Episode 751: The Periodic Table of Elements…of Humor!

Technorama episode 751, the periodic table of elements of humor.

Hello and welcome to Technorama, the show that takes a lighthearted look at tech, science, sci-fi, and all things geek.

If this is the first time joining us, welcome to the show. We appreciate it.

Hey, it's 751 episodes later, but you finally made it.

That's okay. Sure, there's still parking in the parking lot for you.

Achievement unlocked.

If you're returning guest, your spot is saved for you. How's that? You don't have to park in the visitor spot.

Yeah, all the parking spots are numbered, so by the time you hear you listen.

The patrons have their names painted on the curb. We got this. We got this. We finally figured it out.

My name is Chuck Tomasi from Sunnyfield.

I'm in Phoenix, Arizona, and right over there is Craig Stepp. How are you, Craig?

I'm doing good. I'm doing good. Weather is really beautiful tonight in my office.

We are now officially in the second half of August. Isn't this crazy?

I know, but what is it, like 10 days or so till DragonCon?

Yes. Let me see. My counter on my phone will tell me specifically 9 days, 23 hours, 26 minutes.

Yeah, so almost 10 days.

Yep.

Yep. Wow, that's awesome.

And I've got 18 days to retirement, of which about 10 of those are work days. This is my last full week of work coming up.

Wow. How do you feel?

It's starting to hit home. If it doesn't get done after Friday, it's probably not getting done.

Yeah.

I do have two more trips. One is a trip to the mothership on the 27th.

Yeah.

There is a...

...segment of marketing that we're in called product solutions marketing.

Right.

And we are having an all-hands, and they said, could you come out to Santa Clara for our all-hands meeting on the 27th?

So I'll be making a day trip out there.

And then I've got one more where we're driving out to San Diego on my very last day so I can turn in the laptop,

and then Donna and I are going to make a mini vacation out of it and maybe do some Disney because it's only an hour and a half drive to Anaheim.

That's kind of cool.

What are you going to do when you retire?

I'm going to Disneyland.

That's exactly it.

You got it.

Which is better than what I did when I was between jobs at Plexus and Service.

Now, you remember that story, right?

Yeah.

Gathered up all the old collectibles.

Your beard got long and you were...

No, no, no, no.

...drinking a lot. It was like, it's terrible.

Well, I had a whole bunch of stuff in the basement, old computers, VT220s and SGI Indigos.

Just...

There was a lot of electronic stuff that I just...

I just wasn't using anymore, and I used those few weeks between jobs to do some house cleaning.

So I loaded it all up in the minivan, floor to ceiling, door to door, drove it to the recycle center in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, about an hour west of Appleton,

and they gave me some money back for certain elements like power cords.

I got lots of power cords.

They gave you money for power cords?

I made...

Yeah, I made like 12 or 15 bucks.

So then I noticed...

Right across the street was the Point Brewing Company, which is a kind of moderate micro brew place.

Okay.

Famous in the region.

And I got back and Craig says, wait a minute, let me get this straight.

You gathered up some recyclables to get cash for beer.

Yeah, that's right.

I do remember that.

That's right.

Yeah.

He took all my hard work and noble efforts to clean my basement and do e-cycling and

educate myself and brought it down to, this is what an unemployed guy does.

Leave it to me to bring in the reductive comment.

That's right.

Well, we'll see what happens for retirement, but I'm not sharing any stories with you.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Well, I was just...

When you were talking about that, I was just thinking about whenever I've recycled a piece

of hardware or something like that.

Something like the power cord is always the thing.

I keep, you know, so I've got this, I got a bucket full.

They multiply on their own.

They kind of do.

And no matter how well you tie them to get time.

So they don't not up.

They not up.

They do that while you're not looking.

I think it's like Christmas lights.

It's like toy story.

They start.

Yeah.

I've got my power cords under, under control.

I remember when I worked at my last job, somebody was gathering up all these extra power cords

because they, they multiply it.

Somehow you, you.

You install a computer with one for the monitor and one for the CPU.

You come back and they, they move offices and now there's four.

What?

How?

What?

They had babies?

I didn't know this.

How does this happen?

Someone explain it to me.

So we gathered them up and we put them in a banker's box and he labeled it power cords,

but he spelled it C-H-O-R-D-S.

So I wanted to draw a picture of an electric guitar so bad.

Yeah.

That's right.

It's the power cords.

So just to let everybody know.

If you don't already know, Chuck and I will be in Atlanta for Dragon Con coming up in a

couple of weeks.

Yes.

Yeah.

We were just talking about that.

So about 10 days, nine days now, probably about seven by the time you hear this, we'll

be at Dragon Con with our buddy Clinton.

We got a live show going on that weekend.

I meant for Technorama and the comedy forecast.

That's with Clinton.

And then we have our topic is Trek.

Yep.

There you go.

There he is.

He's chiming in now.

The topic is Trek one.

