Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

These are not very smart people, and things got out of hand.

Giving up is unforgivable.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

Shut up, hissy kitty!

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

Decision time: keep arguing about the last election, or try to win the next one?

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

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“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Late Night Open Thread: But Can A CyberTruck Serve Briefly As A *BBQ Grill*?

Late Night Open Thread: But Can A CyberTruck Serve Briefly As A *BBQ Grill*?

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Lol. The "Cybertruck will act as a boat" but, if you drive your brand new Cybertruck with 26 miles on it in a tiny bit of water, not even reaching the cabin, your insurance company may total the car as not worth the cost of repairing your $100k dumpster on wheels.
electrek.co/2024/06/24/t…

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— Mike Masnick (@mmasnick.bsky.social) Jun 24, 2024 at 1:20 PM


(Another commentor added “Maybe he meant it will act as a boat in that the best two days with it are the day you get it and the day you get rid of it”)

Albert Burneko, at Defector — “I Would Like To Put Lunchmeat On The Cybertruck”:

I saw my first Tesla Cybertruck in person a couple weeks ago. I’d driven my family into an outer satellite town of D.C., well outside our normal circuits, and there it was, around the corner from us in a parking garage. It looked dumpy and top-heavy and cheap. You could spot its poor assembly at a distance: the weird uneven gaps between panels, the way light angled off the front and rear doors differently because they were misaligned and not even uniformly finished. While I was walking toward it, a whole other person happened by, spotted it, and erupted into giggles.

It was a bright, blazing hot afternoon. I did not touch the Cybertruck, but I did find myself wondering how hot its amazingly shabby-looking stainless steel body panels might be just then, or later on, when its owner took it home. I thought of the stainless steel propane grill my father-in-law used to have, and how just lifting the lid of that grill on a sunny day could blister your fingers. The thought came to me all at once, whole and fully crystallized, that I would like to slap a big ol’ slice of bologna onto that Cybertruck.

I did not think about this further, because it’s an insane thought to have. But a few days later, driving my kids home from a soccer game on another broiling sunny afternoon, we spotted another Cybertruck headed down our street, less than a mile from our house. It looked like shit. It looked far worse than the one in the relatively dim parking garage. The bright sunlight did those ugly brushed panels no favors: You could pick out, even headed the opposite way at 35 miles per hour, all the very many places where the light glanced off it irregularly, absorbed or refracted unevenly by a zillion oily fingerprints. It looked water-stained. It looked like a toaster for a divorced giant. Once again I found myself consumed by the idea of plopping a nice pink slice of mortadella on that sucker.

Many people are having this impulse! Certainly you yourself are one of them. I am here to tell you that this is quite normal. The fact of the matter is, to see the Cybertruck in person is to want to smack a nice thin rasher of corned beef onto one of its stainless steel body panels. This is natural. What is unnatural is to deny oneself so simple and harmless a delight…

This is the highest calling of the Cybertruck, which otherwise spends all of its time bricking itself, falling apart, and being shuttled back and forth to service centers and factory recalls: that on bright, hot days it will be a place to slap down a cold cut for the sheer joy of doing so. It is not the highest calling of lunchmeat, but then again neither are many sandwich preparations. We must not let the perfect be the enemy of the good…

i live in hollyglen which is the nice neighborhood in hawthorne where a lot of space x and tesla people live so i see a fair amount of cybertrucks.
the most devastating burn was when my seventy year old neighbor saw a guy getting in his cybertruck and said hey nice tonka truck.

— not an art thief (@famousartthief.bsky.social) Jun 26, 2024 at 10:49 AM

I am unironically thankful that the Cybertruck exists
what other vehicle can provide us this level of schadenfreude day in and day out
art comes in many different forms

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— Micah (@rincewind.run) Jun 25, 2024 at 11:45 AM

bsky.app/profile/elsp…

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— Arvid (@ornthoron.bsky.social) Jun 25, 2024 at 4:18 PM

Reader Interactions

115Comments

  2. 2.

