Hyperfixed - Jack and the Missouri Color Cabal

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

Become a premium supporter of Hyperfixed to get all kinds of bonus stuff! It's thanks to all of you this show exists! http://hyperfixedpod.com/joinJack has noticed something weird about some license plates. It could be a conspiracy. We investigate.LINKS:The Automobile License Plate Collectors Association  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

I want to tell you about a new show from Radiotopia Presents that we're really excited about. It's called Red for Revolution, a six-part audio drama about black women, queer love, and liberation. We meet Jasmine, an 18-year-old who's grappling with her emerging queer identity and first crush, all while trying to mend her relationship with her homophobic mother. As she seeks solace and guidance from her grandmother, we are transported back to 1971 to follow the passionate love affair between a jazz singer and an activist. Two remarkable women from vastly different backgrounds, with opposing political views

and living oceans apart, risk everything to embark on a romance that defies all conventions. This show has everything, romance, family drama, history, fantastic original music, and a killer cast, including Loretta Devine, S. Epatha Mergerson, Danny Glover, and Jennifer Beals. Radiotopia presents Red for Revolution wherever you get your podcasts. Why do people commit themselves to the things they do? Why are people so worried about sport? Why wine? Why video games? I'm Brian Lowry and in this season of my podcast, Know What You See, I'm asking a simple question,

but a really big one. What's the point? In conversations with people with a variety of passions and obsessions, we get the chance to look through a window and see what it means to truly focus on a realm of human experience. Join me on Know What You See. New episodes begin November 26th. Hi, my name's Alex Goldman.

This is Hyperfixed. On this show, listeners write in with their problems big and small and I solve them Or at least I try and if I don't I at least give a good reason why I can't This week Jack and the Missouri color cabal and let me just get my microphone my microphone Stand is extremely broken. So Give me a second here. It's straight- up looks like you're in a shed right now. This man impugning the shed-like nature of my basement studio is Jack. He lives in Missouri in a home that looks nothing like a shed,

and he works as a software engineer, building websites using their most basic building blocks, code. It's because of this, because he spends all day looking at code, that Jack started noticing this thing. This thing that's happening all over Missouri. And very few other people seem to be noticing it. Okay, let's try and start from the very beginning. You sent a message on the Hyperfix Discord and I am wondering if you could tell me the story of first noticing this particular problem.

Yeah, so I was driving to get coffee with my wife and we were behind this car that had this plate and license plates here have six digits and most of the time it's three and then three. digits and most of the time it's three and then three. This was all together and I noticed because I've been trying to teach myself how to read hex codes that this license plate in front of us was a hex code. If you have no idea what we're talking about, a hex code is a six-character sequence that tells

a computer what color should appear on the screen. It's like a recipe, but the only ingredients you can use are the numbers 0-9, and the letters A-F. Based on where those characters appear in the sequence, it'll tell the computer what color to display on screen. So if you want a pure red, you'll do FF0000. You're saying full red, no green, no blue.

There's a six-digit sequence like this for every shade of color on the spectrum. There's over 16 million shades in total. And the thing is, the vast majority of people in this world will never have to interact with these or even know what they are, because hex codes exist wholly within the realm of computer code. Or so Jack thought, until that day when he was in line to get coffee with his wife and he spotted a hex code on the license plate in front of him. And I said, hey, I'm sure if you type this into Google with a hashtag on the front of it, it would be the same color green as Spotify.

And then she typed it in and pulled up the color and it was the same type of green as Spotify. And she's like, that's insane. This was one of those extremely rare instances when a computer nerd is able to demonstrate their skills to someone in the non-computer world. Except as it turns out, this hex plate, it wasn't super rare. The better Jack got at reading hex codes, the more frequently he started seeing them in the wild. It became kind of a game for Jack and his wife.

