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You finally got your flying cars, and Stephen Colbert says they suck

“Like a mini trampoline had sex with a wienermobile.”

Kitty Hawk
Peter Kafka
Peter Kafka covered media and technology, and their intersection, at Vox. Many of his stories can be found in his Kafka on Media newsletter, and he also hosts the Recode Media podcast.

If you are reading this you are likely a person who consumes a lot of news on the internet. So you may well have read about, or heard about, the fact that Kitty Hawk, a Larry Page-backed flying car company, has started showing off its flying car.

Flying cars! We finally have flying cars! Or, at least, a thing that flies.

Kitty Hawk’s unveil came via a New York Times story a week ago, which makes it ancient history for people who inhale news on the internet.

But lots of other people don’t hoover up every bit news on the internet in real time, which means that talk show hosts like Stephen Colbert can riff on it many days later and it will still be news to them. And, more important, funny.

Here’s the official Kitty Hawk promotional video, released in conjunction with the Times story last week:

And here’s Colbert, reacting appropriately Friday night:

Bonus video for Larry Page-backed flying car startup enthusiasts! Here’s a clip that shows a team from Zee.Aero — yes, another flying car startup funded in part with the Google co-founder’s money — wearing chicken suits while flying homemade gliders off a dock:

You can read more about that confusing episode here. And you can read much more about the exciting and baffling world of Larry Page-backed flying cars companies in this excellent Bloomberg Businessweek piece from last year.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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