Jake

Important If True 18: Important If Rhymes With True

Recommended Posts

Important If True 18:

Important If True 18


Important If Rhymes With True
This week things really hit the fan. If you're finding yourself clogged up with steaming, burning questions, if you're knee deep in problems and need advice, relax: We're here in a pinch to flush out the truth. This week: What are the Russians hiding in Britney Spears' Instagram feed? What are the real motives of a man who offers free liverwurst to children? And what am I going to do with all this garlic? Plus: How many times can we be hoisted by stories about poo? Find out inside.

Send us email at [email protected]. If you enjoyed this and would like to subscribe to an ad-free feed, please consider supporting Idle Thumbs by backing our Patreon.

Discussed: The triple hoisting, Bristol stool scale, apartment hunting, Britney Spears Instagram comment hacking, garlic surplus, the kindly old neighborhood liverwurst man, Christmas and/or Hoistmas traditions that are definitely real, CRISPR clarifications (browse this Idle Forums thread for lots of fascinating discussion from smart people!), crisper clarifications, sleeptalking, shadow sleep selves, breaking bad habits, the Bristol Goblin

Chris' Endorsement: Jurassic Park (Amazon, iTunes

Jake's Endorsement: Fartbarf (official site; "Dirty Power" album: Amazon, iTunes)

Nick's Endorsement: Earplugs

Sponsored By: Quip electric toothbrushes, Freshbooks accounting software

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

New Podcast title - Important if True:Hoisted by Poo.

 

Nick's Liverwurst mentor threw me for a loop until I realized he grew up in the Midwest like me. Old Midwest guys love it. "Buy the Wurst, it's the best."

 

Great email on CRISPR! Important and True.

 

 

 

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Reading more about the Britney Spears thing here, and I enjoyed the way they actually parse the messages.

 

Quote

The extension will look at each photo's comment and will compute a custom hash value. If the hash matches 183, it will then run this regular expression on the comment in order to obtain the path of the bit.ly URL:

(?:\\u200d(?:#|@)(\\w)

 

It's nice to know that even Russian espionage groups have to deal with that one guy down the hall who insists on using unreadable regular expressions instead of simply writing out the code. Somewhere out there is an FSB agent who cares not for the inefficiencies of quadratic complexity string parsing if it means saving 3 lines of code. 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

haven't listened yet, but I second Nick's earplug recommendation. Wear them to concerts. Wear them to work. Wear them to sleep. It mostly just cuts bullshit background noise and you get tinnitus symptoms less often. It's great!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Here is a portion of the garlic in question. I'm up to significantly more at this point.

IMG_0659.JPG

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
I'm glad someone mentioned roasting garlic. You don't even have to eat the roasted garlic. Coat a whole head of garlic in oil and roast it alongside meat or potatos to give a subtle flavour. I've also heard of garlic soup but I've never tried it. 
 
 
I don't know how to help the listener who wrote in last week to stop checking their phone, since I'm a terrible addict. I can offer advice for how to make it a constructive rather than destructive experience tho.
 

1. Install a reading app on your phone. I like the kindle app but there are others too. This has been by far the biggest change. Always having a book with me right there on the first screen has turned 80% of my "frittering time away on draining social media" habits into reading books. Likewise, comic reading apps like comixology are great, and feedly is good for following blogs. 

 
2. Put other activities on your phone! Follow a blog that reviews mobile games on feedly and then download the games & play them. Install the wikipedia app and use the random article function. I'm fond of Golden Thread Tarot as a way to reflect on what's been happening in my life lately. I also like the vogue runway app for looking at cool fashion.
 
2. Unfollow everyone on twitter, only refollow a selection. This has two benefits: It helps you get your bearings again and it means your feed will actually run out, letting you get on with your day for a while. I went from following 1540 people to following 130ish and it's been great. Do whatever the equivalent is on fb or other social networks. Maybe mute everyone and only unmute selected people if you don't want to hurt feelings. 
 
2.1 Follow a news source rather than getting your news from whatever trickles into your feed. 
 
2.2 Twitter now lets you mute words in your timeline, tho you have to use the web app to do it. I have everything from trivial turns of phrase like "architecting" to slurs to the names of many prominent trolls and odious personalities. 
 
2.2.2 Turn off image previews so you have to opt into seeing images in your feed. It's just... nicer.
 
3. Find spaces to talk online that are topic oriented. It might seem counterintuitive, but I really like the reddit app because I only follow subreddits with good cultures that talk about topics I'm interested in. I also like the idle forums and I'm in a handful of slacks. You don't realise how much you missed the psychological safety of being part of a community until you join one again. 
 
 
 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I hesitate to bring up such a stupid film on a forum filled with intelligent people but in Austin Powers: Goldmember Britney Spears appears as herself at the beginning and is soon revealed to be an evil robot sent to kill Austin Powers who shoots bullets out of her breasts, which I guess in a way is kind of similar to what you guys were saying. So there's that.