And I'm trying to remember the dates.

I don't have them on my calendar.

I do.

There are five things I need to remember.

Thursday, 10 p.m.

Hilton Galleria 7.

Karaoke.

Digital media style.

Yes.

I'll be KJ-ing that.

Saturday morning, 10 a.m.

Dragon Con parade.

Right down Peachtree Street.

Park yourself outside the Hyatt or somewhere along that route.

You'll get the idea.

Yep.

Sunday, 4 p.m.

Galleria 2-3, I believe it is, where the Star Trek panel is.

This is in the Hilton, downstairs.

You get there.

And we will be doing our topic is Trek live.

And there is audience participation.

So show up.

It's going to be fun.

That's right.

Then at 7 p.m. in Hilton Galleria 7, which is right around the corner.

If you're going to Trader Vic's, stop in and say hello.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's literally across the hallway, really.

And that's where we're doing Comedy Forecast, Technorama, and Friends

for at least the 10th year.

This might be our 11th doing that combined show.

So it's going to be a lot of fun.

How long have we been going to Dragon Con now?

Since 2009.

So I believe this is our 15th.

Yeah, 15th year.

Jeez.

Didn't that go by fast?

I know.

Wow.

It's like we were in our mid-40s or you were in your early 40s going,

this is...

Ah!

Michael Butler just celebrated 20 years of podcasting.

Yeah, I'm coming up on that in December, too.

I started podcasting in my 30s.

This is crazy.

And I'm going to go into my 60s.

Yeah, I didn't have my own show, but I kind of started at the same time.

I was helping out other podcasters and like Kevin Devon and stuff like that.

Yep.

In the trenches, which is...

It didn't last too long.

He didn't keep it around too long.

About five years.

Yeah, a few years.

Yeah.

So...

His role changed.

So he didn't have the subject matter expertise and the stories to tell.

Yeah.

It just disappeared when he changed roles.

I mean, if you don't have any source material, it kind of makes it tough to make your podcast.

That's true.

All right.

I remember doing an April...

Hey, I remember doing the April Fool's show for him.

Do you remember what I did?

I remember sometimes we would switch shows, like put our show in his feed or something.

That April.

April.

2005, I guess.

I came on there and made the announcement that I bought the domain and everything from him

and I was turning it into a board game podcast.

Board game.

In the trenches with board games.

Welcome to board games.

He wouldn't let me do the whole show.

He was like, no, no, I want to stop it.

And he was scared he was going to run everybody off.

Oh, yeah.

I can understand that.

I was like, okay, fine.

I was going to do the whole show.

Okay.

Now for the pre-show banner.

Should we get into the feedback?

Yes.

Let's do it.

Let's do that.

Letters.

Oh, we get letters.

We get your letters every day.

Mailman, mailman, mail today.

Reach right in and pull one out.

Those letters.

I love those letters.

Let's find out what you've got to say.

Oh, boy.

Mailman.

Mail today.

Right.

All right.

Our question of the week this time.

Why is the left channel not linked to the right channel?

That's weird.

Uh-oh.

Are they sliding or something?

I was able to pull down the left and the right didn't.

Now they are.

That was bizarre.

All right.

So before we start, I want to ask you.

All right.

So the question of the week was, what fictional universe would you feel at home in?

At home.

This is like a comfort thing.

Not just, which one do you want to live in?

Sure.

Which would you feel at home in?

Yeah, if you existed in a fictional universe, which one would you be comfortable in?

I don't know, because I would want to go to the Star Trek universe, because, you know,

beaming technology, transporter, that's...

Yeah.

Replicators.

Yeah.

And save a lot of time traveling.

Hey, synthahole.

You just, you know...

Earl Grey.

Hot.

I don't know.

Yeah.

But that would be where I want to go, where I'd feel most comfortable, where I'd feel

at home.

That...

I don't have any shows that jump out at me like I would feel at home there.

What are your thoughts?

I mentioned it last time, the Flintstones.

I wouldn't be able to live in the fictional universe.

Although, you would kind of have some dinosaurs around that may want to eat you, but...

I have fun stopping the car.

The brakes are murder.

Well, I have been called...

I've been told I look like Barney.

That's right.

Hey, hey, hey.

I don't know.

I thought it'd be fun to be in the Flintstones.

Okay.

Let's see what our listeners say.

Kyle says, for me, I'd say the Noob Town universe would be fun for me.

Think of a D&D basic map, but the Roadrunner and Wiley Coyote physics engine governs.

Mark says, I think Middle Earth might be nice for a while, but Star Trek is amazing,

so long as you aren't there during the wars, or the Borg, or maybe not.

Also, toss-up between Babylon 5 and Farscape today.

And although I've come to really be disappointed in its creator,

the wizarding world of Harry Potter sounds pretty cool, so long as I'm a wizard.

Steven Weshie says...

I'd really like to live in the Trek universe.