    Splitting Image

    You can use a cybertruck as a boat, but you can’t take it through a car wash?

    I’m not a driver, but I think I have a good fix on the number of times I’d want to wash my car versus the number of times I’d need a boat.

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    If the cybertruck is the electric boat in question, I’m definitely taking my chances with the shark.

  4. 4.

    Elizabelle

    Oh, I thought you meant it was flammable.

    Have yet to see one.  When I think Tesla, I think of Mitch McConnell’s late sister in law, drowning in her Tesla in her own pond, with rescue workers on site, because they couldn’t get into the car.

    The Cybertruck looks … less well made.

  5. 5.

    TBone

    I saw one yesterday at Walmart.  I opened my window to point and laugh.  The occupants were not pleased.  Fugly.

  6. 6.

    Stuart Frasier

    I saw one in a black wrap today.  From a distance, it seemed like an improvement.  Got closer and the wrap just emphasized how uneven and wavy the body panels are.

  7. 7.

    dmsilev

    @Elizabelle: I’ve see a couple in the wild. They’re pretty hideous. You could excuse that if they were very functional, but apparently aren’t great on that aspect either…

  11. 11.

    mrmoshpotato

    The tow truck has been out there for an hour now trying to figure out how to tow my neighbor’s broken down Cybertruck 😂😂😂

    Burn it!

  13. 13.

    dmsilev

    @eversor: That’s only if you insist on obsolete measures of effectiveness like ‘has a reasonable chance of returning to the surface of the ocean under its own power’.

  14. 14.

    Elizabelle

    I wonder if people might start frying eggs on them on triple digit days.  The sidewalk has been done.

  15. 15.

    pacem appellant

    As a denizen of the Silicon Valley, I see too many of these. The best use so far was a neighbor, a Tesla employee, rented one from work to haul compost into his yard. It didn’t excel at this simple task (the truck bed is surprisingly small), but it got dirt from the city recycling center to his house in slightly larger volumes than could have been achieved with his hatchback.

  18. 18.

    RaflW

    Like clockwork, we can expect the AP to have a headline that calls that toaster for a giant (thank you, Albert Burneko) “futuristic.” It’s only futuristic if your viewpoint is a golly gosh late 50’s comic book kid.

    I totally agree on the schaden-joy. One of Musty’s stainless scrolltop desk sh*twagons passed me on I-94 the other day, I did my best to try to pantomime-laugh as bigly as I could for the kid in the passenger seat. Not sure I pulled it off, but who cares. The vehicle is it’s own joke.

  20. 20.

    J. Arthur Crank

    I have seem maybe 6 or so distinct specimens in the greater San Diego area.  The first time my daughter said “what the hell is that?”.  The last one was a very odd lime color.  I texted a picture to my daughter who said “it looks like a lego”.

  21. 21.

    Urza

    @TBone: Unless its a small town with nowhere else, why would someone with the money for a cybertruck shop at wally world?

  22. 22.

    Gloria DryGarden

    @dmsilev: I’m thinking this way too, only, can’t we gift a nice electric cyber truck to TcFG?
    A. Promise him it won’t electrify the waters, ( but be wrong about it)

    B the proverbial big truck as dick enhancer

    C show him the boat functions in alligator infested waters, then, or shark waters, either way is fine.

    D suggest a trip to the titanic (see above)   Oh Jesus that was funny,

  23. 23.

    Jay

    yellowdoggranny had a meme posted I think last Monday.

    Photo of a cybertruck.

    Caption:

    “Finally! They invented male birth control.”

  27. 27.

    Trivia Man

    Very positive campaign event today. WI Dems opening a new field office, Gov Evers came and brought the Gov of MD. Very dynamic and passionate, keep your eye on him fir future greatness. Great pep talk from both plus the state party chair.

  28. 28.

    Citizen Alan

    I saw one here in Fresno quite near where I live. (My apartment complex is in a fairly upscale neighborhood; I have to drive by pretentious and gaudy million-dollar homes on my way to work every day.) Two week later, I saw my first million-dollar house with a huge Trump 2024 banner in the same area. Coincidence?

