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the tech inside your credit card, explained

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🕰️ It all started in the 1940s…

Legend has it, in 1949, a man named Frank McNamara went out to dinner in New York, realized he forgot his wallet, and did what any great innovator would do: got embarrassed and invented a financial revolution. Thus, the Diners Club Card was born — the first credit card. At first, it was basically just a “gentleman’s IOU,” used at fancy restaurants so you could pretend to be rich while actually being very much not.

💳 The 1950s-60s: Birth of Plastic Fantastic

By the late ‘50s, Bank of America decided IOUs were for amateurs and launched the BankAmericard (later known as Visa). It was sent to random Californians like a financial bomb — unsolicited, physical cards mailed with zero consent, just vibes. It was the original “you’ve been pre-approved,” except you didn’t ask, didn’t want it, and now you owe $500.

This was the era when banks realized, “Wait a second… what if we charged people… for borrowing their own future money?”

📈 The 1980s: Interest Rates and Wild Capitalism

Credit cards really took off during the age of big hair, big shoulder pads, and even bigger debt. The marketing was seductive: “Buy now, pay later… or never, as long as you’re okay with 22.99% APR.”

Consumers didn’t blink — they were too busy buying cassette tapes, microwaves, and other artifacts of modern living. The phrase “minimum payment” became financial code for “this problem is Future Me’s responsibility.”

📱 The 2000s and Beyond: Tap, Swipe, Cry

Enter the digital age. Cards got chips, then they got “contactless,” and now you can just wave your phone at a terminal like a financial wizard. Spending money has literally never been easier — or more terrifying.

Meanwhile, credit scores became the adult version of GPA, but with more existential dread: “Want a house? Better hope your teenage self didn’t miss that Hot Topic store card payment in 2008.”

💡 In conclusion:

Credit cards are humanity’s way of saying:

“I want it now, I’ll worry later, and please don’t show me the statement.”

They’re a magical portal to convenience, a slippery slope to debt, and an iconic symbol of modern life — like jeans, but with late fees.

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Rise and fall of the Twisted Metal series

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Ah yes, Twisted Metal — the video game series that asked the all-important question:

“What if Mario Kart had a midlife crisis, bought a flamethrower, and started listening to Nine Inch Nails?”

🚗💥 What is Twisted Metal?

Imagine a demolition derby, except every car has rockets, machine guns, and deep emotional trauma. It’s vehicular combat meets psychological horror meets…a 14-year-old’s sketchbook full of fire and skulls. You don’t just race to win — you blow up an ice cream truck driven by a flaming clown while dodging missiles fired from a haunted hearse.
So… Tuesday in the ’90s, basically.

🧠 The Premise (yes, there’s lore)

Twisted Metal revolves around a tournament run by Calypso, a mysterious cryptkeeper-meets-used-car-salesman who grants one wish to the last vehicle standing. Sounds cool, right? Plot twist: he’s a genie with a legal team. Your wish always comes true, but in the most ironic, monkey’s-paw way possible.

You ask for eternal life? He buries you alive.
You wish to be famous? Boom — you’re wanted in every country.
You ask for peace on Earth? Everyone else dies.

Classic Calypso!

🎮 The Gameplay

Pick a car, get a weapon, and start wrecking people. Your opponents include:

  • A killer clown named Sweet Tooth, driving a flaming ice cream truck (soothing!).

  • Mr. Grimm, a literal death biker with a scythe and no chill.

  • Axel, a man fused between two giant wheels because apparently walking was too mainstream.

  • And other emotionally unavailable vehicles with serious firepower and even deeper issues.

Levels take place in beloved landmarks like Paris, LA, and the apocalypse. The controls are tight, the explosions satisfying, and the soundtrack pure early-2000s rage.

📉 What happened to it?

Like a rock band that peaked at Ozzfest 2001, Twisted Metal had its glory days on the PS1 and PS2, then sort of… spun out. There was a reboot on PS3, and now there’s a Peacock TV show, which somehow exists and stars Anthony Mackieand Will Arnett as a clown. It’s both baffling and completely on-brand.

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XBOX Retro Classics is good… and could be great!

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Xbox is teaming up with Antstream to bring classic Activision titles to Game Pass. Atari 2600, MS-DOS, SNES, PS1 & More. Here are my first impressions!

The Xbox is like that one overly enthusiastic friend who shows up to game night with a cooler full of energy drinks, a 4K TV strapped to their back, and the unshakable confidence of someone who’s never actually beaten Elden Ring. Born in 2001 with the original Xbox (a console roughly the size of a small microwave), Microsoft decided it was time to crash Sony and Nintendo’s party—armed with Halo, a terrifying amount of marketing dollars, and a logo that looked like it was ripped straight from a Mountain Dew commercial. And somehow, it worked. Xbox became a household name, partly because of its powerful hardware, and partly because gamers couldn’t stop yelling profanities into their Xbox Live headsets at complete strangers. A true bonding experience.