TNG, DS9, or Disco would likely be ideal time frame.

See, I think that sounds like it'd be fun.

John Kratzer said, Battlestar Galactica 2004 version.

Do you remember that?

They were refugees.

They'd be chased.

That was not a good time.

They were on the brink of extinction for a few years during that show.

No, I wouldn't...

Yeah, no, that's not happening for me.

Let me do a real quick check.

Let's see if anybody got any responses.

Oh, I got some responses.

Okay.

I just posted this a couple hours ago.

Yeah.

My brother Vince says, La La Land.

La La Land.

Where would you feel most at home in La La Land?

Yeah.

Weber Baker just said, Eeyah.

I think.

It has an A with two dots over it.

I don't know where that is.

John Clifford says, Star Trek would be my choice as well, and Lone Guy's Night.

Probably Harry Potter.

But I'd still be a muggle and completely unaware of their world.

You may already be there.

Yeah.

Say too late, and you're already there.

That was a good answer.

It's kind of like Steven Wright when he said, I woke up this morning and realized that someone

came into my house and stole everything and replaced it with an exact replica.

Oh, Steven Wright?

Yeah.

He's got some good ones.

All right.

That's our question of the week.

We're going to play that funky music, white boy.

Rolling right into the history.

On this day in history for August 21st, 2024, this is the 234th day of the year in the Gregorian

calendar.

There are 132 days remaining in the year.

It was on this date in 1770 that James Cook,

formerly claimed Eastern Australia for Great Britain, naming it New South Wales.

Yeah.

We're out with the old one.

Also on August 21st, 1883, an F5 tornado struck Rochester, Minnesota, leading to the creation

of the Mayo Clinic.

I had to read this whole thing because usually I don't do disasters like plane crashes and

earthquakes and whatnot.

But since this one led to the creation of the Mayo Clinic, I went, okay, there's a story

I want to learn more about.

I want to go back and read about that.

Right.

All right.

The first successful adding machine in the United States was patented by William Seward

Burroughs.

On this date, Burroughs, remember the guys who combined to make Univac?

Yeah.

1888 is when he made his first successful adding machine.

Wow.

And it was 79 years ago today that physicist Harry Doglin and his fatally irradiated...

He was fatally irradiated.

He was fatally irradiated in a critical...

Accident during an experiment with the Demon Corps at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Yikes.

Hey, if it says Demon Corps, I'm staying away from it.

Yeah.

My cursor go.

Hey, Harry, could you carry this package over to that other room?

Oh, no.

It's safe.

Just keep the lid on the box.

Don't look.

August 21st, 1957, the Soviet Union successfully conducted a long-range missile, a long-range

test flight of the Univac.

The R-7 Semyorka, yeah, that's it, Semyorka, the first intercontinental ballistic missile.

I think they give it a better name, but okay.

R-7.

Yeah, R-7.

Yeah.

That same date in 1959, U.S. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed an executive

order proclaiming Hawaii as the 50th state in the Union.

Hawaii's admission is currently...

Commemorated by Hawaiian Admission Day.

Hey, let's go celebrate with Mad Marv.

Yay.

31 years ago today, NASA lost contact with the Mars Observer spacecraft.

And it was also today in 2017, a solar eclipse traversed the continental United States.

I'm starting to see pictures from seven years ago on Facebook.

I got some good pictures of people with glasses on.

I look a little goofy.

The one that came up today is the road sign that says, keep your lights on during eclipse.

Like, there's a sign you don't see every day.

That's right.

Happy birthday goes out to the state to French mathematician and engineer, Hubert Gautier,

born on this date in 1660.

And Giacomo F. Moraldi, the French-Italian astronomer and mathematician, was born 359

years ago today.

Born August 21st, 1754, Scottish engineer and inventor, created the gas lighting, William

Murdoch.

Murdoch, he was the first person to gaslight someone.

And they never stopped after that.

So Augustus Louis Cotchey, Cotchey, whatever, the French mathematician and academic, was

born 235 years ago today.

The worst French ever.

Yes.

Nathaniel Everett Green, the English painter and astronomer, was born on that same date

in 1823.

You're a painter and astronomer.

What do you do?

You look through your telescope and then paint?

What do you do?

What do you see?

Yeah.

All those pictures are about as big, round, tiny.

Here's a dot.

There's a dot over there.

There's another dot over there.

Yeah.

American animator, director, and producer, Fritz Frilling, was born on this date in 1906.

Fritz Frilling?

Yeah!

Yeah.

Many of his works.

August 21st, 1909, Russian mathematician and physicist, Nikolai Mugoliovov.

And also turning 68 today is English-Canadian actress,

Kim Cattrall.

Yay, baby.

American businessman, co-founder of America Online.

You've got mail, Steve Case.

He was born on this date in 1958.

He's got mail from the...

You've got mail.

His mother got mail from the stork.

Right.

