Everyday before I begin to write I take a brief break and attempt to consume the entire internet.
Yesterday, that entirely productive behavior turned up this:
Now you can revel in its deeply nerdy grotesque wonderfulness. (Yes. The word store had a sale on adjectives and adverbs.)
By way of explanation: this is a cover played on Tesla coils. This is, apparently, a thing.
This thread, it is open–especially for cherce* musical absurdities.
*See Pat and Mike.
japa21
Now that was different.
West of the Rockies
Tom, you must have loved the movie Sorceror’s Apprentice.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Cole just tells us how much he hates us.
mrmoshpotato
Just saw this on Popehat’s Twitter. Bravo to whomever came up with this idea.
Amir Khalid
Cool.
This is Schrödinger’s Cat, a music video by theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder.
Emma from FL
I’m a sucker for strange, wonderful magic. I loved that.
And someone in the gentleman’s home grows orchids.
trollhattan
Trying to imagine being this guy’s neighbor.
Definitely the nerdiest thing I’ve seen in a long while.
brettvk
Social media may yet destroy civilization on this planet, but every day I revel in the the joy the internet has brought into my life.
Yutsano
A respite thread with no Tikka? Fie, sir. Fie I say!
Tesla coils were his answer to America’s growing energy needs. Honestly if someone could figure out how to make them quieter that would make them much more viable. Right now they’re just cool toys.
SFAW
@Yutsano:
Tikka didn’t want to be associated with a thread extolling Toto, I’m a-guessing.
Amir Khalid
@Yutsano:
Tsk, tsk. If Tesla coils were quiet, you wouldn’t be able to play Toto’s greatest hits with them.
Yutsano
@Amir Khalid: I’m not so sure about that. Humans are creative especially with their possessions. If Tesla coils were common odds are someone would come up with a creative usage like this.
I submit it would have taken until at least the 90s for that to happen as the underlying technology didn’t really exist until then but who knows?
Eric S.
I assume the morning garden thread is mostly dead so I’ll ask this question here. I have a deck garden. Tomatoes and hot peppers growing in planters and some herbs: mint, oregano, thyme, and basil. I just discovered some tiny, bright red insects. My guess is they are aphids. Any suggestions on control techniques? I’ve read a dish soap solution sprayed can help. I’ve also seen it could be harmful and to test it on a small section.
Subcommandante Yakbreath
Quietly pushes theremin into corner and slinks away… : )
Firebert
I’m pretty sure Austin’s Arc Attack did musical Tesla coils first, and bring a robotic drummer, Faraday suits, and other theatrics to the act.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
These things are called Thoramins or Zeusaphones variously. They are a bunch of videos of these mad scientist/musician devices out on the internet for all different kinds of music. They’re great!
mrmoshpotato
@Yutsano: Sadly, not even Metallica can drown out the coils’ noise.
J.
I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you, Tom.
(My husband LOVED the video. But he also likes Toto and “Africa.”)
Aleta
@Amir Khalid: priceless
Yutsano
I contacted our esteemed author. He shall be rectifying the lack of Tikka forthwith.
@mrmoshpotato: It is sad. They actually accomplish their intended purpose well. When I went to a demonstration of a full sized one the presenter warned us to cover our ears. Even with that it was LOUD.
artem1s
if JC wants to add some lightning to the next BJ get together he can hire the Tesla Orchestra
Tesla Orchestra, 2013 Ingenuity Festival
mrmoshpotato
@Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]: At first I thought you’d misspelled “theremin” and “sousaphone” but no…
debbie
@Eric S.:
Spider mites more likely. Spray with a mix of water and Dawn detergent. That stuff’ll even kill stink bugs.
trollhattan
@Eric S.:
Spider mites is my guess. Do the plants show fine, dense webs when you mist them?
They’re a bane here and hard to control. They love heat and we have that.
Art
Well … we did that. Interesting, and somewhat musical.
Of course Tesla coils have some pretty big issues, in terms of EM footprint. They have, as an inherent property, a tendency to throw square-waves that interfere with telecommunications and can couple onto insufficiently shielded land-lines. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find out that during this performance police, fire, over-air TV, CB, air traffic control signals and general radio communications were disrupted. Cable-TV, land lines, and both control and data circuits, depending on proximity and shielding might also suffer significant interference.
If you could move the display into a shielded enclosure, or arrange for them to be in a remote location and well away from people needing to use the EM spectrum, there might be no objection. I don’t know of any location sufficiently distant within the continental US to gurantee non-interference but perhaps I’m being a stickler.
In the US the FCC, which enforces signal discipline and punishes abuses of the radio spectrum tends to frown upon large Tesla coils, Van de Graaff generators and even low-power Jacob’s ladders and spark-gaps operated in an unshielded environment. Obviously the person/s doing this sort of thing haven’t had any encounters with jackbooted thugs with badges and attitudes so maybe they know something I don’t.
I learned about the potential conflict because a friend in highschool had the FCC show up on his doorstep in the 70s saying his electrical experimentation was interfering with FAA communications at nearby military and civilian airports. Fines started at $10,000 (a whole lot of money back then). Given his age, about 16, and the situation, they issues a stern warning and the offending equipment was dismantled. They left a booklet outlining the various equipment that tended to cause interference, what can be done about it, and possible legal remedies. The boy’s father, E-2 Navy, and making only a sailor’s pay, informed his son that his interest in high-energy electronics was over.
Yutsano
Oh yeah: my twin cousins were named after the Pat and Mike movie. They’re both pretty much drifter losers like their dad, but at least one is okay. The other needs major psychological intervention.
JPL
That is awesome!
Just One More Canuck
@SFAW:
yes, if Tom truly loved us, he wouldn’t have inflicted Toto on us
prostratedragon
“Cherce!” One of my favorite special words for things that are, well, cherce. Saw Pat and Mike years ago, forgot that’s where I probably got it.
prostratedragon
Heard loads of beautiful new (to me anyway) music lately, and not much absurdity. HOWEVER
I went looking for one snippet and found youtube to be a fount of archived inspiration:
Also,
You’ll be dismayed relieved to know that this was an expected effect of recent safety-oriented design changes. Something in the article reminded me of a bit of Twin Peaks apocrypha whereby back in the 1980s young Lucy Moran took her solid B- from the Tacoma Narrows College of Business and Structural Engineering off in search of adventure and romance in the northern Rockies.
J R in WV
World’s largest existing Tesla Coil:
Known as Electrum, this four-story (38-foot) Tesla coil was commissioned by a prominent New Zealand art patron, Alan Gibbs, and set up on his farm outside of Auckland in April of 1998. Built by the late artist Eric Orr and high-voltage engineer Greg Leyh, the enormous coil puts out over 3 million volts, enough to rip electrons out of the air molecules around it.
Atticus Dogsbody
I’ve got a shiny nickel that says those Tesla coils have never even visited Africa.