I wasn’t here from the absolute beginning, though I tried to get here as fast as I could. Many of the features you and I love about the website were already baked into the experience from almost day one. A key part of this operation is Jason’s “Cold Start” post. It’s the first thing on the site… usually.
It’s a chance to establish, for anyone who happens to point their browser this way, that we as a site are more committed to sharing a bit of interesting information you’re unlikely to see anywhere else – like a history of wet meat – than we are the latest crossover mid-cycle refresh (although we’ll maybe get around to that eventually, too).
Jason is the soul of this place and, like a soul, he’s a bit ephemeral and hard to pin down sometimes. The idea of Cold Start is that it starts the day. In order to do that, it needs to be first. If you’re a regular reader of this site you’ll know that, uh, that isn’t always the case.
This is a member’s only post, if you’d like to read more you can support this place by becoming a member!
I don’t pretend to know how all this works, but a spiritual/philosophical quote I always loved, once I became aware of it is:
“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” – paraphrase of a George McDonald quote in Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood
It has been wrongly attributed to (how ironic) CS Lewis.
Ah, Hardigree, my old friend. Do you know the Klingon proverb that tells us Cold Start is a dish that is best served cold? It is very cold in Slack.
Rename it to Hard Start.
Keep fighting the good fight, Jason.
Never surrender to the Cult of Clock.
CS is easily my favorite reason for being alive.
Well this article took a real turn to the philasophical. So may I question is CS live when JT Posts it or when the Autopians read it? Is it live when unread or does it come alive throughout the day as different readers read it?
If no one reads CS, does it actually happen?
I’m confused I thought Otto was the bus driver and the kids name was Bart?
The comics seems like a Spider-Man trope between J Jonah Jamison and Peter Parker, I hope Stan Lee isn’t a member here? You know 8am Climate Shift Time is 11am Einstein Standard Time. That’s why California is always 3 hours behind the times but doesn’t realize it.
Sadly Stan died a few years ago.
Scene: Me badgering Jason in his DMs to get his goddamn Bettle Hate rebuttal piece written as mine was done weeks ago.
Me: KNOW I KNOW HOW MATT FEELS
Jason: He knew what he was letting himself in for.
Is that John Romita’s artwork?
I, for one, would like to hear some tales of Hardigree fielding cranky copyright infringement-related phone calls.
I heard Jason had a third arm fitted to improve his ski-boxing
He’s just this guy, you know?
I think Jason’s very particular brand of weird bullshit emits an anti-lawyer field – anything worthy of litigation is buried far enough in the article that nobody without a sense of humor is going to stick around long enough to find it, which means nobody with a law degree will ever see it.
And it’s still been a Mercury-less Thursday for how long now??
I thought it was supposed to be Mercury Monday?
And Shhhhh!! It’s ok that went away…
And what happened to the worst car book/random number generator column?
I have a copy of that book (and its companion about the best concept cars).
I wonder if they want reader generated content?
Jason’s recurring series recur on his own time and nobody else’s.
I am amused at how Ron Swanson-like Jason can come off in Slack.
Ron: “Normally, if given the choice between doing something and doing nothing, I’ll do nothing. But I will do something if it helps someone else do nothing. I’d work all night if it meant that nothing got done.”
Now comes the lawsuit for copying Parks and Rec.
It’s just like any other ecosystem, every animal plays it’s part in making the whole thing work. Jason is simply the resident racoon, leisurely digging through a garbage can full of coffee stained brochures, fluid soaked service manuals, half eaten cans of clams and who knows what else, causing minor chaos in a charming and joyful way.
That’s part of his Muppet persona, too
On one hand the laissez faire attitude is commendable, on the other hand he’s co runner of the site and could lead by example, or like pass it off to someone in an earlier time zone and just be main editor of them.
NEVER
So sounds like a vehement laissez faire. I guess if we consider every day’s cold start the day before’s, then it’s like super early.
You might be on to something. Does Torch even verify the post goes up? Maybe PV should just skip CS one day and schedule it to post the next morning. Rinse, repeat. Never late again.
But then the articles about concept cars commissioned by English newspapers in the late 1960s would lose all of their topicality! Who wants to read about that 58 years and a day after it happened?