Born August 21st, 1961, American marine biologist, cartoonist, animator, and creator of SpongeBob's

SquarePants, Steven Hillenburg.

I had no idea he was a marine biologist.

No wonder everything is so factually accurate.

He had to one-up the painter-astronomer.

It's a documentary.

I did not realize SpongeBob was a documentary until now.

Hey, Steven was looking through his telescope.

Whoa, look at that sponge.

I'm going to paint it.

Three weeks later.

Russian-American computer scientist and businessman, co-founder of Google, Sergey Brin, was born

on this date in 1973.

He's younger than both of us.

And he's a lot richer, too.

Listener birthdays this week go out to...

Dean Jensen on August 21st.

August 22nd has two birthdays.

Bilbo Baggins and Frodo Baggins.

They put their own entries in, I think.

That's lovely.

That's the way it was on this day in history for August 21st, 2024.

Hey, if you want to get your birthday in the calendar, Craig's going to put a link on the

screen, but I'll tell you what it says for all the people listening at home.

You go over to chuckchat.com slash birthday, and we will get your name on the birthday

calendar when your time of year rolls around.

If it's your birthday, you're going to get your name on the birthday calendar when your

birthday this week, and you're not on the calendar, you're not Frodo, you're not

Bilbo, and you're not...

You don't have a birthday.

You're not...

It doesn't exist on our calendar.

You don't have a birthday?

You don't have to count it.

Hey, that's a way to stay young.

Wait a minute.

That's also a way...

Don't put...

It's an incentive for people not to put their birthdays on there.

Oh, happy birthday to you.

We wish you all the best.

Good news, nobodies.

Well, the good news...

The good news is that somebody, these citizen scientists, as they're calling them, spotted

an object moving one million miles per hour.

There's an object that is moving rapidly across the sky, and they just discovered this, I

think it was as far back as a couple of years ago, but they just verified and reported it.

A fast-moving object they call CYS.

All caps.

C-W-I-S-E-J-1-2-4-9-0-9-point-0-8-plus-3-6-2-1-1-6-dot-0.

Rolls off the tongue.

When I saw that, it was like an exponential.

I think it's got something to do with the coordinates, but as it's moving, those won't be the coordinates

for long.

Yeah, that's right.

So they spotted, they shortened it up to just CYS-J-12-49.

It's zooming out of the Milky Way at about one million miles per hour.

It's...

Apparently...

It's actually a low-mass star, and what they think, there's a couple of things that could

have happened.

One is it was part of a binary star system with a white dwarf, and you know how when

white dwarves kind of suck all the energy out of a star?

Yep.

And then they go kaboom every once in a while.

We saw this on Star Trek Next Generation, and they're expecting it to happen any day

now in real life.

Really?

Yes.

Any day now?

There's another one about to happen.

It happens every 80 years.

It goes kaboom, and we shall see it, which would be kind of cool.

So anyway, they think that may be one way is that the dwarf star just sucked off so much

energy that it couldn't maintain this binary system.

It just kind of went, I'm out of here!

Yeah.

Or...

See ya.

Or it somehow got tangled up in a couple of black holes that are orbiting each other,

and it got too close to there and got flung out.

Because you got to have some sort of...

Oh, like a fling shot.

It's going way too fast, and in the wrong direction, it's going to be flung out of...

It doesn't say when it's actually going to be leaving, but space is big, and it's zipping

across the sky.

I think this is kind of cool.

Hey, slingshotting is also something we've seen before.

They had a dime for every time.

Yeah, it's how you go back and save the whales.

That's right.

Yeah.

Actually, when I first saw this title, I said, moving 100 million miles per hour, and went,

oh, that's cool.

As long as it's not coming.

As long as it's not coming at us.

Just one million miles per hour.

Much slower.

Well, as long as it's not coming at us.

I don't think so.

It'd be kind of fun if it did.

Would it?

Sure.

Some of our planets would get flung out.

Yeah.

All right.

On to the Hacks and Strange Stories.

Found some interesting stuff in here.

We have a story in episode 751 over at chuckchat.com slash technorama.

For a huge Lego Star Trek Deep Space Nine model that has over 75,000 pieces.

This video is from, I believe it's the Chicagoland Lego build con, whatever, five years ago.

So, sorry it took us so long to find this story.

But there's a video and a story.

I think I did.

I think we did talk about this a while back.

Now that I think about it.

Yeah.

But the story at the top, it says August 13th.

I went, okay, great.

And so.

2019.

Yeah, I know.

No, that's fine.

It's eight feet in diameter or almost three meters.

It's crazy how big this thing is.

And stands, what, about six, seven feet tall?

A couple of meters tall from pylon to pylon.

It's really big.

And I watched the video where they interviewed the guy of how long, it took him two years to build this.

He didn't even fully assemble it until the night before the conference.

Because he doesn't have enough room to assemble it in his house.

He says, yeah, the only place I've got is my garage floor, which is uneven, or the middle of the living room.