  29. 29.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    Made me look. From the Five Points Academy website, under “Facilities”, this is the Science Lab:

    Our Science lab will start with a Tesla Cybertruck. How innovative is the Cybertruck in the automotive industry? Very. From gigapress castings to state of the art tri motor power… 

    The more you find out what’s underneath the exoskeleton the more you will find parallels with our groundbreaking educational technology.  Students who attend our first year will get to perform experiments with a Tesla Cybertruck. This Cybertruck is a unique “school vehicle” that will put through its paces so we can better experiment and understand a state of the art mobile demonstration machine.

    Weird science!

  34. 34.

    Captain C

    The Cybertruck looks like something a dollar store John Delorean would have designed on a coke binge if he lived in the Woody Allen’s Sleeper universe.

  35. 35.

    Shalimar

    @Sure Lurkalot: Maybe it’s a sign of my limited creativity at this point in the night, but I can’t think of many science experiments I would let high school students do to a $100k vehicle.

  38. 38.

    piratedan

    @Captain C: Stainless steel has its place, mostly on kitchen appliances, but I guess as a marketing play, it has the appeal of the “new hotness”, which means it’s likely to flame out soon until there’s a new “new hotness”.

  39. 39.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Shalimar: ​
      Hitting it with hammers is a type of experiment.*

    *What type? Fuck if I know, but let’s try it and see what happens.

  44. 44.

    TBone

    @Urza: it is a small town with very limited shopping options.  I’d never go to Walmart myself, otherwise!

    I had my pointing arm and my laughing face all the way out the window at them 😆

  45. 45.

    Jay

    @piratedan:

    Had a stainless steel fridge. Man it sucked. Couldn’t even cough near it with out having to clean the SS skin off.

    Bosch dishwasher, with a stainless steel tub. Great.

    Boat hardware that was 316SS, great.

    316SS pots and pans, great, life changing.

    304SS “skin” on a vehicle?

    Crap, as anybody who has worked with stainless steel knows.

    You want “shiny”, get a mylar skin.

  48. 48.

    Flanders Other Neighbor

    Not sure I’ve seen a CT here on the east side of the SF Bay, but I see quite a few Rivians in my immediate area.  I haven’t looked all that closely at any of them, but nothing was obviously garbage-looking.  Not a fan of mocking people over a vehicle unless it has a trump sticker on it, though.

  53. 53.

    JaySinWA

    I’ve seen a lot of Teslas and a few other EV’s parked on the street in my suburb. The townhomes next door have one car garages, so I thought a lot of them shuffled between charging and out on the street. OTOH maybe they park at charging stations.

    OTOOH I haven’t seen them recently, so maybe they have ditched them. But for a while there were a lot of them in the area parked on the street, or out driving around. Mostly Teslas, but a few Leafs. No Cyber trucks that I have seen.

  54. 54.

    Prometheus Shrugged

    @Flanders Other Neighbor: Two people down my street have CyberTrucks and they are the only two Republicans in an otherwise solid blue neighborhood. Coincidence? I don’t think so.  We live near the coast, so the salt corrosion, after only a few months, makes the stainless look like my grandmother’s 1965 Corvair floorboards.

    Full disclosure: I drive a Rivian.  We got it for camping and for the dogs. We were early adopters, but now they’re everywhere in our area. So far, no complaints.

  59. 59.

    Prometheus Shrugged

    @NotMax: So much depends on

    Vertical bun with a horizontal hot dog

    sticking out of it on the central white pale

    between alternating red and blue half-cantons

  60. 60.

    Keith P.

    The Tesla by my house has been stacking Cybertrucks up for months.  Finally, they moved them off the part off the parking lot next to the road, but they’re still not moving.  And the lot itself has been packed with cars for over a year now (before that, it was nearly empty).  And last week, I was getting lunch in another part of town, and the parking lot’s back edge was packed with unplated Tesla’s.  If their quarterly numbers aren’t terrible come July, I’m going to be convinced that they are cooking the books.