 

Swiftly moving on, Chris you mentioned that you'd been listening to a podcast about British politics on an episode a few weeks ago, do you remember what it was? 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, Goose Malloy said:

Swiftly moving on, Chris you mentioned that you'd been listening to a podcast about British politics on an episode a few weeks ago, do you remember what it was? 

 

Here's a list of the British politics podcasts I have been listening to during the campaign and in the aftermath of the election:

- Deep Dive from the New Statesman

- Electioncast from BBC Radio 5

- Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4 (I mainly just listen when it's the News Quiz)

- FT Politics from the Financial Times

- The New Statesman Podcast

- Politics Weekly from The Guardian

- Pienaar's Politics from BBC Radio 5

- The Political Party with Matt Forde

- Political Thinking from BBC Radio 4

- Polling Matters with Keiran Pedley

- Red Box Podcast from The Times

- Talking Politics with David Runciman

- Week in Westminster from BBC Radio 4

- Westminster Hour from BBC Radio 4

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thank you very much, I'll definitely check out some of those. That's a super impressive list, I'm British and try to stay reasonably up to date with current affairs and I reckon I've listened to maybe two of those, clearly I need to up my game :-p

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Goose Malloy said:

Thank you very much, I'll definitely check out some of those. That's a super impressive list, I'm British and try to stay reasonably up to date with current affairs and I reckon I've listened to maybe two of those, clearly I need to up my game :-p

 

For what it's worth, my favorites are probably:

- The Times Red Box (although The Times is right-leaning, they do a good job getting a good variety of guests from different angles and it feels pretty even-handed)

- Talking Politics with David Runciman (I like how calm and measured Runciman is, and that tends to rub off on his guests)

- New Statesman Deep Dive (this is a pretty new podcast; they choose a specific topic for each episode, which means there's less overlap with other shows)

- The Guardian's Politics Weekly (it's shamelessly partisan, which can be annoying, but it's partisan in the direction I lean, and the people are smart)

 

The BBC Radio 5 Electioncast seems good but I've added it more recently than the others and I'm not sure if it will continue indefinitely; I assume it's a limited series.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I have some pals that got decently far up the musical ladder, despite being named Fucked Up. They made the trip from burly hardcore to symphonic rock band while also not changing the vocal style really.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks again Chris, had a listen to a few of those and enjoyed them thoroughly (well enjoyed probably isn't the right word since they're all pretty much about the massively fraught nature of our political landscape right now, but you know what I mean.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, feelthedarkness said:

I have some pals that got decently far up the musical ladder, despite being named Fucked Up. They made the trip from burly hardcore to symphonic rock band while also not changing the vocal style really.

This makes me happy to hear. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
On 2017-6-16 at 8:37 AM, Kyir said:

Here is a portion of the garlic in question. I'm up to significantly more at this point.

IMG_0659.JPG

I was baffled by your dilemma until I saw this and realised it's whole heads of garlic they're sending, not individual cloves.

 

I have also had my fair share of apartment viewings where I linger on out of politeness. I'd appreciate finding a toilet surprise that I could use as a convenient out to immediately leave.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
15 hours ago, SuperBiasedMan said:

I was baffled by your dilemma until I saw this and realised it's whole heads of garlic they're sending, not individual cloves.

 

I have also had my fair share of apartment viewings where I linger on out of politeness. I'd appreciate finding a toilet surprise that I could use as a convenient out to immediately leave.

 

Yeah, looking back I got heads confused as cloves when I wrote the email (why is cloves even a word when we can just call them slices?) The point is, I'm going to start consuming a lot of garlic toast now probably.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I've seen recipes where the instructions are to slice garlic, but I've never seen recipes where cloves are called slices.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Oh, I've never actually referred to them as that, but it's basically what they are. I'll start a petition to officially make the change.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

But they're not slices at all! They are naturally formed, unlike slices which are the result of...slicing.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Orange slices are also naturally formed though, and I've never heard them referred to as anything else. Furthermore, slices much more clearly describes the nature of the garlic sections, while clove does not.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
6 minutes ago, Kyir said:

Orange slices are also naturally formed though, and I've never heard them referred to as anything else. Furthermore, slices much more clearly describes the nature of the garlic sections, while clove does not.

 

Garlic cloves have to be individually peeled, though, which orange slices don't. I don't think "garlic slice" describes a garlic clove. A garlic clove is an entirely self-contained unit, which has to be peeled, and can from that point be sliced, minced, grated, smashed, or left whole.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I like that @Kyir saw he had too much garlic and decided to write into a podcast about it instead of, you know, googling "recipes that involve a lot of garlic." I would love to have too much garlic! Garlic is the best! You can use it in all sorts of stuff! Or you can just make garlic paste and store it in the freezer for a few months. If you mix it with chiles, you can make chile garlic paste

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now