But that would block the TV and the family wouldn't be happy.

Well, how do you transport this, like, to this show?

He breaks it down.

He said the pylons, they kind of flare out at the bottom.

He said those come off so that they're nice and they're uniform thickness the rest of the way.

So you can stack them and pack them in a much smaller box.

So he's got a way to break this down in sections, and they're all easy to reassemble.

The LEDs inside are good old kitchen undercounter RGB LEDs from Amazon.

And he's got connectors on each segment of that.

So when he plugs in one of the spokes from the bicycle wheel, because there's three spokes on there,

when he plugs that in, he plugs it in electrically and mechanically, and he's good to go.

Okay.

So very interesting stuff.

Spent a lot of time.

Engineered the heck out of this.

Because he said, you know, that outside, the habitat ring, I guess it is, is so, not heavy, but it flexes too much.

And it will actually crush under its own weight.

So he's got some steel reinforcements inside that hold it up off of the floor on stands, too.

So just an incredible amount of time.

The interviewer also asked him, he said, did you have any, like, projects in between this?

Or did you just go straight on?

Or did you just go straight on two years solid through on this?

He goes, no, you get burned out if you work on something this massive for that long.

Oh, yeah.

He said he built a Tesla Roadster with the spaceman in it, the one that was launched into space.

And what else did he build?

He built something else that was along that line, just to kind of break up the monotony and give him something to do.

Yeah, you had to have, you couldn't work on this full time.

Yeah, I would imagine you'd have to have a couple of things going.

Wait a minute, is he married?

Does he have a family?

Yes, he does.

What?

Well, then how did he get married?

He didn't say how many hours.

It's not like this was his full time job 24-7.

Yeah, but it looks like it would take a lot.

Oh, I'm sure it did.

Because he had to-

He said it took two years, didn't you?

He had to cab this whole thing together.

And he said it was based off of a, what was it, a one foot model he had when he was a kid.

And he scaled that up.

It's one 600th scale.

Wow.

It's even got the Defiant on it.

Yeah.

That's pretty cool.

Pretty cool.

Pretty cool stuff.

I, I, you wouldn't catch me building that.

Hey, well, I was going to say, now you got a project for your retirement.

Not happening.

Yeah.

You don't like Legos anymore?

I already have a project.

I, call me old fashioned, but when we built things out of Legos, you built them out of

the standard bricks.

You know, the one by eights, the, the, the two by six.

Yeah, there's a lot of specialized ones now.

There are so many specialized ones.

You're basically putting a model together.

And you're like, okay, I'm going to build, you know, a Star Destroyer from Star Wars.

It has to go together.

And there's, there's not much room for imagination.

That's, that's my thing.

Lego bricks, in my opinion, were built for imagination.

Let the person build what they see in their head.

This is pre-canned stuff and it doesn't feel like, you know, you're really exercising the

imagination so much as you're trying to build a model.

Well, I thought you were going to say, call me old fashioned, but I'd rather do this in

Lincoln logs.

I'd rather do this.

I'd rather do this in a 3d printer.

Yeah.

I'm old fashioned that way.

No, Lincoln logs, man.

Imagine trying to build something like that.

I had Lincoln logs.

Yeah, I did too.

A lot of the, a lot of the flat green ones that were for the roof turned into hockey

sticks.

I'm sure Clinton remembers though, the time when we had rocks and sticks.

Hey.

To play with.

Hey, he might not even be online anymore.

When I was a kid, you just sat in the dirt and played with the dirt.

Yeah.

So they're making mud pies.

You had water?

Yes, I did.

We didn't have water.

We had, we had dehydrated mud pies.

Poop and sticks.

Poop and a stick.

That's right.

I said poop and stick.

He probably had that too.

Leaving the dirty jokes aside.

All right.

Next article.

I did not realize that Alan Parsons from the Alan Parsons project was like the engineer

slash producer of Dark Side of the Moon.

Yeah.

I was unaware of this too.

Yeah.

This is a pretty cool article that you found.

Yeah.

This was, that was one great expert.

I was like, wow.

I had no idea.

I knew he did a lot of engineering.

Of course he had his own rotating band, you know, with different people in it.

That was Alan Parsons project.

But what fascinated me about this was I started seeing, they were, they started talking about

the sounds in the song money.

Yeah.

You know, the, the bag of money fall paper.

Yeah.

And they have to go up the rec crash register and.

But, and, and even the song on the run, if you did this today, it would be a copy paste

exercise in a digital audio workstation or a dog.

Not terribly sophisticated, right?

Right.

Back then they said we had to record these sounds and then measure on the tape.

What was it?

Six and seven eighths inches for each sound.

It literally with a tape measure.

Yeah.