Every time they saw a hex plate, he would try to guess the color, and then his wife would look it up and tell him how close he got. They even started keeping a list of all the hex plates they'd found. At the time of this interview, they'd found about 90. And here's where things got really weird. Because when they looked at that list, they realized that every one of the hex plates they'd seen, everyone in all of Missouri, produced

just one color. Green. And I never knew why it was always green. And that's the question that I have is why are all of the hex code plates that I see in Missouri green? Okay. So I have questions. Do you believe that this is a deliberate hexadecimal code that's being put on these license plates? Or is it just like, do you think it's random? So I don't know. In theory, I should be seeing all

different types of colors if this is truly random. But I'm only seeing greens. I saw one purple and the car was the same color of purple. So I think that was a vanity plate, but I don't know. Interesting. So the only not shade of green hexadecimal license plate you have seen was a vanity plate for a car that was the same shade as the hexadecimal code that you saw on the license plate. Correct. And so that kind of confused me. I was like, is this an

intentional choice? These other cars aren't green. I have no idea what's going on. And I didn't know who to ask. I imagine if I went to the DMV and asked the person behind the counter, they would say next. So. Jack told us he hasn't done any real digging into this question. And he hasn't approached any of the drivers he's seen with green hex plates, in part

because he's worried his question sounds kind of crazy. But he does have two major theories about what might be happening. The first is that there's someone at the Department of Transportation who, for some strange reason, has written an algorithm that favors hex green license plates. His second theory is that the hex green plates are all vanity plates and the people driving around with them are part of some kind of group, like army veterans, or some other kind of club with an affinity for green. Totally a guess, right?

Like I'm just trying to connect green to organizations, but I genuinely have no idea, and no idea even where to begin. So I think there is an algorithm. It's not totally random, but I just don't know why the algorithm would result in only greens. What if there's some kind of cabal of like green hexadecimal code? It's like the Freemasons

or something. What if you've uncovered a sinister conspiracy? I don't know. I don't know what the repercussions of this would be. I just feel like one of the hallmarks of conspiracy theories is that people hide stuff in plain sight. The idea that, like, celebrities cover their left eye as like a nod to Freemasonry. They're always trying to hit you with codes. This is code. This is computer code. This is code. This is computer code.

This is a literal code. All right. Is there anything else that you need to tell me before I get involved with this? No, I'm looking forward to having some answer. I don't know if it'll be as fun as a cabal. It better be. I hope so. After talking to Jack, I immediately started fantasizing about a Missouri-based secret society whose membership could only be

identified by the green hex codes on their license plates. I pictured them driving past each other and rolling down their windows to tip the brim of their stetson hats at one another before driving off into the night. But before I could even start searching, I got a mysterious message from Hyperfix producer, Emma Cortland, asking me to join her in a recorded meeting. Hi Emma, how are you? Hey, okay, I'm gonna make this quick. I listened to your conversation with Jack

and I was struck by something that I need to ask you about. Go ahead. Do you think license plate numbers are random? Yes. I thought that, yes, I do. Like, like the order of the letters and numbers on a license plate. You think those, you think those are random? It's not like I see cars driving down the street and they're like, one, one,

one, one, one, one, and one, one, one, one, one, two. Yeah. I think they're random. Why? Yes. Are they not? Hold on, Alex. Okay. Do you, I think they're random. Why? Yes. Are they not? Hold on, Alex. Okay. Do you know your license plate number? Yes, I do.

Does it go letter, number, number, letter, letter, letter? What the fuck? Yes. It is 831-HWL. You can put that on the radio. I don't care. If you guys want to find me in New Jersey, that's my license plate number. How did you know that? My dude, that is the current serial format for passenger plates in New Jersey. But every state has its own special format. And the reason this matters for our story is that, you know how Jack said he would expect to see hex codes for different colors if this were truly random? Well, because the format is definitely not random, you would actually expect it to be producing the same color.

Okay, so this really isn't like a real problem, right? Because he's seeing so many greens because Missouri standard format produces the hex green. Okay, so that's what I expected too. But if you actually try plugging hex characters into Missouri Standard Format, which is letter, letter, number, letter, number, letter, you'll see it does not produce green. Do you want to try it? screen. Do you want to try it? Okay, I will put in, I'm gonna put in CD 3D 3D. Let's see how that works. CD 3D 3D. Whoa! Yeah, not green at all. In fact, very red. Right, right! Which means that the hex green plates that Jack is seeing around

town are not run-of-the-mill plates. They are either vanity plates. Come on, this is a cabal. It's people who like frogs. They're all hanging out in the swamp together. But in the meantime, to identify one another, this is what they're doing, right? Okay, so it's either that or...

