This week we are discussing an absolutely, positively, 100-percent guaranteed process to beat the lottery*.  We even have proof, albeit from an Australian in the early 90’s that, sadly, is not Paul Hogan.

Now some will say air conditioning has grown from a luxury to a necessity, and cj & Jeff couldn’t agree more.  So with the hottest summer on record finally ending (hopefully!), the guys dig into the history of our BFF, trusty ol’ air conditioning.

And of course, no episode of Nonsense would be complete without some Tesla & SpaceX headline low-lights!

*: time machine not included.

Marine conservation group honors Bob Barker, who funded anti-whaling ship

Focus: Tesla braces for its first trial involving Autopilot fatality | Reuters

The 6 Levels of Vehicle Autonomy Explained | Synopsys Automotive

Texas Approves 2 Tesla Virtual Power Plants to Help Out State's Power Grid - CNET

Wildlife officials say SpaceX launch left behind significant damage | Mashable

How Australia Ended Regular Mass Shootings: Gun Reforms After 1996 Massacre Could Be Model for U.S.

Odds of 50 Random Events Happening to You | Stacker

10 biggest Powerball, Mega Millions jackpots won in US lottery history: LIST

Before Powerball jackpots, Stefan Mandel won the lottery 14 times - The Washington Post

The man who won the lottery 14 times - The Hustle

Air conditioning - Wikiwand

Global Cooling The History of Air Conditioning - ASME

The Unexpected History of the Air Conditioner | At the Smithsonian

Willis Carrier - Wikiwand

And…we are back from our summer breaks, which means we’re back to our good ol’ full-length episodes.  This week we are digging into state-of-the-art refractive surgery: in just the past 150 years, we have gone from assessing your visual acuity using mustard seeds to shooting lasers into your eyes to reshape them.  Ain’t science great?!

The most common of these procedures, commonly called LASIK, can be performed in less than twenty minutes using two different lasers to first access, then reshape, your eyeball(s).  Not only do you recover overnight, but you’ll have greatly improved eyesight the next day.  Fortunately for you, cj was kind enough to volunteer his “bad eye” for LASIK just to be able to tell y’all how it went.  Now if that is not podcast host commitment, then we don’t know what is! 

But before getting knee-deep into eyeballs and lasers, we’ve got (yet another!) new coronavirus variant (hooray!), a crashed moon lander (boo!), a bunch of wiped-out “legacy” tweets (yay?), and companies like Facebook & Amazon applying more pressure to return to the office (double boo!).

If you are thinking about having a LASIK procedure, then this is an episode you are not going to want to skip!

CARROT Weather for iOS and Android

Which arm gets the Covid-19 booster may make a difference, study shows

Russian astronomer who was advisor to Putin's disastrous Luna-25 mission to the Moon is rushed to hospital after unmanned spacecraft CRASHED

India is the first country to land at the Moon's south pole

Elon Musk admits X ‘may fail’ after glitch deletes Twitter photos

X glitch wipes out most pictures and links tweeted before December 2014

Tesla says data breach impacting 75,000 employees was an insider job

Meta threatens to fire workers for return-to-office infractions in leaked memo

Meta employees who flout new return-to-office mandate face termination

Mark Zuckerberg’s new ‘in-person time policy’ will crack down on Meta’s remote work rebels

Amazon relies on ‘serendipity’ for office return; employees want data

Funniest Cat Videos 2023

How Julio Urías, who once struggled to see, became Dodgers' ace

What Does it Mean to Have 20/20 Vision? - Healthcare Trends

Refractive surgery - Wikiwand

SYNOPSIS OF MEDICAL STANDARDS - Applies to SPECIFIC Class of Medical Certificate

Driving Restrictions per State - EyeWiki

Excimer laser - Wikiwand

Astigmatism - Symptoms & causes - Mayo Clinic

LASIK - Wikiwand

Femtosecond Lasers and Laser Assisted in Situ Keratomileusis (LASIK)

And we are back to being HOT, again, this week. Our savvy listeners know that this means cj and Jeff are both at risk of melting and as such, are incapable of putting in a solid 45-minute recording.  Instead, they are hosting the second headline-only episode this month.

