Youtube hearted comments of ZGryphon (@ZGryphon).

  1. It's a shame this wasn't invented by Pioneer. They'd have figured out a way to make it play Laserdiscs, too. :)
    4400
  2. Poindexter lived the most epic "but it's my day off" story ever.
    1200
  3. Ah, Thomas, my old friend. I wrote my undergraduate thesis in history on Midgley, years ago. One of the things that turned up in my research was that a number of Midgley's contemporaries, including members of his family, believed his death was not accidental, but a carefully engineered suicide prompted by despair over his condition. (Not, as some have speculated since, remorse over his inventions. There's no evidence he ever saw lead as anything other than a necessary evil, and no one on Earth had the slightest idea CFCs were anything but a harmless miracle until decades after his death.) As an aside, the beneficial aspects of leaded gasoline during Midgley's lifetime weren't only economic. TEL led (as it were) to the development of high-octane fuel, particularly for aviation use, by American oil companies, which gave aircraft on the Allied side of World War II enormous performance advantages over their opponents. For example, the average octane rating of the gasoline German fighters had to settle for was about 65, as opposed to 100 or more for the RAF and U.S. Army Air Forces fighters they were up against after 1941. (By comparison, even the lowliest pump gas sold in the US today is in the mid-80s.)
    810
  4. I have a couple of light switches in my house that have those little neon lamps in them. The neon's on when the switch is off, so you can find the switch in the dark. Pretty neat.
    523
  5. Every time I hear about another case of dangerous, usually radioactive crap being left lying around by the Soviets, I think of the pre-credits scene in Tomorrow Never Dies. "Can't you people keep anything locked up?!"
    238
  6. About 20 years ago I worked at a (now sadly defunct) local newspaper here in the rural USA. We had a scanner in the office that was always listening for the local emergency services, for obvious reasons, and occasionally someone would address us directly. Usually it was the fire department dispatcher, casually letting us know that the current call was for equipment testing or something and we shouldn't get too excited. :)
    44
  7. That navigator position makes total sense. As we've seen on this very channel, it's not really very important at all for that crew member to be able to concentrate.
    41
  8. "Too fast, Vasiliy, too fast! These charts are laid out precisely--so many knots on such and such a course for so many seconds. And this thing handles like a pig!" - Lt. Viktor Slavin, The Hunt for Red October
    35
  9. During the playback of the DFD21 error, I keep picturing some hapless 18-year-old Bundeswehr conscript, left alone in the control booth while his superior goes to the john, stabbing frantically at buttons and trying everything he can think of in a steadily rising panic while the computer voice lady goes completely off the rails and the tone generator has a total meltdown. In my head, it has the same comedic energy as the scene in Modern Times where Charlie Chaplin can't keep up with the pace of the assembly line.
    29
  10. Would you say it's making you... give a ship? I'm sorry. In my defense, you started it. OK, technically Sal started it. :)
    20
  11. Scott's maniacal cackle when something especially ridiculous has just happened will never get old.
    17
  12. That guy who always yells about how he's endangering national security will be on the case.
    10
  13. On top of everything else, I'd just like to note that based on the photo at 8:24, the "proper" carrying case for the apparatus appears, in itself, to be nothing more than the kind of can U.S. Army .30-caliber rifle ammunition comes in, but it has been spray-painted black for extra radiation containment, so that should be fine. Oh, and the lid appears to be missing, but, you know. You can't be too picky about this stuff.
    5
  14. The shape of the glass on that lamp makes me want to do something really silly with it, like put a novelty plastic mad science brain inside it.
    5
  15. The BLEVE to end all BLEVEs.
    3
  16. It'd be funny if the "alarm sound" ones were literally just the soundtrack for a ridiculously inefficient alarm system that's designed to tune a loudspeaker to that frequency if the alarm goes off rather than having an annunciator of its own. Has to be running all the time, since you never know when the alarm might go off! :)
    3
  17. Don't forget all the outfits that won't be affected by this in any way, but will use it as their latest excuse for lousy service, just for a change of pace. "Oh, yeah, there's a dockworkers' strike in Canada. Supply chains! Nothing we can do!"
    3
  18. Here in Maine, in addition to our pre-statehood importance to the War of 1812, we also hold the unique distinction of being the only U.S. state to fight* its own private war with a foreign power. The one and only armed engagement of the Aroostook War between Maine and British New Brunswick, the Battle of Caribou, raged for at least an hour on New Year's Eve of 1838–39 and resulted in two** casualties: a pair of New Brunswicker lumberjacks who were attacked by a bear while attempting*** to have a gunfight with a group of Maine militiamen in the woods. True story! * FSVO "fight" ** three if you count the bear, who unfortunately did not survive her tactically unsound decision * unsuccessfully
    2
  19. I feel like there was a missed opportunity to say "Sorry if this story was a little crude, but hey, ship happens." :)
    2
  20. "Aston Martin Hostage Negotiators" would be a good name for a band.
    1
  21. This is making me miss my Century AK all over again. (Although that one was a Zastava, I guess from before they started just selling stuff in the US themselves.)
    1
  22. There's a Julius Fučík joke here somewhere, but at the risk of seeming to be making it at the expense of the tug operators rather than the pilots, I'll refrain.
    1
  23. Thanks, I hate it! (... the sound, not the video. The video's great. :)
    1
  24. So we're up to, what... the Chip-o-Matic 8000 now? :)
    1
  25. I have a feeling there's a navigation officer who's about to be unemployed in Greenland.
    1
  26. The zombie bust tests are always simultaneously hilarious and horrifying, but that last one this time... yikes.
    1
  27. Do the red-edged white Xes mean "this signal is defunct" or the like? "Never mind about this, it's abandoned but we're not going to take it down because you never know, might need it again one of these days"? I'm sure this is a blindingly obvious cultural thing to folks in the UK, but I haven't seen an equivalent to it here in the US. When our railroads abandon stuff, you can generally only tell from the rust. :)
    1
  28. "I think you'd be all right, as long as your buddy wasn't covered in tartar sauce and other condiments." Pretty sure no one has ever said those words in that order before in human history.
    1
  29. Can confirm: I've never seen that movie, and I was completely mystified by the intro. :)
    1