Oh! ...or Missouri is running an entirely separate sequence for certain license plates. Okay. Seems unlikely. I feel like the frog theory seems more likely, but how do we figure this out? I don't know yet. But when Jack first posted his question on the Discord, someone found this Reddit thread from like 10 years ago where someone else had noticed these green hex plates driving around Missouri. And I think they said they were most frequently seeing them on these license plates that had little green handprints, which apparently go to benefit this Missouri based nonprofit called the Children's

Trust Fund. Hold on just a second. Children's Trust Fund. Okay. So I'm on their website. Their branding is indeed very green. Um, it looks like they do a lot of advocacy work around child abuse prevention. So, um, maybe just give them a call. Just ask if they know why so many of their license plates seem to be producing this hex screen format.

Yeah. So, um, I'm super excited to hear how it goes. Great. Okay, talk to you soon. Hello, and thank you for calling the Children's Trust Fund Missouri Foundation for Child Abuse Prevention. We are currently away from our desk or helping another caller. So we tried calling the Children's Trust Fund. Actually, we tried a bunch of times, and every time we called, we got their voicemail. Now it was right around the holidays, and not many people were picking up their phones

around that time. So we sent an email to their head of media relations. And when we didn't hear back, we sent a follow-up email. And when we didn't get a response to the follow-up email, we decided to change course and focus on the Missouri Department of Revenue. The Department of Revenue is the agency that's actually in charge of license plates.

So we called and emailed their media person. And when we didn't hear back from them, we called their help desk. And that's when we started to wonder if maybe we were the problem. The person at the help desk took down our information and they took notes about our question and they were like, look, we're going to try to find someone to talk to you about this.

But if you don't hear back from us, basically, probably nobody's going to call you back. Jack told us the reason that he was reluctant to approach anyone with a hex green plate was because there was a very strong chance that asking them about it would make him sound crazy. And it turns out that fear was not unfounded. Because once you've heard a recording of yourself asking a government official why their license plate algorithm is generating HTML code for the color green, you're forced to admit it does sound pretty nuts. So we decided to change our approach. But even when we quit asking about the hex codes and just tried asking, hey, is there someone we can talk to about Missouri's license plate sequencing? The reaction was the same. It was like we were asking why water was wet. Like this question, what is the logic behind your state's license plate numbering system, was simultaneously

the strangest and most obvious question we could possibly be asking. And for that reason, I don't think anybody took it very seriously. So with our next step, we decided to redirect our question. As far as we could tell, nobody had tried to answer this question about the license plate numbering system in Missouri. But as we were digging around on this, we found that there is a whole community of people who have paid an inordinate amount of time to license plates. And they were so excited to talk to us about them. I really appreciate the great heroic efforts you're trying to answer this one. Yeah, it's the whole idea. It's fascinating. I think it's wonderful.

We spoke to three members of the Automobile License Plate Collectors Association, which turns out is the country's preeminent group for license plate enthusiasts. The group has about 3,500 members, their own bi-monthly magazine, and they also have their own archive, where they keep data and decoding information for license plate sequences going back to the very beginning of license plate history.

Because, you know, somebody needs to document this stuff, otherwise it gets lost to time. If you have to try and figure it out 25 years from now, you know, it's going to be difficult unless there's an article to help you. All of these guys have been collecting and decoding license plate sequences since before the Internet age. And they told us some truly amazing stories.

One of them drove across state lines to crack a reportedly random sequence that turned out not to be random at all. Another even used license plate sequencing to help catch a violent criminal. But those are stories for another time, sequence that turned out not to be random at all. Another even used license plate sequencing to help catch a violent criminal. But those are stories for another time, or perhaps a bonus episode.

For now, you just have to know this. There's a lot of complexity to these license plates. The hidden codes and meanings in some of these plates are just, the world of those is just limitless. Given their decades of expertise and their penchant for puzzling out the hidden meanings behind different license plate sequences, we figured if anyone can tell us why Jack is seeing so many hex green plates, it's these guys. So we told them everything we knew about Jack's hex plates.

