Society & Culture
Summary: It's been a while! The boys meet in a local establishment to discuss Jody's only topic idea in a long time...'scale'; How do you scale as a human? Recording in public made Jody self-conscious, but Matt still talks a bunch about the education system. Jody had to scale immediately to 2 children ...he's still struggling with that. Matt scales his knowledge to N-students-per-day Matt might be able to adjust value of N to be inspiring or depressing how depressing this number might be. Jody was impressed with Matt's handling of Net Neutrality for his students Matt answers with direct call to action to vote...nice way to scale that message :) take opportunity to discuss NN since it went well at the Indy over the holidays A bit of SpaceX talk led into recommendations: Elon tried to catch the Falcon Heavy fairing with a boat named Mr. Steven Matt says the boat's name is a reference to a sci-fi book series, but couldn't come up with the title at the time... It's the "Culture Series" by Iain M. Banks Other SpaceX boat names come from these books (like "Of Course I Still Love You" and "Just Read the Instructions"), but the origin of the good-ship Mr. Steven is unclear Matt had never heard of Ray Kurzweil You might recognize the name as a brand of music synthesizer from the 1980s (same guy) Or you might also be hoping that The Singularity Is Near and that you'll soon be able to live forever once you upload your mind into...well, something other than your body One of Jody's top sci-fi pics is Altered Carbon Which now has new life as a heavily-promoted Netflix series Jody watched immediately and recommends, even if it goes to far with the ultra-violence Matt's new/expensive hobby...Airsoft Army LARP-ing! Matt's foam sword gun: Dr. Katz...you know what the music means Podcast picks: Jody: This Week in Virology (the kind that make you sick) Can be super-technical when they review virology papers, but stick around for science-communication, funding, or public health discussions This interview w/Dr. Julius Youngner was a great episode Malicious.life This one happened to be top of Jody's feed when Matt asked for picks Dig the host's great accent! The 3-episode arc covering Stuxnet is a good jump-off point (Stuxnet Part 1, Stuxnet Part 2, Stuxnet Part 3) Story Pirates...for the kids Command Line Heroes Matt: Omnibus, Jody & Matt's podcasting/music hero John Roderick w/everyone's Jeopardy hero Ken Jennings...what's not to like? (other than the annoying house-ads) Friendly Fire (another John Roderick vehicle) MBMBaM (My Brother, My Brother and Me) Oh No Ross & Carrie I Only listen to the Mountain Goats Still Processing Slow Burn (a Slate.com show about Watergate)