" sort of context. I feel like it came together well; was a little nerve-wracking to do because I basically never give talks but I was glad to have the opportunity and it was a nice crowd. Seeing a few familiar faces was nice too.

Cortex, I liked what you had to say enough that I went ahead and transcribed it.

Fine by me! And as mbrubeck notes, there's the live-captions as well; the folks who do that kinda blow my mind, it's a service XOXO used for a few years to great effect so it was a trip seeing Mirabai showing up again over on the TV screen, typing her butt off like I'd seen elsewhere in the past.
posted by cortex (staff) at 8:07 PM on November 8, 2017 [4 favorites]

I'm impressed sometimes by how thoughtful cortex is about the site

I love the "sometimes" in this sentence. (But I do agree - good talk, yay cortex!)
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 8:15 PM on November 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

This was great.
posted by suelac at 9:09 PM on November 8, 2017

You got a problem with me, huh? :-)
posted by anotherpanacea at 8:29 AM on November 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

Ha ha, yeah, LobsterMitten- I guess I'm "impressed sometimes" because the rest of the time I'm not impressed, I'm like, yeah, you're a smart person with a long history of being thoughtful, this is not surprising that you're using your noggin. I suppose that came out a little rude, but I thought it would be overselling it if I said "constantly impressed!!!"
posted by Secretariat at 9:19 AM on November 9, 2017 [1 favorite]

I mean, you have to spend a lot of time around me and hear the jokes that don't even make it to twitter for other people to yell at me about, so
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:27 AM on November 9, 2017

I like it -- that cortex, he's pretty ok sometimes.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:42 AM on November 9, 2017 [3 favorites]

I mean, you have to spend a lot of time around me and hear the jokes that don't even make it to twitter for other people to yell at me about, so

The horror...the horror...
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:43 PM on November 9, 2017

If our minds really are based on quantum tubes, then one could say that our cortex is, sometimes!
posted by crysflame at 6:47 PM on November 11, 2017

Finally got around to watching this -- it was excellent. I hadn't noticed the toggle for the U.S. politics threads, and when I went to look at it, I was deeply amused to see in the sidebar that when I put the cursor over the "[-]" sign, the popout message reads, "Collapse U.S. Politics."
posted by JanetLand at 12:28 PM on November 16, 2017 [7 favorites]

Yeah, somebody accidentally clicked that in the metaverse a while back and well look at where we are now.
posted by cortex (staff) at 2:35 PM on November 16, 2017 [6 favorites]

That was wonderful. Thank you, cortex and mods, for all you do. MetaFilter is so so important to me and has been for years but especially since the current political hell. I don't know what I'd do without this community.

As an aside, though I knew it logically had to be true, it's also weird to know that cortex has a face. Like, I know you are all humans behind the screens, but somehow cortex is supposed to be just a brilliant floating brain in a jar.

(sorry cortex I mean it's a nice face.)
posted by hapaxes.legomenon at 8:31 PM on November 16, 2017 [2 favorites]

Hey cortex, that was terrific. Big thanks to bendy for posting. And big thanks to MeFi for ... everything.
posted by valetta at 3:33 AM on November 21, 2017 [1 favorite]