Over the years, Xbox evolved from a bulky console that sounded like a jet engine to a sleek black monolith (Xbox Series X) that now lives in living rooms like some kind of digital obelisk. It’s embraced the “Netflix of gaming” model with Game Pass, letting players gorge on hundreds of titles for less than the cost of a large pizza. Xbox even started cozying up to PC gamers, no longer insisting on console exclusivity like an overprotective partner. Today, Xbox isn’t just a brand—it’s a lifestyle, a subscription service, and possibly your child’s best friend (or worst influence). In short: Xbox is the lovable tech bro of the gaming world—loud, flashy, and always ready to drop a nuke in Call of Duty.

Metal Jesus Likes

The Ultimate Imagic/Atari 2600 Tier List – ALL RELEASED GAMES RANKED

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Ah, iMagic — the game developer that sounds like a magician got lost on their way to an Apple Store.

This was a company forged in the golden, lava-lamp-lit age of the early 1980s, when every game idea was apparently greenlit with the question, “What if we made it… sparkly?” Founded by ex-Atari employees (read: rebels with a joystick), iMagic was part of the original console wars — back when pixels were a bragging point and “16 colors” was considered high-tech wizardry.

They cranked out titles for the Atari 2600 and Intellivision with names like Demon Attack, Atlantis, and Dragonfire, which all sound like heavy metal albums or energy drinks your mom warned you about. The games themselves were basically fever dreams: aliens swooping, dragons spitting fire, and cities blowing up with all the subtlety of a Saturday morning cartoon.

In the early ’80s, iMagic rocketed to fame faster than a kid mashing the fire button. Their games looked slightly better than Atari’s — a fact they clung to like a life raft on the pixelated sea of competition. But alas, the Video Game Crash of 1983 hit them harder than a poorly timed laser blast in Demon Attack, and iMagic vanished from the scene faster than your older cousin when it’s time to share the controller.

In short: iMagic was like the glam rock band of early game developers — flashy, bold, gone too soon, and still making retro gamers sigh dreamily into their CRT monitors.

Featured, Recent Pickups

Square Pegs – Video Game Pickups – 29 Games on Switch, PS5, Super Famicom, More!

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Square Pegs is the retro gaming YouTube channel that feels like it was lovingly assembled from an ‘80s toy aisle, a VHS tape left too close to a magnet, and the exact moment someone blew into an NES cartridge and made magic happen. Hosted by a guy who looks like he’s just one caffeine crash away from organizing a complete Game Boy Color library, Square Pegs is a glorious celebration of all things pixelated, plastic, and questionably licensed. It’s the kind of channel where “hidden gem” doesn’t mean obscure—it means a game that probably sold three copies, came in a cardboard sleeve, and features a boss fight against a mutant waffle iron.

Each episode is like being invited to a sleepover where the pizza’s cold, the soda’s flat, but nobody cares because you just found out Faxanadu kind of slaps. Jay Malone’s encyclopedic knowledge of retro titles is matched only by his ability to roast bad box art like it personally offended him. There’s deep dives, listicles, hauls, and enough CRT nostalgia to give a magnet a nervous breakdown. Watching Square Pegs feels like digging through your old game drawer and realizing, “Oh right, I did own Yo! Noid… but why?”

Featured, Music

Yes, Cassettes still rule.

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Collecting cassettes is like adopting a bunch of tiny plastic pets that constantly remind you how old you’re getting, yet somehow make you feel impossibly cool—like a time-traveling DJ who refuses to update their Spotify. There’s the thrill of rewinding with a pencil (the original fidget spinner), the satisfying clunk when one slots into your Walkman like a key to a nostalgia portal, and the mysterious joy of finding that one mixtape labeled “Road Trip ’94” that turns out to be three Enya songs and your cousin whispering into the mic. It’s impractical, it’s fragile, it hisses at you—but hey, so do most of our best relationships.

Featured, Special Episodes

Doug DeMuro Ranks Every V12 Lamborghini Flagship Car

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Lamborghini’s history with V12 engines begins, naturally, with a grudge match and a tractor. Ferruccio Lamborghini, a wealthy Italian tractor magnate, got annoyed when his Ferrari kept breaking down. When he politely suggested Enzo Ferrari build better cars (read: when he insulted his clutch to his face), Enzo basically told him to stick to farming. Ferruccio, fueled by spite and probably a fine Barolo, decided that if Ferrari wouldn’t build the perfect grand touring car, he’d just do it himself. Thus, in 1963, Lamborghini Automobili was born — and like any angry Italian revenge fantasy, it started with a 12-cylinder scream.

