Connor observed where a CDF file would hang Autoplot. With the debugger I could see it was stuck in a deadlock which involved synchronized code in AxisController. Most all old synchronized blocks have been removed, and I decided this should probably be removed, too. (I didn't understand synchronized blocks when I used it back in 2009.)
This seems to fix the problem, but I thought I'd make a ticket as tests are done. The file which breaks is at nudnik.physics.uiowa.edu:/home/jbf/project/autoplot/u/2026/connor/20260130/distributions.cdf
Also worth mentioning is distribution functions often confuse the autoranging, where it'll pick xlog. This triggered the error.