That's a pretty wild interpretation! I have nothing but respect for the tz db and its contributors; I indicated as much quite explicitly by stating my appreciation for the commentary. Personally I will soon be sending historical corrections to the precise days and times of DST changes in the 1940s for a few places in US and Canada, from my own research.

But yes, it's absolutely a tongue-in-cheek reference to the unrelated notion of "out-of-thin-air" values and reads in memory model semantics. (I've just added a link to an explanation by some PL researchers.)