The V12 became Lamborghini’s middle finger in engine form: massive, beautiful, and completely impractical for things like “fuel efficiency” or “quiet conversation.” The first one, designed by Giotto Bizzarrini (a man who probably wore sunglasses at night), was meant to be a Formula One engine but was detuned slightly for street use — because who doesn’t want their daily driver to sound like it’s qualifying at Monza? From the Miura to the Countach to the Aventador, Lamborghini has been stuffing 12 angry Italian cylinders into their cars like it’s a religion. Other brands downsized, turbocharged, hybridized — Lamborghini said, “No, grazie,” and just added more carbon fiber and louder exhausts. It’s not an engine; it’s a tantrum with pistons.

Featured, Music

Retro Buyer’s Guide: Portable CD Players!

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It all started innocently enough — just trying to find a Discman to play that one scratched-up mix CD from high school labeled “Ultimate Feels Vol. 2.” But one late-night eBay scroll turned into a rabbit hole of vintage Sony Discman models, anti-skip bragging rights, and forums full of middle-aged warriors debating whether the ESP Max on a 2001 Panasonic was better than the Mega Bass on a ’98 Aiwa. Suddenly, I wasn’t just reliving my youth — I was negotiating shipping rates with a guy in Slovakia for a translucent blue Sanyo with “futuristic” top-loading action. My family hasn’t made eye contact with me since the “Unboxing of the JVC XL-PG5,” which I filmed in full 4K and narrated like it was a nature documentary.

Now I judge people not by their music taste, but by whether they know that a lid-lock mechanism was the true sign of luxury in 2003. My bookshelf used to hold novels and framed photos — now it’s a shrine to circular plastic marvels that came with belt clips nobody used and headphone jacks engineered to break under a stiff breeze. I listen to CDs like it’s a sacred ritual, holding the player level with two hands like a pizza so the laser doesn’t skip during Track 4 (bonus acoustic version). Sure, Spotify’s easier, but where’s the thrill in that? If your music doesn’t come with the constant threat of sudden silence and AA battery bankruptcy, are you even really listening?

Featured, PC Games

Interview: Dorian Hart on Looking Glass Studios & Irrational Games

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🎮 Games Dorian Hart Worked On

🧙‍♂️ Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds (1993)

Dorian’s journey began with this immersive dungeon crawler. It was like D&D, but your party was just you, and the dungeon was a maze designed by someone who hated you.

🤖 System Shock (1994)

A pioneering first-person shooter where you battled a rogue AI named SHODAN. It was like arguing with your smart toaster, but the toaster had lasers and a god complex.

🚀 Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri (1996)

As the lead designer, Dorian crafted this tactical shooter with powered armor suits. Think of it as “Mechs Gone Wild,” but with more strategy and fewer spring breaks.

🕵️ Thief: The Dark Project (1998)

Dorian helped design this stealth game where you played as a master thief. It taught players that the best way to deal with guards was to hide in shadows and hope they had poor peripheral vision.

🧟 System Shock 2 (1999)

He returned to the world of rogue AIs and added zombies to the mix. Because nothing says “fun” like being chased by undead cyborgs in zero gravity.

🦸 Freedom Force vs. The 3rd Reich (2005)

Dorian co-led the design of this superhero strategy game. It was like a comic book come to life, complete with over-the-top villains and heroes who shouted their attack names.

🃏 Card Hunter (2013)

Combining tabletop RPGs with collectible card games, Dorian helped create this love letter to nerd culture. It was like playing D&D with cards, minus the snack crumbs on your character sheet.

Featured, Travel, Special Episodes

Tour of ** NEW ** Pink Gorilla GAME STORE in Las Vegas!

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Pink Gorilla Games has leveled up with a brand new location in Las Vegas! Take a behind-the-scenes tour of the store w/ Kelsey before it opened to the public, then stick around for the grand opening chaos complete with good vibes & packed video game shelves.

Las Vegas is the only place on Earth where you can lose your life savings, your dignity, and your luggage—all before lunch—and still think, “What a great vacation!” It’s a city powered almost entirely by neon, regret, and a cocktail of bad decisions served in a souvenir yardstick cup. Where else can you eat pancakes next to a guy in a tuxedo and a woman dressed as Pikachu while a bachelorette party screams in the background? It’s like someone designed a city after binge-watching infomercials and drinking Red Bull for 72 hours straight.

Vegas is where logic comes to die and Elvis impersonators multiply like rabbits. It’s the only place where a man can get married by a zombie pirate at 3 a.m. and divorced by brunch without ever changing out of his flip-flops. You’ll find luxury hotels designed to look like ancient Rome, Venice, and Paris—if those places were rebuilt by a committee of slot machines. And the best part? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, mostly because even Vegas doesn’t want to remember what you did.

Retro Gaming with a Heavy Metal Soundtrack