a lot of mind news in this one

October 04, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that greets the cool fall weather joyfully with wide open arms; please never leave me 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayThe next time Facebook goes offline you're going to need something to entertain yourself with; how about over a hundred hours of a very good podcast?!?!Someone out there somewhere is contemplating putting a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating on our Apple Podcasts page, which means this is your only chance to beat them to itInstant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberI'll be honest: I don't know if the Delta variant has fucked our plans for November 11th's return of Instant Band Night. At this point I'm assuming everyone reading this has gotten their shot, so what's left to do but wait, cross our fingers, and also run through the streets forcibly vaccinating everyone we can get our mitts on? I'll see you out there.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook+ + g e t   y o u r   s h o t   / /   l e t ' s   d o   t h i s + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.We're closing in on the final form of this place. My father-in-law helped me rearrange some of the shelves in the garage from the frankly insane way I'd placed them originally to a much cleaner and more spacious configuration. My ceramics workbench is now within striking distance of becoming accessible. Art has gone up on several walls. I mounted a display cabinet on one wall of the office for Mavis to put her collection of vintage/instant/toy cameras. We got curtains to put in front of the sliding glass dining room deck doors, so the setting sun doesn't blind us while we eat dinner. We miiiiiight be in the market for some new art to put on the living room walls -- if you've got any recs or ideas, shoot 'em on over! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin is trying to extend the litany of goodnight words to an untenable six phrases. Five, to be honest, was kind of stretching both our memories -- sometimes even he would forget the third without noticing -- and neither of us wants to be responsible for any meltdowns should one of them be skipped or misplaced. Hopefully this new notion of his will pass soon.Felix has just this week discovered his own right fist, judging by the way we've observed him holding it out at arm's length and gazing at it for what seems like minutes on end. It's very good. I can only assume this means he'll figure out there's a hand at the end of his left arm any day now; further updates as events warrant. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Ed Yong wonders whether we're prepared for the next pandemic (spoiler: in what fucking universe could we possibly be); the takeaway quote here is "The arc of history does not automatically bend toward preparedness. It must be bent." (~$Atlantic) 

  • The largest pushers of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin-based misinfo are making a shitload of money grifting their dupes. I talk a lot about how much I'd love to get in on a MAGA grift, but it turns out even I have a line. (~$The Intercept) 

  • Speaking of the MAGA crowd, seemingly the only webhost who would do business with them has been definitively hacked. You love to see it. (Daily Dot) 

  • The way most outlets have been covering the vaccine mandate firings is absolutely fucking idiotic. Instead, what if we talked about how "It Sure Seems Like a Lot of People Are Choosing to Get Vaccinated Rather Than Lose Their Jobs" (~$Slate) 

  • Pursuant to last week's suggestion that we all read How To Blow Up a Pipeline, here's an interview with its author. (Vox) 

  • "The Largest Autocracy on Earth: Facebook is acting like a hostile foreign power; it’s time we treated it that way." (~$Atlantic) Facebook just didn't have a great week, folks, although it's not like they fucking deserve to in any case. (Recode) 

  • The Pandora Papers sure sound like a big deal; quoth the Washington Post: "As a result, the Pandora Papers allow for the most comprehensive accounting to date of a parallel financial universe whose corrosive effects can span generations — draining significant sums from government treasuries, worsening wealth disparities, and shielding the riches of those who cheat and steal while impeding authorities and victims in their efforts to find or recover hidden assets." ($WaPo) 

  • How about some ultratough, potentially flexible glass inspired by seashell design? (McGill U) 

  • Research seems to indicate that if you know someone had a rough childhood, you're more likely to praise them for doing good deeds as an adult. (U of Missouri) 

  • The Ringer has put together a reasonably comprehensive Bake Off Hall of Fame; I can only assume Mary-Anne from s02 was overlooked because her season is still (incomprehensibly) not on Netflix even though they seem to have made a whole category ("The Beginnings") that currently only contains s03. (Ringer) 

  • A single elephant can eat a Kenyan family farm's entire harvest in one day. But how to keep them away without brutalizing them? Possible solution: a perimeter of real and fake beehives. (~$Scientific American) 

  • "A smart person pretending to be dumb" is comedy gold when done right, and this is pretty good. (Vice) 

  • We're still researching human kindness; here are some of the findings and biggest unanswered questions thus far. (BBC Future) 

  • Netflix revealed some numbers on its most popular movies and series of all time. (~$Quartz) 

  • Australian researchers have put together a plan to capture carbon that would yield fantastic side benefits at comparatively little cost. (U of Queensland) Other Aussie scientists have been working on a way to upcycle plastic waste into carbon nanotubes(?!?) and fuel. (RMIT Australia) 

  • That said, I'm just gonna let the headline do the talking here: "Human behavior sabotages CO2-reducing strategies" (U of Utah) 

  • Here's an interesting interview with someone trying to untangle the nature of consciousness. (Quanta) 

  • Contrary to what we all seem predisposed to think, having deep conversations with strangers is actually more interesting and rewarding, and we should think about doing it more??? (American Psychological Association) 

  • UCLA bioengineers have developed a new class of microscale power generators based on body movement they're calling "magnetoelastic" that are pretty damn cool. (UCLA) 

  • Anyone who makes more than $109K/year with a reasonable amount of social connection should be encouraged to make more climate-friendly behavioral changes, on the theory that it'll propagate better coming from them. (U of Cambridge) (Paper) Which pairs nicely with this study that seems to suggest that it should be possible for a committed minority to influence larger groups to change their minds on something. (U of Groningen) 

  • What if large swaths of macroeconomics theory are just some total bullshit we made up and should not trust? A staff economist for the Federal fucking Reserve wonders this. ($NYT) (Paper) 

  • Some robotics engineers have worked out a promising precursor to neural lace technology, not that they're calling it that; I'm just sayin'. (DGIST) 

  • The decades-old experiment that purported to demonstrate a theory of mind in tiny children might have had a basic flaw, at least according to an updated version that, uh, gets significantly different results. (Arizona State) 

  • It's just a mind-heavy issue this week: what you think about when you've got a few minutes to yourself can actually reveal a lot about your mental health. Read the paper for this one if you can; even though some of it is technical, enough of it is comprehensible to be fascinating. (U of Arizona) (Paper) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumBone Supply, We Go Where the Mind Wanders (If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because now I'm curious) 

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.