Put them in a loop and then record.

those to a four track recorder that got onto the multi-track recorder that got onto the 24

track master and like wow and they had to do all this because it's very carefully timed you listen

the meter of that song money or on the run they all have this specific money is interesting

because it eventually fades out as the singing comes in yeah it fades back in

that is a master stroke to be able to take those sound effects in rhythm to the time of the song

that's coming just incredible incredible stuff they made the loop and then the band played to

the loop and they ended up eventually faded out when it starts playing so when you get to that

part that's not too crazy but it's the how they got there was to know that they had to put the

you know use the measuring tape

i was like i've done some crazy things with cassette tapes i know it's not i know it's a

different ballgame yeah but i did a lot of things when i was remixing some music with cassette tapes

and but to think out you know sitting there with a tape measure and trying to make sure it's all

lines up it's amazing and that this article just drew me in as i read i went oh yeah i want to know

how they did that and so i started reading it it was fascinating so yeah oh here you go um

clinton says regarding legos

you

need to watch youtube's why legos is so expensive video by the business insider so it addresses a

lot of things here you go yep that's your that's your homework for next week i i also thought it

was interesting i'm not going to ruin it but i suggest that our listeners go and read this

article again episode 751 over at chuckchat.com slash technorama and they they tell how they did

this live because remember they're not going to ruin it they're going to ruin it they're going to

ruin it they're going to ruin it they're going to ruin it they're going to ruin it they went out on tour

and and it wasn't just like okay billy roll the tape and we'll start playing

you get a foley actor on the side dropping coins

no do it on time one two three clink one two three clink okay yeah yeah that that was i love

this article so much it was great last article truly belongs in the hacks and strange stories

because it combines nuclear fusion experiments with mayonnaise as it should fascinating stuff

so they go into a little precursor about what is nuclear fusion and how you can do this it's you

know what powers the sun when you take lighter elements and fuse them together and get heavier

elements like two hydrogen atoms make a helium atom and you get a whole bunch of energy well

on earth there's a couple of different ways you can do this one is called the nuclear fusion experiment

where is it where is it i should have highlighted this stuff let's see nuclear fusion one way to go

is use the torus shaped device called a takamak which is magnetic fields to control an internal

plasma and induce fusion reactions another way is a blast a small pellet of fuel with lasers

causing fusion the latter method is the way scientists at the department of energy's national

ignition facility generated a record-breaking amount of energy

from their reaction in 2022 but that's not to say that takamaks are a bad way to go earlier this

year the jet takamak in the united kingdom produced over 69 megajoules of energy 20 times

more energy than the national ignition facility reaction okay so we're we're making this stuff

it's still not economically feasible but we are getting a whole lot of energy out of so what does

mayonnaise have to do with this hey well tina q tina turner what's mayo got to do with this

i'm sorry go ahead anyway i my brain went in three more directions off of that but i'm gonna

leave him alone well of course we all know that mayonnaise is an emulsion of egg oil and an acid

like vinegar and you know some people don't go for that but the condiment is also the key to perfect

grilled cheese i like this author where did this article where's this article going in the fusion

mayonnaise help the team probe an instability that occurs between materials of different

densities when the gradients of density and pressure are moving opposite oppositely easier

to say than it is to comprehend yeah from a scientist banjiri we use mayonnaise because

it behaves like a solid when it is subjected but when it is subjected to a pressure gradient

it starts to flow so interesting stuff i i also dug down whenever you get articles like this i

like to dig

down into the comments okay first one comes up it says other labs immediately

mustered all their condiment knowledge to catch up with their state of the art oh all in the name

of butter science yeah the next comment i must admit to relishing in the saucy comment exactly

oh boy there's there was another one down here i have become craft destroyer of eggs

yeah

those kind i thought we'd share that with them but hey you never know what mundane things are

going to help advance science forward mayonnaise yeah who would have thought

all right quick shout out to the chat we have clinton that's it on to the next one we're around

sunday nights at 8 30 eastern time thanks clinton we had a couple people earlier they didn't make

any comments they may oh we're not broadcasting to x anymore are we because i think our no because

they won't let us boogers all right but you can join our facebook page or a youtube channel

and get announcements when we start broadcasting join us live stick your quippy comments in there

and talk about mayonnaise or whatever condiment you want we're around sundays at 8 30 eastern time

or we put this podcast out live on wednesday uh recorded on wednesdays or you can come back and

watch later it's always fine are we um gonna redo one before dragon con sure why not it's in it's in

a week it's good

going to be the 25th i'm around are you around yeah i'm just getting ready for dragon con but

yeah yeah let's do it i have a pile of stuff accumulating in the bedroom waiting for my

big suitcase to come back from lithuania okay my daughter has my big suitcase and that's the

one i use you only have one i only have one mega suitcase yes okay all right then let's thank our

patrons on that note thank you to our patrons they make this show possible

they help offset the cost of live streaming and hosting and software upgrades and whatever else

it takes to put this show together at least financially thank you alexis duran amber elstead

