As you likely already heard me kvetch about, this has been a short-staffed week, and for much of it, I’ve been operating the steering wheel, throttle, brake, clutch, shifter, hazard lights, and HVAC controls. Someone else helped with the radio and kept the floormats properly centered. And yet, even during this hardscrabble week, our Autopian HQ Slack room has been filled with the usual ridiculous bullshit. I really wouldn’t have it any other way. Some of this week’s valuable bullshit had to do with those strange House of Representative hearings about, um, aliens, and some was geeky tech crap and some was just our own Adrian Clarke being the Bestest Bitchy Briton he can be. Here, members, enjoy your look down our collective trouser-pants!
We’ll start with the alien talk, which hit our own sweet Earthling Stephen particularly hard:
I backed up SWG there by demanding that the whole staff get up to speed on their Holographic Principle as it relates to String Theory:
I’m not so sure it’ll help, but SWG brought up some salient points:
Now, to be fair, I’m not sure the “millions of light years” is a reasonable distance to be considering, when there are plenty of exoplanets less than 50 light years from Earth! That’s right around the corner! A bunch of those are even in the habitable zone!
This is pretty heavy geek talk here. Luckily, Peter was around to provide something else heavy and geeky for us to gawk at, a huge-ass old calculator that used a CRT display:
I’ve been aware of these for a while and find them really fascinating. I love old display tech. Relatedly, a reader sent me another fantastic CRT-based thing this week:
The readers at @the_autopian are the best. One named Peter sent me this amazing old Commodore Pet. Look at this thing! Plus the hood opens like a car and I found the bad capacitor thanks to the magic smoke. Exciting! pic.twitter.com/HBHltvcE8u
— Jason Torchinsky (@JasonTorchinsky) July 27, 2023
Look at that! A Commodore PET! As soon as I get that capacitor that leaks magic smoke replaced, I’ll start migrating the Autopian Mainframe software over to this machine. I bet you’ll see the performance boost immediately.
That story about Tesla owners’ ardor for Elon Musk cooling sparked some discussion in the chat, leading Peter to compare Ford’s CEO and Adrian to introduce us to the concept of the “thundering toolbag.”
The Autopian has a policy of never having a thundering toolbag as CEO, which is why David has the CEO title and I have CCO or something like that:
Adrian was kind of on a sass-roll this week, as we also saw him throwing some intense Ferrari-owner shade at some peon who dared criticize his Mondial:
Daaaaaaaamn! Also, whenever I read “Mondail” I think “Walter Mondial” which is a serious problem that I should get looked into.
Speaking of serious problems, our own Mercedes was out at that air show in Oshkosh this week, but she did send many pictures of VW Beetles and aircraft, including that Super Guppy that really reminded me of that dude up there.
Hey, I’m exhausted! And I still have I think one or two member birthday cars to draw. If you have a July birthday, I promise they’re coming!
“Walter Mondial” makes me wish there were a deep and weird joke in Beverly Hills 90210. In that show, the twins Brandon and Brenda are from Minnesota, and share a car that they call “Mondale.” Local nepbaby Steve Sanders always drives a Corvette with a personalized license plate “I8A4RE” (I ate a Ferrari). Brandon should have totally scored a Mondial and challenged Steve to a race (hell, Brenda should have gotten it, now that I think of it). It would have made no sense and been for the wrong audience entirely.
Oh, shit, you went deep with this one.
Since you mentioned the birthday drawings, Jason, I just want to say how much I enjoy the 1972 Avanti you sent to me this past February. It’s the wallpaper on my desktop and it’s just gorgeous, man. I really appreciate the effort you put into it and the bit of Roy Lichtenstein treatment you gave it for effect.
When describing Elon, I prefer “chundering toolbag”.
Great Ferrari comeback, Adrian! I don’t drive one, but I do have a prancing moose badge on my Polestar 2 keyfob, since it’s basically a high performance Volvo EV.
https://i.ebayimg.com/thumbs/images/g/qXIAAOSwiC5hWeMs/s-l1600.jpg
I need a job. I’m not a thundering toolbag. I’m already in Austin. I also really like money. Lots of money. Think of all the poor life choices I could make with actual money. Maybe I could buy a sweet Tatra, or even another Puffalump.
Fire the toolbag and let me run Tesla. I can’t run it any worse.
Who would have guessed that, of all people, David Tracy is the one who actually steers this harem of maniacs somewhere close to the border with sanity?
Anyone?
You know how some countries go to complete shit when their dictator is disposed, because their reign of terror was holding the whole powder keg together? Same principle here.
Are we in the pre- or post- genocide era of Jasonia? I only just started training the munchkins in guerrilla warfare, I’ll be pissed off if it’s all for nought.
*naught
Wehoo! Wehoo!
Comment police initiate protracting devices!
“This one is busted sir.”
“Well then ignore it soldier!”
David Tra-… wait. No. That actually explains a lot.
“And I still have I think one or two member birthday cars to draw.”
So the birthday drawings for velour members are real? I didn’t get one last May. I couldn’t tell if it was lost in mail or if the member gift of an original Torchinsky artwork was satire.
(also, why is my name showing up with my comments and not my username? I recall someone else mentioned having this problem a few days ago. It appears I can change my registered name away from my actual one, at least.)
You’re showing up as Stig’s Cousin to me?
I changed my name to “Stig’s Cousin” to avoid having my real name displayed (looks like that worked, at least). My username is something different. Before this, all of my comments only displayed my username. Not sure if I accidentally did something to change that, or if there is something wrong with the comment system?
Ah, weird.
RBF = Resting Brit Face? 🙂
Sweet. Just after my introduction to the phrase thundering toolbag was a TEMU add for weird cargo shorts that look like a perfect addition to a thundering toolbags wardrobe.
Should I click on the add and go all in?
#idiot goals
Cargo shorts are the only appropriate place to keep your thundering toolbags.
I prefer boxer briefs…
I get the weirdest assortment of crap in those Temu ads. Like, are these real products that exist, or just oddball assortments of pixels designed to scam elderly Facebook scrollers?
Either way, I’d err towards a no.
It’s like someone connected their 3D printer to their dreams somehow and they are trying to sell us their plastic hypnagogic creations.
We had a couple of Commodore PETs in elementary school that got wheeled from classroom to classroom for computer time. Complete with cassette tape drives.
I used to remember the POKE/PEKE codes to switch from CAPS to lower case, but it has fallen out of the memory buffers recently.
I haven’t had to type those commands in 37 years but they are POKE 59468,12 and POKE 59468,14.
Thanks! I figured somewhere here would know them.
Ooh, I missed that Ferrari burn since I’m avoiding “X”, good comeback.
A Commodore PET Model 4016! The sum total of hardware in my high school’s computer lab was three of those and a tractor printer, later supplemented by a floppy drive. Commodore BASIC 4.0 all the way!