a decades-old mystery that could use some solving

November 27, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wishes bags of Takis had a transparent window on them so you could see how flavor-blasted a particular batch got before purchase 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Instant Band Night 24: NEW YEARS BALLIf you missed the last one, I am genuinely sorry for you, but not to worry: you can come to the next one, and you can wear something you feel goddamn fabulous in. Come participate or simply witness the most concentrated and joyful burst of musical creativity in the entire Bay, hands down, and bring a few friends along, why not!January 11 20246p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  T E L L   Y O U R   F R I E N D S  + ++ +  S E E   Y O U   T H E R E  + +Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOUIt's 2023 and there's no reason you should settle for a boring garden, potted plant, or living space! You could have a little statue of a crazy-colored tardigrade, a little guy to hold your last fruit, a Star Trek buddy in a party hat, or an Ediacaran life form right now. Take a look and consider some clever ceramics for you or a friend — I hear it's gifting season???Idea Factory GiveawayI think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after two years of inactivity, but I'm putting a link to its evergreen Apple Podcasts presence here, which includes a back catalog over 150 episodes long chock-full of excellent ridiculousness, including an experimental tabletop RPG and a couple of Star Trek fantasy drafts that could almost be their own show if I had the time to make yet another podcast 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.If you were old enough in the mid 90s to see live music at a coffeeshop in the Boston area, I have a mystery I need your help to solve. Forward this to anyone who may qualify.It's 1996 and I'm at a summer college program in Boston with a bunch of other magnificent nerds; one evening we decide we're gonna Go See Some Live Music Goddammit, so we pick something out of the back of a local newsweekly and pile onto the T. It's important to note that we're all in high school: we end up at what I'm sure in retrospect was just a run-of-the-mill coffeeshop with a little space cleared out for open mics or whatnot, but the memory my mind's eye paints is a louche, dusky red velvet jazz lounge with gold accents, a spotlight, etc. In reality it's just a coffeeshop. It's got to be a coffeeshop; none of us are even 18 I don't think. We're pretty much the only people in the place: an unruly gaggle of overachieving high school nerds barely able to contain the exhilaration of the most freedom and independence we've ever known in our lives, away from home with the entire city of Boston to rattle around in, and this! This!! Is what we're doing with our night!!!! Fuck yeah!!!!The band we've decided to see (again, picked literally at random out of the listings in a free street newsweekly) takes the "stage," and I can vividly remember exactly 2 things:1. They're an instrumental jazz trio of some sort. There's definitely a soprano sax, but the other two instruments are vague in my memory. Drums? Keys? Maybe a bass?2. They call themselves SONIC BACKRUB.Sonic Backrub, who are clearly delighted to see such a crowd pack the place out, start their set, and it's absolute fucking madness. The soprano sax guy plays like he's never even seen his instrument before. It's atonal nonsense, the musical equivalent of scribbling with a blunt crayon on cheap newsprint, the mindless pipers of Azathoth live and in concert. It sounds like he's trying to strangle a belligerent goose to death, and he doesn't exactly have the upper hand.It's unbelievable. We're all looking at each other. We can't fucking contain it, there's no way: we last exactly one song before slinking out of the club,* leaving at most one or two or maybe zero people remaining in the entire audience; I'm not sure we have the decorum or composure to stay quiet until the front door has swung shut to start shrieking with incredulous laughter. We drift down the sidewalk howling at each other and go do something else with our evening. Comedically, we dine out on this gig for the rest of the night and possibly the rest of the week; the nourishment is neverending.Things I now want to know decades later:1. Was this a bit? Were they doing this as a bit? Did we stumble into some sort of musical improv scene without realizing it?2. I truly can't remember what the rest of the band played; for obvious reasons the soprano sax was the only thing that stuck in my mind. Were there drums? A bass? Or was it a keyboard? Maybe an accordion??If you were alive in Boston in the mid 90s and you saw a band called Sonic Backrub at any point, what was their lineup? Could they actually play their instruments or were they an avant-garde comedy troupe of some sort? Google has failed me and now I turn to you for answers. Thank you in advance.* Coffeeshop. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.There are three types of Felix Nighttime Wakeup that we categorize in this house.The first isn't even a type, it's just something I call the Ten O'Clock Complaint: sometimes, in the zone between 10-11p, Felix utters a crying sound exactly twice without waking up or needing anything.The Type One wakeup is a result of his ongoing teething: Felix wakes up crying and needs a new dose of painkiller; once it's been administered, he's happy to collapse back onto his pillow and go back to sleep.The Type Two wakeup is something else: Felix wakes up crying and when I come into the room, he sits up, lifts an arm, and points at the door. He's pointing to our room. He cannot be denied, or there will be screaming. The Type Two wakeup cannot be resolved by any means other than bringing him into our room and putting him in bed next to Mavis, at which point I grab my pillow and head downstairs. Felix will usually sleep peacefully until the actual hour of waking, or sometimes he'll just be up and babbling to himself an hour early.Thankfully, I actually enjoy sleeping on the couch,* but I have to tell you all that the Type Two wakeup has become a nightly occurrence sometime between midnight and 4a, and I'm getting a little — just a little! — tired of it. I think it's mostly the unpredictability; if I could plan for it, I'd feel better. But at least we know what to do? At some point this is going to become untenable, but we haven't hit it yet. I'll keep you updated!* Couch sleeping always provokes more interesting dreams than usual. Is this true for you too, or am I alone here? 