There’s more amazing battery tech this week (this time some super-fast charging batteries shoe-horned into a Lotus Elise!), Apple cracking down on apps that “fingerprint” their users, and US spies love this one phone surveillance loophole.

As an aside: apparently, there’s a bill called “the fourth amendment isn’t for sale”.  We’re not sure about the other 26 amendments, but hopefully, someone will buy the 18th Amendment and finally put it out of its misery.

And more confessions this week: cj’s spent hours watching his toddler son chasing a laser pointer; he’s also been known to feed samples of delicious smoked prime beef ribs to his local raccoons; and Jeff’s most colorful dreams involve getting 10 long, hard miles to the kilowatt.  Super hot.

World Wildlife Fund⁠

⁠Why Your Appendix Actually Matters

Apple cracking down on 'fingerprinting' with new App Store API rules | Engadget

The NSA Is Lobbying Congress to Save a Phone Surveillance 'Loophole' | WIRED

Ultra-fast niobium batteries boast 6-min charge for Lotus Elise-based EV | Ars Technica

Lotus lost £145m in 2022 and job cuts are now looming | Top Gear

Sequoia & Kings Canyon

Watch The Beanie Bubble - Apple TV+

Buckle up, buttercups, we’ve got a long one this week!  After last week’s summer-break-headlines-only-episode, both cj & Jeff were just overflowing with words and insisted on sharing them with all of their listeners.

This week we’ve got a double-header segment covering the history of Elon Musk’s X.com, including its improbable (but necessary) merger with Confinity (the creators of PayPal) and the successful coups of not one, but TWO CEOs before ultimately being sold to eBay.  The guys both thought they knew most of the story, but as it turns out, there is way more crazy in this saga than your favorite classic episode of Jerry Springer.

But before X.com, we’ve got AIs performing sports broadcasting, Android phones detecting AirTags, Cacti in Phoenix dying from the heat (!!!), and British Airways serving KFC in a pinch.

21 Reasons Mutts Are Better Than Purebreds

That sports broadcaster you hear could be AI

Android phones can now tell you if there’s an AirTag following you

Phoenix’s record heat is killing off cactuses

British Airways Just Served KFC on a Flight From the Caribbean to London

Beyond Chicken Tenders

Do Peanuts Go Bad?

Why is Twitter called X now? Elon Musk's rebrand explained and where it's going next

Sandy Weill and the Story Behind Citigroup

A brief biography of 'X,' the letter that Elon Musk has plastered everywhere

Single-letter second-level domain

Elon Musk's 25-year obsession with 'X' explains what he did to Twitter

Twitter's Future Is a Return to Elon Musk's Past - Every

Zip2 - Wikiwand

If you haven’t noticed, it is HOT this week.  And neither cj nor Jeff wants to slave away over microphones for 45 whole minutes, but they don’t want their listeners to have to go without!  As a result, this is the first of two short, headline-only episodes this month.  We hope you are basking in delightful air conditioning while you enjoy this quick episode.

This week the guys have a Paris Hilton flashback, complain about the heat (again!), highlight the “gravity hole” found in the Indian Ocean, and talk a bit about how AIs are starting to learn like humans.

And no episode of Nonsense would be complete without a Starman reference, pee bombs for robots, and lithium batteries (namely, what happens when you add salt to them)!

That’s Hot with Paris Hilton | The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

⁠When Do Snakes Come Out?

