a microbial parade of hits

June 06, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that has been on Tumblr this whole time and has never stopped liking it, you should be on it too if you know what's good for you 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayThe thing about having a 4yo and a baby who doesn't yet sleep through the night is that you can't put them in the same room together overnight, and it's also not possible to put yourself in the room with him without causing even more sleep complications. Long story short, we're sleeping in the office (the house's third and possibly actual master bedroom, considering it has the attached half bath) on the pull-out couch, which is also where my computer is, so the edit on the last episode we recorded (which admittedly was last year) still isn't quite complete. But it'll get there someday!As of the time of this writing, there are still not only 43 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings, but someone managed to slip past the perimeter and enter another lovely review, which I only just saw now! Whoever you are, you have not only our thanks but our favor should we ascend to the throne. The rest of you: a new standard has been set!!Instant Band Night 15: TIME WARPFor real, though, we're doing this on July 14th. You must be vaxxed and boosted to get in the door. If you've got kids under 5 and they haven't been able to be vaccinated by then, maybe give this one a miss, though. (Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  r e t u r n i n g   i n   2 0 2 2  + ++ +  h a n g   i n   t h e r e  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I want to talk about the TV show Severance, but I'm not going into specifics, so there won't be any spoilers here. Partially because there kind of can't be — they've left so many mysteries unaddressed by the end of the first season. Which is what I want to ask y'all about: what's this show's minimum threshold of Answers that must be revealed in order for it to be satisfactory? Not just about the work they do, but the world they inhabit? For me, that number is nonzero, and it may in fact be pretty high. There are so many questions!! No I will not look at a subreddit. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix has been at the stage of random babbling vocalization for some time now, and it's A++ Great, Would Recommend, but lately we've noticed lately a new and utterly delightful variation. Sometimes when he's playing with one of his toys, he whispers tiny nonsense to himself — there are a lot of sibilants — and it's absolutely incredible. I may not be able to capture it on video, but if I do, it's going to be a treasured family heirloom.That's the sweet thing I wanted to tell you about; now here's how the weekend's been, in convenient bullet points:Friday

  • I'm set to go to a wedding down in LA

  • I'm on the train to the airport and decide to check my email

  • Turns out the wedding's postponed (too many covids) (message was sent at half past midnight) (this must have been an absolutely agonizing literal last-minute decision that I do not begrudge in the slightest)

  • Mavis and I discuss it and decide I should go anyway; have a nice little mini-vacation

  • So I do and I'm having a lovely time*

  • Meanwhile: Quentin barfs himself awake in the night and proceeds to have A Stomach Bug with problems at both ends

Saturday

  • Mavis informs me of the situation but we agree there's basically nothing I can do from a distance

  • She calls in backup (family, best friend) who arrive in shifts to help and are amazing

  • Meanwhile I'm having a nice little solo trip

  • Mavis ascends the throne of Most Powerful Mom

  • Quentin's stomach bug starts to calm down

Sunday

  • Quentin is more or less his old self again

  • I return

Monday

  • We keep Quentin home (his preschool wants kids 24h symptom-free before they return from a sickness)

  • Felix, who's been fine this entire time, barfs up his lunch

  • This is followed by a diarrhea blowout 15m later

  • Yeah, he has it

I missed the excitement with Quentin, but it looks like I'm getting the Felix version as a kind of sequel. As of the time of this writing, there's been no more barfing, but there've been a few more diapers. He's keeping down his nursing, so we'll see what tomorrow brings. Right now he's sleeping peacefully. 🤞🎃I just hope I don't end up with whatever this bullshit is. I guess I'll find out in the next couple of days, which is what its incubation period seems to be? EDIT: I'm typing this sentence at 516a on Tuesday, and I've been up for about two and a half hours. You don't want to know what I've been up to in the interim; let's just say I'm afraid to go to sleep, and must stay awake to maintain vigilance. I can feel something that's only describable as my traitorous guts tensing in anticipation of their next betrayal, and there's no way I can let that happen in a bed. Let us all hope for the sake of the nation that this phase doesn't last very long.* If you're in LA and I didn't see you, it's nothing personal; I'd already made a few plans with friends around the wedding and decided it would be nice to just not have any assigned activities in the space where the wedding would've gone. The thought of having so much unstructured kid-free time was a mixture of bewildering and intoxicating. I ended up doing some light shopping and binged the new season of Stranger Things in my hotel room, and the whole experience was great. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • This week's serious Atlantic read is a real thoughtmeal. Here's the money quote: "Today, I’m left with one conclusion: The children and parents of our country need to take the summer to organize locally, build a set of national demands, and then refuse to go back to school in the fall until Congress does something." (~$Atlantic) 