amy bowen abner braverman thank you ben vaughn brian brown chris martinez chris mc thank you

dan d man coyer wow craig's already got the banner up at the bottom no reminder necessary this week

he is on the spot kudos already almost as good as the 16 year old

no 17 year old trainee i have at church dean jensen denise english gary lindros john clifford

john noble yorga shrawan crazy joe kyle nishioka thank you leon thank you mark brad mike saturday

steven steve steve steve steve and tim

it's your name not steve then spam spam spam spam spam spam and tim

thank you to all of you who have gone

over to patreon.com slash technorama podcast quick note craig and i are in discussions of

what we're going to do because those of you who are paying through the ios app

they're they're apple's ios billing is going to start taking a chunk out of oh yeah they bill so

we may have to go to per content from from per episode billing to scheduled we're going to talk

about that what does it mean how are we going to do that or or

you can just log in on your computer with and go to the website yeah but i think by november 2025

they're changing it all i think they're getting away from per episode billing

that's on patreon yes we're going to review all that and let you know so there are talks

just letting you know early that things may be changing here we will let you know

or you know you can just mail us checks

give us your venmo account

you're so

security number we're good with that all right let's put that music away as fun as it is and as

much as i want to listen to that oh i gotta get the music together clinton 30 it hurts yeah

i mean there if and that's only if you're paying with the ios patreon app at this point

so they're either going to take 30 and we get 30 less or we're gonna have to raise the 30 and then

it's just like android

or google does with some sites like amazon you bought if you buy through amazon they get a cut

on your amazon app okay um however if you go to a website like the patreon website

and set up a payment type where you're not using ios at all i have a feeling that that's because

i'm going to read it and double check but i think that that would be fun you'd have to that's the

way it works today but they are they are saying that we're we're

looking at changing the billing permanently for everyone in about a year so we have some time to

work with this yeah if you're currently using the ios patreon app which i don't know if anybody is

or not we can't tell let us know and and we'll start a discussion to let you know what we're

going to do okay let's move on to pass me the remote i was gonna say maybe just charge them

30 percent more on that dollar show is a bit of a hit

okay um donna and i just finished up ted lasso season one on apple tv plus okay good really

enjoyed it we we blasted through 10 episodes on that uh this is a really good feel good show

it was made in 2020 or 2021 i forgot what it was uh basic story premise if you haven't already seen

it i know i'm catching up on a lot of this stuff is uh this guy from a junior football like american

football league is brought over to the- i don't know if you've seen it but this guy is brought over to the

to the uk to be the manager slash coach of uh the richmond football league aka soccer and he's

being brought over even though he is terribly unqualified he's he doesn't even know the rules

of soccer slash football i'll just call it football from this point and uh he's he's doing

it because the owner of the team has just gone through a real ugly divorce and she wants to

sabotage this thing because it's the love of her ex-husband's life and she wants to burn it to the

ground so she brings him over and uses him only it's kind of backfiring because he's actually

doing good but it's first the whole town hates him they call him a wanker among other things but

among other things but he starts making friends just

through

his personality and that starts turning the team around starts turning the town around

and it really is a warm feel-good movie i'm not gonna spoil much more of it yeah well uh and what

what i will say is the next two seasons yeah it's more it's more than the same in a lot of ways

and some ways that gets a little better too so yeah it's really good okay i'm not gonna not

gonna say what happens at the end and i'm sure that sets up at least season two all right what

have you been watching

well not a whole lot but today we watched jackpot which was on amazon prime and it's uh i figured

her last name it's with the comedian aquafina that's her name and john cena and the premise is

in california after the depression of 2026 or 2029 or something you know they were trying to

the government needed money really bad so what they did was they did a lottery

and the

if you win the lottery uh it's legal for somebody to kill you within 24 hours of you winning

sounds like hunger games kind of thing and if yeah and if they kill you they get your money

but if you live for the 24 hours you know you get to keep it it's yours so it's um

it's supposed to be a comedy and it's it's a little thin i think i didn't it wasn't really

great there was a few moments but it wasn't that great okay but i know i looked at kim and said

well just how did you i said how did you like that and she looked at me like are you kidding me i was

like trying to be positive trying to be i didn't really yeah actually to be honest with you during

the credits you know sometimes movies they'll they'll show bloopers and outtakes yeah so they

were doing that actually those were more entertaining than the movie i think itself

the credits are more fun my other one is a new channel that i just came across a couple hours

before the show started called retro recipes the video that caught my eye was this guy saying all

there's this show on bbc channel four from 1985 that was talking about various computer projects

and it was kind of cool nerdy show and he said there was

episode where they flashed this little white dot on the screen and said here is your program now

you can write the receiver it's for the commodore the zx spectrum spectrum zx something it was for

two or three different computers at the same time and they're in the magazine they said if you want

to write the receiver program you need to build this little circuit and they showed most of what

the circuit was about so you can put the ir receiver on your tv and have that translated

