a good nickname to have

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that just wants a sock that won't develop heel holes after what seems like a few months of wear 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI haven't lost hope that I'll recover enough energy to kick the side of the podcast machinery and get it rumbling to life in early 2023. In the meantime, you can find the show's 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 podcastInstant Band Night 19: SOLARSomething that I haven't been able to stop thinking about is that this event wouldn't ever have existed without Jen Angel, who if you didn't read last week's issue was a friend of mine who died recently in perhaps the most untimely manner possible. Jen was part of a monthly dinner party crew Mavis integrated me into; when the East Bay Community Space was getting up and running, she happened to be living next door and introduced me to the owners, who were looking for people with ideas for recurring events. I'm still going back and forth about this: it feels weird and bad not to mention her; she literally is the reason Instant Band Night started! But also I don't want to seem like I'm trying to guilt people into showing up: this is the week I send a "two weeks' notice" email to a list I've assembled of past attendees who've opted in and cool friends of mine. What do you think? Does it seem gauche to talk about her a little? Because it doesn't seem right not to, either. I'm trying to draft the email now and it's getting existential in there. Let me know what you think, because right now my brain's going in tight little circles.Instant Band Night 19 is still:March 9 2023 (click to add to your Gcal)6p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook) (Partiful)+ +  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  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.The last couple days of weather have been Fool's Spring around here, but starting today (the day this newsletter is sent) it's supposed to be chilly again for a while. I'm looking forward to it, honestly. Part of it is surely some tiny but indelible piece of me that remembers the winters of Syracuse and longs for the iciness, but I'm pretty sure a sizable chunk of it is incontrovertible climate anxiety: I just want to be reassured that my part of the world can still get cold when it's supposed to. I've never been a hot weather person, but I identified an edge to my dislike of the admittedly infrequent but nevertheless savage-seeming heat blasts that hit us last year. Gonna be a lot more of these, that part of me is saying. Gonna be a lot more of these. Anybody else in this boat with me? How are we all doing? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin's TK class made each other Valentine cards last week because of course they did, and they're adorable. His teacher and her assistant also made cards for the kids, which is how we learned that his teacher's given him the nickname "Mr. Nature." It makes sense; she's told us in the past how he loves to share facts about the creatures or environmental features that appear in the stories she reads the class. Sometimes he might be a little too enthusiastic and need to be reminded not to interrupt constantly, but I do love that he wants to share his knowledge. May it serve you well, bud! 

Fascination Corner

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

• "The Future of Long COVID: This emergency is not about to end." (~$Atlantic) 

• If you've run across any "why isn't the media talking about this???" hysteria about the Ohio train derailment, you can relax a little: traditional news outlets are talking about it. But: they're also doing a shitty job. (Media Matters) 

• The Scientists have done the math: even if it doesn't look like we'll make the 1.5C threshold, it still makes sense to try like hell, immediately. (Anthropocene) (Paper) 

• BTW, there's an extremely compelling argument that we should be looking into solar geoengineering precisely because it's scary. (Nature) 

• It looks like having a sense of purpose helps teens be somewhat happier with their lives. (U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) 

• Some Engineers have figured out how to assemble 3D objects out of tiny particles using computationally-shaped ultrasound fields, which could theoretically be applied inside living tissue without having to cut anything open. (Max Planck Inst for Medical Research) 

• Lord. Did the USAF blow up a $100 hobbyist balloon? (~$Intelligencer) 

• A new study shows that little kids will choose to show compassion every time as long as there's no cost to them, which honestly seems par for the course even for adults. (U of Queensland) (Paper) 

• All right, here's a surprisingly good use of The Machine: to analyze the emotional content of forum posts and warn people when they're about to say something incendiary. (Cornell) 

• Some Engineers have worked out a way to get carbon dioxide out of seawater, which is potentially great news for all problems ocean acidification has been causing if we can scale it appropriately. (MIT) 

• Tesla has agreed to open up some of its Supercharger network to other EVs. (TechCrunch) 

• According to a new study, leaders playing favorites can actually be beneficial when the group doesn't already have an established hierarchy. (Stevens Inst of Tech) 

• "Judging Parents Online Is a National Sport: Whether they share their joys or their struggles, parents just can’t win on social media." (~$Atlantic) 

• The Scientists have built a machine learning system that can read physiological data from conversational participants and tell you with about 75% accuracy whether they're vibing, which would be great not just for first dates, but coworkers, research partners, or any scenario where there are two people who need to achieve synchrony. (U of Cincinnati) 

• A virus found in a Danish creek can kill a bacterium that likes to infect hospital patients. (SDU) 

• The classical definition of "selling out" could maybe stand an extremely narrow revival. (Defector) 

• A five-year look at 28 Californian community gardens shows that urban gardens help biodiversity rather than harming it, which is what we've been assuming the whole time. (UT Austin) (Paper) 

• "Pastry Chefs Aren’t Disappearing — We’re Evolving: Pastry chefs may be leaving restaurants, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing for the profession" (Eater) 

• The Scientists have invented a form of engineered wood that absorbs CO2 over time, becoming stronger in the process. (Rice U) (Paper) 

• Our mental picture of rural America is astonishingly outdated. (Center on Rural Innovation) 

• Shitty writers are turning to The Machine to try tricking their way into being published authors. (Neil Clarke) 

• If you didn't see Everything Everywhere All At Once, rectify that immediately, but also maybe don't click this particular link. If you did, though, you gotta read it. (Inverse) 

• In another life where I wasn't diagnosed prediabetic, this guy who stole nearly a quarter million Cadbury creme eggs would've been me. (AP) 

• The Scientists think there are probably four different types of planetary system, and ours (interestingly) is an example of the rarest one. (U of Bern) (Paper) 

• What did royalty eat five centuries ago? The king of Denmark's ship sank off the coast of Sweden 528 years ago, but the Baltic Sea's waters preserved his pantry remarkably well. (Smithsonian) 

• Wind energy is great except for the part where the turbine blades — which are fucking enormous — have to get junked when they're decommissioned. One company says they've got a way to recycle them, though. (The Verge) 

• I don't know about this, folks: The Scientists think it's worth investigating spiders as pest control for insects that are evolving past the usual chemical insecticides, but then what? Harvest your tomatoes through the spiderwebs??? Also there's the issue where the spiders apparently become free wasp food, and then you've got a wasp problem. Seems bad! (U of Portsmouth) 

A Fictional Thing

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

(I remembered a formula for making fake album covers that involves searching for a random appropriately licensed photo on Flickr and then applying your best Graphic Design Skills to the result; let me know if you like this better or worse than when I just wrote them out and/or if you want to tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because your answers are always incredible) 

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.