We told them we'd already established they aren't part of Missouri's standard sequence, that they're sometimes seen on children's trust fund plates, but also sometimes not. And all the characters are smushed together instead of being separated three and three, like a normal license plate. And then we asked them, is it possible that Missouri's using a second sequence for certain types of plates? And they were like, oh yeah,

that's definitely what's happening. That's what it is. I'm sure that's what it is. They're using the same numbering pattern on all their specialty plates. You're actually absolutely onto something here. There is a second sequence. They've decided when they're doing the short-run sheeting or the thermal transfer with digital plates that that's the numbering pattern to be used on those and they're just running it in

order. None of these guys have studied Missouri's specialty plates explicitly, but apparently a lot of states are doing this whole specialty sequencing thing for their digitally printed plates. So frequently what happens is that standard plates are made on a license plate press, so they're embossed, the numbers and letters are raised. But the specialty plates, the ones with decorative images like say a lobster on a license plate from Maine, or the green handprints from the Children's Trust Fund, those are printed by a computer onto a flat plate. Digital printing allows the states to be a lot more flexible with their specialty designs which allows them to make more money because they're able to cater to a bunch of different groups. Apparently in Florida

all you need is 25 people to justify the creation of a new license plate. And a lot of the time, when they make that flat computer printed specialty license plate, they create a whole separate sequence specifically for those plates. The thing is, Missouri also prints their vanity plates, you know, like plates where you can customize what it says so that it could have one that says like podcaster. I would never do that, by the way. They print those on the same machine. So if we wanted to confirm that the abundance of green hex codes that Jack was seeing on license

plates were indeed part of a separate sequence for specialty plates and not vanity plates, we'd have to go up to someone with these plates and ask them if they specifically asked for a green hexadecimal code as their license. Or we'd need a bigger data sample than what's available online. And to get that bigger data sample, everyone had the same suggestion. You could submit a FOIA request to the stating question. You'd have to do a freedom of information, a FOIA request for the Bureau of Revenue. They probably would give that to you. I have one into the state of Maine for like six months now. They haven't responded.

It's all public information. Just they make it real difficult to get it. The Missouri State FOIA system is supposed to be one of the most expeditious in the country. So we went ahead and filed a request explaining what we were doing and why. But we were still pretty sure we were going to have to publish the story before the state had a chance to fulfill

our request Depending on the agency and whether it's state or federal FOIA requests can sometimes take years to fulfill and we were already down to the line on this story and we couldn't go back To Jack without something more definitive So producer Emma Cortland threw a Hail Mary and decided to make one more call to the Children's Trust Fund I'm so sorry that I never responded to you. If I'm being completely honest, I was like trying to figure out if it was some sort of scam. This is Brianna Barber.

She runs Media Relations for the Children's Trust Fund of Missouri. And once she realized we weren't trying to scam her, she went out of her way to help us. She talked to us about the organization's green branding and commiserated with us about how hard it is to get information from the Department of Revenue. And then she gave us something we'd been looking for since the beginning of our search, access to a person with a green hexadecimal license plate. And that person was her. I can absolutely confirm that you're, you know, you're correct. I have CTF license plates and they very much follow like that, you know, number number letter letter number number

sequence. Yes! And let me confirm for you just really quickly, you did not elect to have the number number letter letter number number. That was just default assigned to you. Correct. And just like that, Brianna confirmed that the Children's Trust Fund's green hex plates are not vanity plates. Now, she had no idea why the plates are sequenced this way or why all the new ones are hex codes for the color green. But the idea that it's somehow tied to the CTF's green branding didn't seem that crazy

to her because apparently the last generation of the Children's Trust Fund plates had an even more explicit coding system. We have a staff member who's been at the Children's Trust Fund for almost two decades and she's like, it hasn't always been this specific sequence. They used to start with CT for like Children's Trust or something. But our state has dozens and dozens of like different specialty plates that people can order. So people can get like, I don't know, like Red Cross or like back the bullet, like there's all kinds of them. So my best guess at this point is that they have

like just different sequences for different types of plates. And that just happens to be the sequence we got. And then, like a guardian angel shielding us from the hellfire of government bureaucracy, before she hung up, Brianna was like, hey, by the way, my office is in the same building as the Department of Revenue. So how about I pop in there sometime next week or so

and see if I can get an answer to this question for you. After the break, we hear back from Brianna and all of Jack's questions are answered. Welcome back to the show. So when we first started reporting this story, we really had no idea how little we knew about license plates or how hard it would be to even formulate a question about them without sounding totally nuts. We spent more than a month chasing our tails. And we set a new hyper-fixed record for the most unanswered interview requests in a single episode.