Never lightning strikes when it strikes you can’t put it in a bottle.
whoops, wrong place
Are you new here? (That’s rhetorical). Jason does lead by example, it’s just that no one else is capable of following where he goes. It’s what makes this place great!
Earlier than EST? Does that mean Adrian gets it?
That would be a cold start indeed!
Yes but given he is in the UK it is 5/9/1825
If Torch led by example…
God help us
I’m the only artist in a company of engineers. I don’t know what they do, they don’t know what I do, so we just kind of regard each other warily from across the cubicle walls.
At one point, I was frustrated with dealing with them, so I wrote NO on my whiteboard in foot high block letters. Any time an engineer would come to my area to ask a question or make a request, I wouldn’t even turn around. I’d just point to the NO.
My wife, people from my church, my friends, when they’d hear about this, they’d ask “How do you not get fired?”
My response was “Well, they like me, and none of them want to try to do my job.”
?
Have you ever been a Circulation Director at a newspaper? This sounds like my old job before journalism committed suicide
Reminds me of my engineer buddy who’s taking a ceramics class. He was losing his mind over a pottery wheel that was making some squeaking sounds, like a belt rubbing on something. The artists in the studio all looked at, saw it was still spinning , shrugged, and walked away.
Engineers and artists are natural-born enemies. Engineers and artists also need each other for survival.
Try being an architect where the profession has attempted to merge an engineer into an artist or an artist into an engineer since the renaissance!
I see the minor chaos as a feature here. I never know what will be up when I drop in, so it’s sorta like spinning the roulette wheel.
100% this. I love the irreverent atmosphere.
This is why I refer to Jason as Chaos Goblin. He’s a living chaos sigil. The power he has demands utmost respect. Choronzon works through him.
That’s because anyone who would notice or care about copyright infringement in a cold start has been dead for at least 30 years.
As it turns out, Jason is just like a 7.3 Power Stroke with bad glow plugs. It’ll start eventually, you just don’t know how long you’ll have to lay into the starter before it finally fires.
I wrote this on Discord just the other day….
One of my favorite things:
(Specifically, my 94 Toyota Pickup 22RE) Starting an old, cold, motor. One that misses until it’s warm. Yeah, the distributor cap could be replaced, so could the plugs. But, one of my favorite things is just sitting there in the quiet listening to all the cylinders miss and pop until it gets warmed up. I just love the feeling of those misses going away. I’ll wait to leave until they are all gone. Then, it just purrrrs along, dashboard looking back at me letting me know it’s time to get going. Slide it into gear to slowly pull away.
Poetry.
It’s beautifully evocative, but still bugs me because of my own old blue Hilux. Same age, same engine. One of the last ones they sold in the U.S. I bought mine in October 1994, mere days before the new ’95 Tacomas arrived, and Toyota of El Cajon was unloading their stock of base-model ’94s for a mere $7500. The only vehicle I ever bought new, and I loved it. I drove it for nearly 20 years, then gave it a new oil pump, water pump, and timing chain and gave it to my niece who drove it to Alaska and used it up there for a few more years. When she sold it, it had nearly 300K miles on it.
And not once in its history was it ever sluggish to start.
That’s exactly how a vintage airplane radial engine starts!
The Cold Start comes on time, never early, never late. Always right on time.
A Torch is never late, nor is he early; he arrives precisely when he means to.
Exactly!
Just like the accordion player for Steve-n-Seagulls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Ao-iNPPUc
Here’s an even better example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JFb_aOn6rc
Love that. What is really weird is that the video that autoplayed after the first one was my son’s band on Tiny Desk Concert about ten years ago. Weird!
The algorithms are listening
SnS is awesome. And neat group of cars in the background
On Martha’s Vineyard, between Edgartown and Chappaquiddick Island (see Mary Jo Kopechne) there is a ferry service that goes 500 feet across the harbor. The ferries that serve this route are the “OnTime II” and the “OnTime III.” Each holds 3 cars. They leave when they are ready and they get there when they get there. They are never late. They are always on time.
Feels a bit ominous to ask, but what happened to OnTime (the first)?
Even at the bottom of the bay, it could still technically be “en route.”
It never arrived at its destination, but it’s still on time.
For the longest time, it was a water dock: where pleasure boats could fill their fresh water tanks. Not sure if that’s still the case.