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye. 

  • How fucked are we, climate-wise? There's a slim chance to unfuck ourselves, but, well, see for yourself. (Nature) 

  • The Scientists have run the numbers and direct carbon capture needs to scale a lot faster if it's going to be of any use to us. (U of Madison-Wisconsin) 

  • What in the fuck: the ozone hole is back and bigger than ever. (U of Otago) (Paper) 

  • "We’ve been fighting poverty all wrong: The success of the expanded child tax credit shows why anti-poverty programs should be unconditional." (Vox) 

  • The Scientists have built a prototype heat pump that relies on an "electrocaloric" ceramic material that isn't quite ready for commercialization, but has tantalizing eco-friendly possibilities. (Nature) 

  • Here, go generate an Earthlike world. (earthlike.world) 

  • Some Engineers built an autonomous excavator that can build an 18ft high dry stone wall out of boulders entirely on its own. (ETH Zurich) 

  • As far as my lazy ass is aware, the British basically invented our version of table manners, so I guess we should ........ consider? .......... condoning the consumption of strangers' leftovers. (Vice UK) 

  • That whole thing about your brain being able to rewire itself after traumatic injuries might be wrong. (U of Cambridge) (Paper) 

  • Bacteria can use iron to effectively form memories that can last for generations. (UT Austin) 

  • You need this longread from Caity Weaver about Stephanie Courtney, the Progressive lady from the commercials. (NYT gift link) 

  • Reminder that The Scientists don't have any good explanations for where super high-energy cosmic rays come from, because they seem to be screaming out of the literal void, which, uhh, should not be possible. (U of Utah) 

  • It's not your imagination: billionaires really are more insufferable these days. (Guardian) 

  • Dolphins and crab fishermen off the coast of western Australia have been locked in an intellectual arms race over the bait in their traps. (Science Alert) 

  • Tests in Sweden show that you can deliver a defibrillator to an emergency patient by drone an average of three whole minutes before an ambulance shows up. (Karolinska Institutet) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists have figured out a way to cancel waves in a channel by budding off a little outcropping, which has interesting implications for coastline protection and even power generation. (Physics) 

  • Neanderthals were the world's first artists. (U of Basel) (Paper) 

  • Quinoa plants are covered in weird little waterballoons, which The Scientists have assumed for the past century are used for water/salt storage. Turns out: no! Not even close! (U of Copenhagen) (Paper) 

  • What if we just give the warehouse robots giant chopsticks to move stuff around with? No, seriously. (IEEE Robotics) 

  • Not only does new archaeological evidence invalidate the notion that prehistoric men alone did the hunting, The Scientists are starting to think women might even have been biologically better equipped for it. (Notre Dame) 

  • Do all the weird little guys who migrate to the ocean's surface every night and return to the depths at daybreak constitute 90% of all fish biomass in the sea? (Hakai) 

  • I guess TikTok gossip surveillance is a thing. (Guardian) 

  • The Pseudomonas bacterium is a notoriously tough little bastard, but The Scientists (with a little assist from The Machine) have figured out how to crowbar antibiotics past its membrane. (U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their album

Photo by Lena Polishko on Unsplash(I remembered a formula for making fake album covers that involves searching for a random appropriately licensed photo and then applying your best Graphic Design Skills to the result; let me know what you think this band/album sounds like, because your answers are always incredible) 

New Music Roundup

Last week's band/album was:

Photo by Rawkkim on UnsplashSomething about this one spoke to some of you!🤖 Reader Amy says this one is "an EDM SoundCloud drop from a self-important 'bro' who works at McKinsey and is trying to stay in touch with his VERY rich creative side (his words) in his 'off-time' as an additional enhancement to lure in Hinge dates which he will eventually ask back to his apartment where he will DJ for them without being asked to."🎤 Reader Steve thinks this album is "thoughtful nerd-adjacent hip-hop in the vein of Open Mike Eagle. I also reckon that this is a surprisingly beautiful love letter of a record, because Multidog thinks the recipient is the one who is capable of true greatness."⭐ Reader Benjamin gave us a whole-ass Pitchfork review, and it's incredible: 

"When Jeremy Lacroix left the trance-DJ duo in 2019, it was assumed that he would go on to solo projects that befitted his secret status as the undersung powerhouse writer of the team, not unlike how Imogen Heap had skyrocketed out of Frou Frou. However, after his Covid-related passing in 2021, the announcement that mononymed tabloid firebrand Yves would be continuing the band without any new partnership was met with swift online condemnation, which only intensified when the album's title was leaked. All of that is backdrop for this softly jangly dreamscape where Yves processes the unexpected death and possible internet immortality of his former creative partner. Mixing samples from an unexpected variety of '60s experimental electronica and '70s sci-fi film scores over excerpts from the duo's demo tracks slowed down 800%, it feels like being a fly on the wall during a long sleepless night where Yves tries to reconcile where he and Lacroix thought they'd end up — here in the future — artistically, personally, and in contrast to the fantasies we have all been sold. May we all come to grips with the unexpected twists of our fates so publicly and so gracefully. [Four and a half stars]"

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict upon someone you don't.