Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter singlehandedly keeping the Envy apple on the market, long may it reign

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.

Instant Band Night 31: FLAVOR

FOUR THURSDAYS FROM NOW

It's becoming increasingly clear as the year wears on (especially over this past week) that we need an excuse to experience and/or create surprise and joy that we can see and feel or else we're going to mcfuckin' lose it. That's where Instant Band Night comes in, friends: clear your calendar for the next one on May 8. Mark it now and tell everyone you know: whether you choose to play in one of the bands or just watch it all unfold, it's an almost unbelievably ecstatic celebration of spontaneous creativity that we all need at the cellular level.

✨🪩✨
May 8 2025
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 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 YOU

If you've been looking for a weird little guy to put in your garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then I have the perfect place to start your search. If you know someone else who needs a weird little guy for their garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then you're also in luck!!!!

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after three+ 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.

Chuck Wendig has a good meditation on "What It Feels Like, Right Now", part of which captures the feeling of trying and failing to stop checking in on the latest nonsense because

I don't have anything pithy to add to it, just a suggestion that you read it so you can at least know somebody else out there besides you and me is feeling this. It's only what, the third month if you're counting from the inauguration? Jesus creeping Christ in the cornfield.

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.

Quentin is in first grade and Felix is in preschool, and because they're not the same schools, of course their Spring Breaks must be misaligned: Quentin's was last week and this week it's Felix's turn. Judging by how Monday went, the most critical time to provide some sort of out-of-routine distraction is the 1-3p window. Typically on weekends this is Quiet Time, which in practice means he and Quentin play together up in their room. However: Felix has noticed that Quentin is not here this week. He's at school. And this is officially distressing. Wish us luck! I've also attempted to put together a sort of rolling "let's meet at this park" playdate for basically everybody at the preschool during specific morning and afternoon timeframes so at least some kids can theoretically play together (and more importantly wear each other out) — we'll see what happens??

Fascination Corner

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

• I admit the title is dismaying but you really must read "The rise of end times fascism" for the way it summarizes, well, everything those fuckers are up to and the beginnings of the vision we need to construct to counter them. (Guardian)

• The Scientists fully mapped the connections inside a piece of mouse brain about the size of a hefty grain of sand and it took up 1.6 petabytes of data. (NIH) (Paper)

• Let's hold our horses on the whole dire wolf thing, folks. (Science Alert)

• Who else wants to live near their friends without having to build a whole-ass commune?? I'm reading the founder's case study and contemplating subscribing to the newsletter, not gonna lie. (Culture Study)

• Trumpworld and the Christian right are doing their level best to destroy the concept of empathy and I would love for someone, anyone — a coalition of epistemologists and psychologists, maybe? — to figure out a way to stop them. (Guardian)

• Some Engineers have created yet another device that makes clean water using sunlight, this time for producing (also clean) hydrogen. (Cornell) (Paper)

• "Yes, your allergies are getting worse: It’s the worst allergy season ever. Again. Just like last year." (Vox)

• Honeybees are having a bad time out there right now (like catastrophically bad), but consider: mason bees? (NPR)

• The Scientists think Titan could only support a few pounds' worth of life based on how the place is put together — but that's only if you assume whatever life it cooks up needs glycine to work. Is that an ironclad assumption? (U of Arizona) (Paper)

• Sabrina Carpenter skin in Fortnite is good actually. She should do a stream where she plays the game as herself; maybe she already has. (Mashable)

• If you're going to hack the crosswalk buttons in Silicon Valley towns to make speeches from Elon and Zuck, they might as well be these ones. (The Verge)

• Tests of The Machine (Generative Flavor) shows that it makes different medical decisions for patients based on their race and class — one guess whether the decisions are better or worse for poor people! — so maybe we should try unbiasing it. (Mount Sinai)

• Some Engineers have built a robot gripper for fruit picking that's literally based on measuring tape; yes there's video. (UCSD) (Paper)

• There's been some theorizing for a while that the dinosaurs were already on the way out before the asteroid arrived, but that might just be because the fossil record for that time period is shitty. (University College London) (Paper)

• Research suggests tapping your fingers rhythmically can help you hear someone better in a crowded room. (Science Alert)

• Did you want a good short horror story involving AI slop? Because I have one for you. (Numb at the Lodge)

• The Scientists are pretty sure we've been estimating the world's food production capacity wrong and we need to get it together. (U of Nebraska-Lincoln) (Paper)

• I'm now taking bets on whether this thing collapses due to Strife, Incompetence, or Grift (or a delicious mixture of all three): "Christian “TheoBros” Are Building a Tech Utopia in Appalachia: What could go wrong?" (Mother Jones)

• The Scientists have cooked up a version of The Machine (Generative Flavor) that can make up new molecules with specific requested properties and have a somewhat reasonable chance of the results being coherent. (MIT) (Paper)

• Fluid battery?? Fluid battery!! (Linköping U)

• Some Engineers have worked out the physical mechanism behind why plastic objects shed micro (and nano) plastics. (Columbia Engineering) (Paper)

• The Scientists have successfully animal-tested a nasal spray vaccine for H5N1! (HKU) (Paper)

• Hamilton Nolan advocates convincingly for an international minimum wage. (How Things Work)

• A very small pre-trial shows some real promise for a pancreatic cancer treatment, which if we're being real here is one of the only cancers that really truly scares me. (City of Hope)

• "Disaster Confessions: When creative workflow goes horribly, hilariously wrong" (It's Nice That)

• Some Engineers built a working prototype of the tiniest soft robot you've ever seen. (Penn State) (Paper)

• The Scientists built what they call an "all-sky infrared camera array" for detecting alien spacecraft with a robot brain powered by The Machine (Analytical Flavor) for eliminating known objects, and they're still calibrating it, but it's a neat idea all the same. (Universe Today) (Paper)

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 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:

Reader Erin says "Raveborg's "A Long Slow Process of Healing" is actually a display album on an Ikea CD rack. Y'know, like how they have "Grand Theft Meatball" and "Call Off Duty" for your XTENDO.

"The back has a photo of the Ikea instruction person sitting on a tasseled rug, holding an allen wrench and crying."

Reader Lauren contends this album is "Ethereal European disco pop punctuated by long stretches of ambient cityscape noise. I absolutely would have had this poster on my dorm room wall, it slaps."

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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!