  • Cops aren't just bad at their jobs; the numbers we can see indicate they've been getting worse at it over time. (The American Prospect) 

  • A Californian task force released its initial report (which is still almost 500 pages) on the litany of injustice Black citizens have endured since slavery, including recommendations for reparations. (AP) (Report PDF) 

  • "How to prevent another white supremacist massacre: The policy ideas are aplenty, but it’s up to lawmakers to act." (Vox) 

  • One more on this topic and I'm out: remember how the stock price of gun companies used to dip after a mass shooting? That doesn't happen anymore, possibly because we've given up on the possibility of gun control as a concept. (The Conversation) 

  • Human organs don't live very long outside the body, which is one reason why transplants are such a pain in the ass. The Scientists have built a device that helped a damaged liver repair itself over a three-day period and successfully transplanted it into someone who's still alive a year later. (U of Zurich) 

  • Speaking of livers, yours is about three years old no matter how old the rest of you is. (Technical U of Dresden) 

  • "‘Everything Is Terrible, but I’m Fine’: A mentality that explains a lot about the economy, electoral politics, and human nature" (~$Atlantic) 

  • Some Engineers have worked out a system for 3D printing using highly focused ultrasound, which could theoretically have applications for building/fixing things inside other stuff, like aircraft or human bodies. (Concordia U) 

  • r/AskHistorians isn't the only good subreddit, but it is a very good subreddit. (Why did someone put a shoe in the wall of a 200 year old house?) 

  • Here, once again, is yet another study that seems to show people may not turn to crime if their basic mental and material needs are met! HUH (Vox) 

  • The Scientists worry that farm vehicles might be getting as heavy as dinosaurs, which they think actually has troubling implications for subsoil compaction. (Paper) 

  • "Nobody Learned Anything From the Crypto Crash" (Vice) 

  • A small study on how to engender cooperation within a group reveals a fairly specific communication strategy you should consider, and one to avoid. (The Conversation) 

  • Here's an interesting case where software seems like it was actually useful in curbing NIMBYism, or at least preventing the NIMBYs from gaining too much of a voice. (Fast Company) 

  • The Scientists have created yet another biodegradable spoil-prevention coating for food that helps it last longer; this one's derived from a silk protein. (NEO.LIFE) 

  • "Why Fangirls Scream: From bobby-soxers to Beatlemania to Bieber Fever—we all know what a screaming fangirl looks like. But do we really know why she’s screaming?" (~$Atlantic) 

  • Evolution seems to apply to things like baby names and dog breed choices. (U of Michigan) 

  • Speaking of which, The Scientists have taken a look at the numbers, and it looks like evolution might actually be happening much faster than we thought. (Science Alert) 

  • Why isn't there a Diggerland on this coast, specifically in the Bay Area, right the fuck now??? (The Drive) 

  • Have another good writeup on Molly White and crypto skepticism, this time from WaPo. (~$WaPo) 

  • People on the forum for a videogame about tanks keep leaking classified information in attempts to one-up each other and it's incredibly hilarious. (Kotaku) 

  • If we want to properly preserve planetary biodiversity, we need to mark at least 44% of its dry surface for conservation. (WCS) 

  • "The mental block preventing people from buying electric vehicles: A new study found people greatly underestimate how many of their daily tasks an EV could support." (Grist) 

  • What if physical systems make a better basis for neural networks than electronic ones? (Quanta) 

  • Here's an amazingly wild idea for civilization-scale interstellar travel: harnessing an entire-ass rogue planet. Not only that, this professor outlines potential technosignatures for identifying aliens who are at it already. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumWorldstain, Death Will Come to Us All(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.