soooo it looks like i’m updating once a week now?
also it looks like nobody has taken me up on my offer
come on guys it’s a sweet offer

ANYWAY LET’S TALK ABOUT LIGHTNING
or if not lightning exactly
then at least lightning’s better-behaved alter-ego electricity
when last we left our heroes
they were busy rubbing shit all over other shit
and then proving that lightning and electricty were actually the same thing
and then going to france and having a lot of sex
and apparently all this shit was crucial
especially that last part
because it opened the door for a dude named Faraday to come along
and start making machines that rubbed shit on other shit
with UN-HEARD-OF EFFICIENCY
he also invented a kind of cage that makes your cell phone not work
so basically he sounds like a dick

BUT HE IS AN IMPORTANT DICK
history is full of important dicks
like Alexander the Great
and Napoleon
and Benjamin Franklin’s dick
there are comparatively few important vaginas though
which is weird
because there’s a whole FUCKTON of really important ASSHOLES
which brings us to Thomas Alva Edison

see, after Faraday invents his spectacularly efficient way of rubbing shit together
Thomas Edison gets super rich by selling crazy souped-up telegraphs
and puts up a gigantic building in new jersey
so that he can more efficiently gather smart people
and rub their brains together
(as a side note
I am currently pioneering a new historico-scientific theory
it is called
“everything in history is just rubbing things on other things”)
and through the friction of all these smart brains
Edison comes up with some pretty cool shit
or more accurately
better versions of other people’s already cool shit
like lightbulbs and shit
and one of the things he comes up with
is another way to generate and distribute electricity

Edison calls his way “Direct Current”
(or DC)
and the other way
which is being pioneered at the same time by a dude named Westinghouse
is called “Alternating Current”
(or AC)
do not try to understand what these things mean
it’s really hard
all you really need to know
is they would make an incredibly sweet band name

so the problem with DC power
is it’s lazy
it won’t travel very far before it gives up and goes away
so you have to make a lot of power stations in order for it to work
meanwhile
the problem with AC power
is that someone has not yet come along
who can upgrade it and make it TOTALLY AWESOME

ENTER NIKOLA TESLA
tesla is this Serbian dude with like no social skills
because he put all his attribute points in CRAZY BRAIN
he willingly gave up rubbing his junk on ladies’ junk
so he could spend more time figuring out how to rub electric shit on other shit
and he hallucinated like ALL THE TIME
to make up for the fact that he slept like NONE OF THE TIME
this dude was less of a dude
and more of a streamlined engine for turning food and water into SCIENCE

So Tesla looks at AC power like ok guys
i see what you’re doing
with the rubbing stuff on other stuff
but guys
what if we made it
MORE COMPLICATED
and everyone is like AWRIIIIIGHT
especially that Westinghouse guy

so westinghouse buys all of Tesla’s great ideas
and then Edison is like oh shit
Westinghouse is about to totally wreck my shit
AC power can travel longer distances than my DC power
it is cheaper and more efficient
welp
i guess there’s only one thing left to do:
time to start murdering animals

so that is what Thomas Edison does
first he invents the electric chair
and powers it with AC power
so everyone will know just how fucking dangerous that shit is
ignoring the fact that lightning can also kill people
and i’m pretty sure that’s not AC OR DC
ELECTRICITY:
JUST PRETTY FUCKING DANGEROUS ALL AROUND
but edison doesn’t stop at revolutionizing american justice
no no no
then what he does
is he starts stealing stray cats
and frying those fuckers on his electro-killing machine
but everyone is still like yawn
so finally edison is like fuck this
just fuck this
fuck
I’m gonna get an elephant from the god-damn zoo
and I am going to electrocute it to death with one of my inventions
while filming it with another one of my inventions
and THAT is going to solve this whole thing for me
i don’t see how it could fail

so he does that
he kills Topsy the Elephant and then shows people the video
and somehow
that fails to convince everyone to buy his flavor of electricity
so that shit fails pretty hard
but it’s fine, because it’s not like Edison is exactly hurting for money
he gets distracted pretty quickly
by an ambitious scheme to repeatedly fire X-rays into his own eyes
presumably in order to become more like superman

meanwhile, shit is not going too well for Tesla
because after a brilliant career of turning down ladies
and sculpting reality with his mind
his mind is finally like fuck this
i’m done
from now on
it’s just gonna be martians and talking pigeons
all day every day
and Tesla is like oh well
it was fun while it lasted
i guess i better go die in a tiny apartment
after eating nothing but milk and crackers for months

now guys
i know you were expecting the standard narrative
“Nikola Tesla invented radar and gravity and knees
and Thomas Edison stole all of it with his asshole machine made of assholes”
and while Thomas Edison is indeed an asshole
and Nikola Tesla did indeed invent like a million things
what both of them have in common
is being FUCKING CRAZY
like, from my perspective
there is not a lot of difference between hallucinating pigeons and aliens
and shooting yourself in the eyes with radioactive beams over and over again
which just goes to show
that the moral of this story
is that all the smartest people in the world
are also the biggest goddamn idiots

the end