  61. 61.

    Poe Larity

    You mean I’m not supposed to store my batteries in water?

    Where do people learn these insurance saving minutiae?

  62. 62.

    Jay

    Fair number of EV’s here, mostly Tesla’s, but not all. Tesla’s stand out where other EV’s look like their ICE and Hybrid versions, so take a close look.

    Lot’s of “Urban Warrior” pickups, lot’s of work pick ups,

    Did a pfffff in front of one owner a few days ago, he responded with “check out the Chilcotin Cut Polish”. Yeah, it was lifted and clean, but every square inch of the paint was scratched, pitted from being offroaded a lot. Showed me the dents in the frame from getting high centered on a boulder. Pointed out that the bed has been “rhinohided” 3 times because of hauling stuff.

    Have yet to see a “Incel Camino” in the wild.

  64. 64.

    JWR

    The Cybertruck should be renamed the Cybersedan without a rear deck lid. I’ve seen one Tesla Model 3? IRL, and I actually loved the sound, so it’s got that going for it.

  65. 65.

    eclare

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    John Oliver showed it on his show last Sunday.  It’s black and white striped with the gender symbols on it.  As John said, it looks like its message is that being heterosexual is like being in prison.

  66. 66.

    Poe Larity

    Maybe people should be a little more tolerant. I bet there are a lot of former VW Thing, AMC Pacer or Gremlin owners on this blog. Remember when you were getting laughed at.

  67. 67.

    Dangerman

    Someplace, if he or she is alive, the designers of the Aztek and the Pinto/Torch are thanking their lucky stars.

  69. 69.

    wjca

    @Shalimar: It’s a flag with a huge penis on it.  Nothing says “hetero” like being proud of your dick.

    Nothing says “insecure” like making a production out of it.

  70. 70.

    eversor

    @dmsilev:

    Well yeah I mean, doesn’t kill the crew is sort of the starting point for anything naval.  And yet we managed to run these things of nuclear reactors with almost zero fuck ups (mostly collisions).

    And now I’m again reminded of when Elon flipped out and told a bunch of cave divers they didn’t know what they were doing and he could fix the Thailand issue with a fucking robot.  I’m a certified advanced master driver for caves, at night, and all that whoo haa.  That was bat shit.  I don’t know what divers of that caliber know so I’m not going to ask.  The notion of lecturing people like that is fucking insane.

    We bought the BMW I4 as it was priced closely to the Tesla and it’s not made by morons.

  72. 72.

    danielx

    Was at a neighborhood car show the other evening. There was a cybertruck parked there which was not attracting a lot of positive comment, for all the usual reasons. It was parked behind a pristine 68 Camaro convertible, bright red with white stripes. The contrast was remarkable – one looked like something you would want to drive, the other like an ugly paperweight.

  73. 73.

    Jay

    @Dangerman:

    I loved Pinto’s. Raced them at Westwood.

    The 46hp 1600cc, 4 speed could be SCAC modified to make 152hp, and the drivetrain and chassis could handle it.

    With a little mill work, the 2L could be refitted with 2300L pistons and heads, making it oversquare, ( faster revving) and bumping the HP up to 210.

    The front sway bar could be moved to the rear and the front sway bar from a Pinto Station wagon, bolted right in.

    Lowering the front and rear was easy, and fitting 205/60/14’s with the aid of a baseball bat was easy peasy.

    The wheelbase was oversquare, so once the suspension was sorted out, it handled like a go kart.

    I raced against factory prepared BMW’s, Porsches and Datsun 510’s, and was compeditive.

    The whole “blowing up” thing, 4 plastics clips worth $5 at the time, (including installation) to isolate the steel gas tank straps from the galvanized fuel tank.

    Don’t diss Pinto’s.

    They had their own NASCAR class back in the day, and raced the first “compound” engine. (Carbon graphite block, steel sleeves, etc).

  74. 74.

    WereBear

    Trucks here are about taking good turns on mountain roads and getting down to camp on the dirt path.