Indian Ocean gravity hole was caused by an extinct ancient sea, scientists say | Live Science

Future AI algorithms have the potential to learn like humans

Paris Hilton Explains the Origin of ‘That’s Hot’ Catchphrase

How sodium could change the game for batteries | MIT Technology Review

Amazon is reportedly making employees relocate for return-to-office | Engadget

Meta’s Llama 2 Elbows Into a Still-Open Field - IEEE Spectrum

Ghostbusters (1984) - The Library Ghost Scene

Nope, not astronauts in the ocean.  This week cj & Jeff cover submarine cables - the 850,000+ miles of cable that stretch along the ocean floor between countries and along coastlines.  There are about 500 cables currently in service around the globe, and today July 27th, marks the 157th anniversary of the completion of the first transatlantic telegraph cable.

And with your favorite blue-bird being renamed “X” overnight, the guys reminisce about some of their favorite products and companies that have started with X throughout the years (there are more than you think!).

Of course, no Nonsense episode would be complete without a discussion of satellites (Amazon’s Kuiper), crypto-related-fraud (SBF’s push to buy an island), and a new type of drug (good for cholesterol, your lungs, and brain!).

12 Shark Facts That May Surprise You | NOAA Fisheries

70 Shark Facts That Will Make You Say "Oh, These Guys Are Pretty Cool Actually"

Twitter is being rebranded as X - The Verge

These are all porn except one. That one's Twitter.⁠

⁠FTX crypto whizzkid tries to 'buy island and make genetically enhanced human species'⁠

Sam Bankman-Fried’s Brother Allegedly Wanted To Buy Pacific Island Country To Build Doomsday Bunker For Effective Altruists

⁠New class of cholesterol-lowering drugs can affect lung function and brain size, study finds⁠

⁠Amazon’s Project Kuiper will open a new satellite-processing facility at Kennedy Space Center⁠

⁠Google co-founder comes back to company to bolster its AI efforts⁠

⁠Elon Musk's X takes @X handle from longtime Twitter user⁠

Twitter rebrands to 'X' as Elon Musk loses iconic bird logo

⁠When X-Rays Were All the Rage, a Trip to the Shoe Store Was Dangerously Illuminating⁠

⁠Xanthan Gum — Is This Food Additive Healthy or Harmful?⁠

⁠The X Factor⁠

⁠⁠FedNow may finally be live, but will it be too costly for businesses to adopt? | TechCrunch

$100,000 Bill | Museum of American Finance

X Window System - Wikiwand

The X-Files - Wikiwand

X-wing fighter - Wikiwand

Star Trek: Enterprise - Wikiwand

15 years ago, the Xbox 360 launched in the desert. It was a wild event..

Xbox 360 launch - Wikiwand

Software versioning - Wikiwand

Semantic Versioning

Kabletown | 30 Rock Wiki

X-ray - Wikiwand

Shoe-fitting fluoroscope - Wikiwand

Computer mouse - Wikiwand

Xerox Alto - Wikiwand

Xobni - Wikiwand

X, the moonshot factory

X-Acto

Xanthan gum - Wikiwand

The X Factor - Wikiwand

X10 (industry standard) - Wikiwand

Xtra-PC

Barbie Girl - Wikipedia

“I’m a Barbie Girl”

Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard feted in Denmark⁠

⁠'LANCE' 

Subsea Internet Cables Light Up the Bottom of the World's Oceans⁠

Submarine Cable Map

CJ Little and Jeff Parker are doing a podcast called nonsense.  Join us at the intersection of technology, creativity and economics.

Who knew that the same man that brought us the telestrator used on every Sunday Night Footbal game also really hated the moon?  Well, that appears to be the case, so this week we thought a quick introduction to Project A119: “A Study of Lunar Research Flights - Volume 1” was in order.

Then cj and Jeff explore today’s electric car options as they are considering adding to their respective fleets - which is good timing seeing that Tesla and now Ford are slashing their EV prices still.

And good news!  This week only minimal talk of AI and nothing about aviation - too much weather, striking, and Twitter shenanigans to cover! 