But, with the guidance of some passionate hobbyists and the help of one very apologetic government employee, we suddenly found ourselves flooded with answers. And we had the raw data to back them up. So we reached out to Jack. And when we asked if he was ready to hear the answer to the question, he said, There's an answer Well, you know, this is a show about solving problems and I like to not come back to you until the problems I'm so full of shit. Yes. There's an answer

Yes, all right, so Here's what we learned the day after we connected with Brianna at the Children's Trust Fund She wrote us an email letting us know that she had been able to get in touch with a source at the Department of Revenue And that they had confirmed The sequence used by Children's Trust Fund license plates is the same one used by all of Missouri's specialty license plates So anytime someone orders a plate that shows they served in the Korean War or that they support deer Conservation or that they contribute to the Children's Trust Fund, that person will be assigned a license plate

that uses the sequence number, number, letter, letter, number, number. And the reason that matters is this. And give me just a moment, I'm gonna send you a link. Go ahead and click on that. Tell me what you see. I see a freedom of information list of Missouri specialty plates between 2022 and 2024. A couple days before our follow-up conversation with Jack, the Department of Revenue responded to Emma's FOIA request with a spreadsheet nearly 15,000 cells long.

And in the very first row was this license plate, 00AA01, the first of the hex green sequence. I sent the list to Jack and it did take him a minute to understand what he was looking at or why we'd sent it to him. But when he finally realized it, his eyes bugged out of his head like a tech savory cartoon. Oh my gosh, they're all green. And what you can see is from that list, with the exception of motorcycles

and other specialty vehicles, they're all sequenced number, number, letter, letter, number, number. And as long as those letters are A through F, which is most of them, you'll get a green hexadecimal code. Wow. Jack was obviously very happy about putting this mystery to bed. But the thing that seemed to make him most excited was finding out that there was a club of people who care passionately about license plates. In fact, when we told him about the Automobile

License Plate Collectors Association, he said, I'm not alone. Not only are you not alone, there are people who are like, into decoding these sequences for all 50 states. Oh my gosh. Do you feel like you've found your people maybe? Yes, I feel like I found my people and I feel that like I thought I was crazy, but that is like another level of dedication. So like that's awesome.

And I'm probably going to join the ALPCA or whatever. Look, I don't want to take more credit than I'm due. But when I am due some credit, you can be sure I'm going to take it all the way up. Not only did we find the answer to Jack's question, we also found him something that he didn't even know he was looking for. A community of people to make him feel less crazy

about his love of license plates. It's not quite the green license plate cabal we were hoping for, but for Jack, it's kind of something better. I feel like we've like infected you with a sickness. I feel like I already had a sickness before I came in and you guys have found where I can coexist with the other sick.

We found a little asylum for you. Thank you, thank you so much. This is awesome. I appreciate it. Jack's official ALPCA membership arrives in two weeks. This episode of Hyperfixed was produced by Emma Courtland, Amore Yates, and Saris Afar Sukenek. It was also edited by Emma Cortland, Amore Yates, and Saris Afar Sukenek. It was hosted by me, Alex Goldman.

The music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder and me. And if you're noticing the theme song sounded kind of wild today, that's because this is the winning submission to our theme song remix competition. It's by listener Henry Wilkinson. Congratulations to him. He gets a free year of Hyperfix membership for himself or a friend. The show is engineered by Tony Williams,

fact checking by Sona Avakian. Special thanks to Eric Tanner, Michael Weiner, Scott Brody, Richard Dragon, Gazpacovac, Nicole Dunmeyer and Natalie Wilbers. You can get bonus episodes, join our Discord, and much, much more at hyperfixpod.com slash join. I recently did a live stream with premium listeners where we made a music queue for the show together, and you heard that queue in this very episode.

I feel like we're building a really nice community of HyperFix listeners. I'd love to have you be a part of it. Once again, you can become a premium member by going to hyperfixpod.com slash join. Hyperfix is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent creator-owned listener-supported podcasts. Discover audio with vision at radiotopia.fm. Thanks so much for listening. Radio Topia from PRX.