onto the cassette and you can write the receiver which was in assembly in a magazine in the march

edition of blah blah the internet really sucked back then it was it was hardcore so this guy said

unfortunately like the next week they went off the air so you never found out if anybody actually

used this thing we want to see if we can decipher this message from the past right so he went out

and said i can't find all the parts we're going to try using some modern parts had some problems

ran into it there was one point where the the guy on the tv starts talking about a variable resistor

he said that's the first i've heard of it and the circuit's already built he went out to pcb way

made a pcb had all the resistors and stuff crammed in there and and then they say and then tune your

variable resistor he's like what what variable resistor this is the first time hearing of this

i've already got my assembly already built

so it was it was a lot of interesting technical challenges to get this application on the on on

his commodore 64 that's funny i've we've talked about this guy before he uh he built the um the

tesla kit night rider a car he built his i think he had his own night uh okay he built and he's oh

this will clue you in speaking the commodore 64 he uh who was the

not the inventor of the commodore but uh was uh renting a room in the house when he was with his

family we talked about it a long time ago i don't know if you remember that i don't remember every

article we talked about on this show for 751 episodes oh am i just wasting my time yeah pretty

much i don't even know what i say but i know if i if if we say the same things the next thought will

be exactly the same because that's where my brain is wired yeah anyway go his kit tesla was pretty

cool too but you can go check that out and i'll see you in the next episode of the show

cool yeah i've seen i've said i've actually i'm subscribed to this guy i've seen him stuff every

once in a while and and he's been producing regularly steady stuff for the last several

years so yes i subscribe to him we'll keep an eye out and let you know if anything else comes up

also a few interesting videos that i put from youtube into the geek library one is about rest

apis something that i learned now i've been doing rest apis for many years this is a method of which

computer uh

talk to other computers and pass the payload and i found out that it's not you can't technically

call it a rest api if it doesn't return a payload that tells you more about like the next page of

information or uh a link to the records in that information does it mean it gives you does it

mean that it gives you some data and rest until you call again no i think it rest actually stands

for representation representational state transfer and unless you're transferring back

that state information it's it's not it's just an http put patch post method oh okay uh apparently

i've been calling many of my rest requests the wrong thing not all of them but many of them

yeah but that was interesting if you want to find out more about rest apis that i recommend that

uh there's another one from rob words the weird ways the elements got their names

some are pretty self-explanatory like californium einsteinium sometimes it has to do with the person

that found it right right in the later ones but where did helium come from argon xenon or she

calls it xenon richard richard r argon discovered richard are gone yeah he's the guy who left halfway

through the experiment i was trying to say actually richard argon uh another one that i i look at

fairly often they'll talk about the uh food franchises that have gone or appliances from

the 60s that we no longer use this one is 20 famous cigarette brands that faded into history

although not all of them faded into history but what i did realize is um there is a market out

there for trading like packets of these things and you can get up to like 30

dollars for an old packet of cigarettes you know you know cigarettes do go stale after a while

they're not smoking them they're just trading them it's a collector's item oh so there's a

market for cigarette collectors didn't realize that no i think i'd pass on that and then ryan

so cash had one on its history called the san francisco's lost belt radio railroad if you've

ever been to um like fisherman's wharf in that area and notice there's these railroad tracks

embedded into the sidewalks yes i've seen those there's a whole network of

railroads down there and they went through the history of it and what happened and

what's left so kind of cool stuff if you're a san francisco buff you might want to look into that

that's what i have in the geek library for this week we are running up to the end of the show

with a question of the week for next time if you could have any fictional creature as a pet

which one would you choose one of the dragons from harry potter a sell it from vulcan yeah

yeah unicorn

maybe a targ from klingon

man those things are tough to feed i don't know there were some interesting ones in foundation as

well almost done with the season two of that so working on that maybe by next time that's what we

want what is your fictional creature as a pet tribbles no neutered tribbles yeah that's right

the ones that rock um

rock fixed rock talk fixed

that brings us to uh end of the show wow we're there we'll talk to you again really soon we will

talk to the patreon people first though so don't forget patreon.com slash technorama podcast

if you want to get in on that action extra episode postcard coming we're gonna send those

off from dragon con and we're working on the design for the 2024 t-shirts so look forward

to that as well until then

if you want to get in touch with us you can reach out on the listener line 707-530 i'm saying it's

slow so you can write it down yeah wait a minute 2428-707-530 chat better be on your speed dial at

this point or you can email us that's always a possibility technorama chuckchat.com a number

of people do that with their ideas they go hey i got an idea for a random question of the week

throw it at us our board will review it and if it's approved you will get on the show and we'll see you next time

the show well all one of them get on the show yeah all one of them hang out with us on social

media wherever you find technorama podcast i'm sure you can google that uh great comments tonight

yeah clinton he's the only one making comments self high five

there you go till next time give us a binary high five craig all right one zero one