    Basic maze of twisty little passages. And I gather this truck can’t… truck.

  75. 75.

    eversor

    @Kristine:

    So my brother is a commercial person.  So… Ford f250 powerstroke, diesel.  This will haul some crap and it’s next to immortal.  Most people don’t need this tank of a thing, but it is usefull when ya need it.

    It’s an actual truck for actually hauling shit, he’s not going to by a cyber whatever.

  76. 76.

    wjca

    @eversor: We bought the BMW I4 as it was priced closely to the Tesla and it’s not made by morons.

    Perhaps as important, it was designed by actual, you know, car guys.  Yeah, they had to make adjustments for EVs.  But they also knew how to do the structural basics, etc.

  79. 79.

    JWR

    Any guesses as to the subject of the Sunday morning shows? I would offer a guess, but I’m always wrong about these things.

    ;)

  81. 81.

    John Revolta

    @JWR: Well, the SCOTUS let loose with a bunch of rulings that look to upend our entire government and destroy the environment, so…………..it’ll probably all be about how old Biden is.

  82. 82.

    Mai Naem mobile

    The first time I saw the cybertruck, the sun was setting and I was actually driving on the freeway in front of it in a different lane. I actually slowed down a couple of second  for it to go past me since it was unusual looking and I was wondering what it was. Anyhow, it went past pretty fast and I didn’t really get a chance to see the full ugliness until a few days later when I saw it during the daytime. I’ve seen 4 or 5 of them since and,good lord, nobody must like Elon because somebody should have stopped this fool and told him his cybertruck has no clothes on. Such an unattractive looking vehicle!

  83. 83.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Flanders Other Neighbor:

    Not a fan of mocking people over a vehicle unless it has a trump sticker on it, though.

    Good news:  Musk is a Trump fan and raging bigot who has done his damnedest to normalize Nazi discourse.  He believes in ‘Great Replacement’ and has publicly promoted it.

    The Cybertruck overwhelmingly sells to his biggest fans, and they’re also becoming famous for “What else do they say online?  Ah, Nazi shit.”

    Mock away.

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    somebody should have stopped this fool and told him his cybertruck has no clothes on.

    He fires anyone who tries.  He fired a whole department when the leader said he was wrong about a business decision.  He’s a world class asshole boss.  Probably not a coincidence that leader was a woman.

    It was the charging station too, the department expected to fail that turned out to be a wild success.

  84. 84.

    Chris Johnson

    @Jay: That’s awesome. I had no idea, but I can easily picture Pintos being like ‘giant go-kart, with attitude’ and it’s transformative :)

  85. 85.

    Ned F.

    @Captain C:  I saw my first Cybertruck on the highway last week, and those were my thoughts exactly!  My second thought is where do i put my mulch from the Depot?

  86. 86.

    hueyplong

    I don’t see much similarity in the mocking of owners of the Wankpanzer and the old Pacers, Gremlins, etc. The latter were suboptimal attempts to find spots in the economy market. The Incel Camino owners can afford Camrys and other vehicles triple the Camry sticker price, yet they feel compelled to demonstrate the obnoxious insecurities of their hero.

    OK, I just wanted to type those two CT nicknames.

  87. 87.

    Princess

    @Omnes Omnibus: “My huge hetero flag has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my huge hetero flag.”

    I saw my first Tesla cyber truck irl in nyc last week and however prepared you think you are for how stupid it looks, you are not.

  89. 89.

    Ken

    I lost the Cybertruck Challenge just yesterday. (In case you haven’t heard, this means “saw one in the wild for the first time”.)

    I didn’t get a good look, but I think it was wrapped, which apparently a lot of owners do when they realize there’s a reason other car companies put paint on the metal.

  90. 90.

    geg6

    @Jay:

    I have an old friend who raced his Pinto (modified, of course) in NHRA competition.  He went to the NHRA Nationals with it for several years.  I went to Indy to see him race and had pit passes.  I have an awesome photo of it taking off at the start.  That was a great race car.