National Moon Day

US heat wave could last into August after breaking over 2,300 records⁠

⁠NYC-area airports see massive delays and groundings as 1,600 flights canceled across the US⁠

⁠Extreme heat in Arizona increased hospitalizations to pandemic levels at one medical center⁠

⁠The heat wave scorching the US is a self-perpetuating monster⁠

⁠Fran Drescher: AMPTP Is 'Punishing Us' for Strike, Stalling Negotiations⁠

⁠Christopher Nolan wants Oppenheimer to be a cautionary tale for Silicon Valley⁠

⁠Engagement on Instagram's Threads Has Cratered⁠

Elon Musk says Twitter’s ad revenue has dropped by 50 percent⁠

⁠Tax preparers that shared private data with Meta, Google could be fined billions⁠

⁠⁠The Morning After: Russia bans Apple devices for state officials⁠

Ford slashes price of all-electric F-150 Lightning trucks⁠

⁠Tesla cuts prices on all models, 3rd cut this year – The Associated Press⁠

⁠In big win for Tesla, more car companies plan to use its supercharging network⁠

⁠Leonard Reiffel - Wikiwand

Project A119 - Wikiwand

The crazy plan to explode a nuclear bomb on the Moon

60 Years Ago: Vanguard Fails to Reach Orbit | NASA

Telestrator - Wikiwand

BlackBerry Trailer #1 (2023)

This week marks the first anniversary of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) delivering on its promise of revealing the universe like never before.  Being super-nerds, cj & Jeff wanted to celebrate this amazing milestone by talking a bit about not only Webb, but some of the space observatories that came before it.

And when it comes to Webb, there are few people in the universe that know more about Webb than our guest this week, Dr. Jon Arenberg, the Chief Mission Architect for Science and Robotic Exploration for Northrop Grumman.  Dr. Arenberg’s, or Jon as he insisted we call him, worked on the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, James Webb most recently, and countless space-exploration projects in between.

If you’re not familiar with the JWST, here’s how NASA described it this week:  “On its first anniversary, the James Webb Space Telescope has already delivered upon its promise to unfold the universe, gifting humanity with a breathtaking treasure trove of images and science that will last for decades,” said Nicola Fox, associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “An engineering marvel built by the world’s leading scientists and engineers, Webb has given us a more intricate understanding of galaxies, stars, and the atmospheres of planets outside of our solar system than ever before, laying the groundwork for NASA to lead the world in a new era of scientific discovery and the search for habitable worlds.”

“WELCOME TO THREADS”

The Webb Telescope's Latest Image Reveals The Birth of Very Young Stars

Over the last year, NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has allowed us to see deeper into space – with stunning clarity

I can’t get over these images from the James Webb Space Telescope!

A Year of Cosmic Wonder With the James Webb Space Telescope

Good news listener!  This episode cj’s voice has been replaced by an AI trained using only Lauren Bacall, The Marlboro Man, and  Lemmy Kilmister - so enjoy the break!

For all the aviation nerds out there, and in honor of National Air Traffic Controller Day, cj shares some amusing ATC stories while Jeff catches everyone up on just how much facial recognition is already being used in various venues, what’s it being used for, and some folks that are quite opposed to it.

And if you had James Webb, Tweet reading limits, gas prices, and drone-based air taxis on your bingo card this week, you’re in for a treat!

Lauren Bacall, 1996

Pool Floats Kids with Water Gun

Wireless Android Auto Adapter

Saturn’s rings steal the show in new image from Webb telescope

Enceladus

USB 4.0

Elon Musk Limits Unverified Twitter Accounts to Reading Just 600 Posts Per Day

Fourth of July gas prices take an almost unprecedented plunge

Joby Aviation's first production air taxi cleared for flight tests

Flight TRAILER (2012) Denzel Washington

SR-71 BLACKBIRD PILOT TELLS THE STORY BEHIND HIS FAMED GROUND SPEED CHECK - The Aviation Geek Club

Facewatch

Russia illegally used facial recognition to arrest protestor, human rights court rules