  91. 91.

    Ken

    @Captain C: I wonder what the crush depth for a cybertruck is.

    According to the insurance company in that Masnick post, about six inches.

    (The real issue there is that the battery pack is positioned very low, which is another reason you won’t see one of these off-roading. It might even be damaged by speed bumps.)

  92. 92.

    Another Scott

    @J. Arthur Crank: I only saw my first one on the road this month, driving gingerly down a major road here in NoVA.  I ass-u-me the driver was still getting used to it.  It was coming the other way, so I didn’t get a good look at it – a glance was enough!

    There are lots and lots of gearheads around here (Plaid, AMG GT, ratty ~ 1967 427 Corvette, etc.), so  I was actually surprised that it took me so long to see a CT.  Maybe people is learning??

    I read recently that the production model is actually smaller (~ 5%) than the prototype Melon showed years ago.  We should be happy for small favors, yes??

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  93. 93.

    Baud

    I have not seen the Cyber T yet in the wild.

    ETA: I’ll probably see one today now that I’ve said that.

  94. 94.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Citizen Alan: Dude, you’re in California. A shack is a million dolars.

    As for the cyberthing, what struck me with the ones I’ve seen is how cheap they look. Fugly, of course, but the materials and build are bad.

  96. 96.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    Reminds me of the old Christian philosophy that people who never hear about Jesus can’t be sent to hell.

  98. 98.

    Manyakitty

    @Keith P.: I’ve been in the Tampa area for the past week and there are Tesla cars everywhere. Haven’t seen a cybertruck yet this visit.

  99. 99.

    TBone

    Rep. Thomas Massie’s wife died (R-ussia/KY).  They lived on a cattle farm and Massie had promoted a pair of bills to allow raw milk to be transported across state lines.  I have to wonder if she’s a Darwin Awards recipient of H5N1 in raw milk.  Poetic justice? One can hope…

    In 2014 Massie introduced the Milk Freedom Act and the Interstate Milk Freedom Act, a pair of bills that would allow the transportation of raw milk across state borders.[135][136] Massie explained: “It’s legal to drink raw milk in 50 states. It is legal to sell raw milk in 28 states. The Feds need to quit arresting farmers for taking raw milk from one raw milk state to another raw milk state”

  101. 101.

    Geminid

    @TBone: Internet speculation about Mrs. Massie’s demise it pretty wild. The consensus in some circles is that the Israeli Mossad did her in, perhaps with help from the Federal Reserve.

  105. 105.

    Gvg

    @Jay: which means the company was totally nuts as well as morally bankrupt to have sold the car the way they did. People died to save them $5 and they got all that bad publicity too. I am sure that kind of thing broke a lot of buy America loyalty overall.

  106. 106.

    JML

    Cybertruck makes the Edsel look like a winner.

    Pickups around here annoy me, because so many people are driving ginormous ones with the extended cab, extended bed etc to get groceries or go to freakin’ Target and they can’t park them reasonably. But the cybertruck would be beyond silly. Haven’t seen one in the wild yet; nearest dealership is at least 30 miles away so it probably can’t get here without breaking down.

  108. 108.

    TBone

    Hubby is expressing displeasure today regarding all the ways the SC is fucking up the fuckup of the fuckening we shall experience tomorrow.

    Ah, here it comes…the fuckening.

  111. 111.

    wjca

    @JML: Cybertruck makes the Edsel look like a winner.

    Hey, the Edsel was an extremely well engineered car!  (Unlike the CT.) It looked a bit odd, for its time.  But that was a time when conformity was at one of its occasional peaks.

  112. 112.

    Shana

    I bet there’s a lot of overlap between buyers of the Cybertruck and Hummers back in the day. We actually have a neighbor who still owns one

  113. 113.

    SFAW

    Maybe some jackal has already commented on this, but: who TF puts baloney/bologna, mortadella, or any other lunch meat on a grill? It sounds like something TCFFG would have his “chef” do — as long as there was ketchup nearby.

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