about that microbe life

July 17, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that would absolutely go to town on an entire apple fritter at basically any moment 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayThe possibility that we may return to podcasting cannot be mathematically excluded!!!! 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 22: WILDInstant Band Night 21 was fucking fantastic and if you weren't able to make it, I'm sorry to say you missed out. That's okay, though, because you can just secure yourself a ticket to Instant Band Night 22 right now and have something to look forward to in a couple months!Sept 14 2023 (click to add to your Gcal)6p$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 YOUNew stuff alert: there's a bunch in the Etsy shop right now! Brilliant little statues for your garden or home! A place to put your fruit! A little buddy to hold your garlic! I'm working (slowly) on even more delightful little weirdos and I hope to show you soon. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I'm doing better at getting out of the house to see friends (or I was until the latest salvo of microbial life from who-knows-where splatted into our house last week; see below), but I've also discovered that visiting the SFMOMA is also extremely good for my mental well-being. If you can, I highly advise making it over there so you can see The Visitors. It's basically a nine-screen video installation of a bunch of people in a house playing a long song together from different rooms, and it's great. You don't have to take my word for it; the Guardian put it at the top of their list of the best art of the 21st century, and that was before the pandemic — now, in 2023, it takes on a whole new and utterly unintended resonance that's .......... well, it's something. It lasts a little over an hour. I watched the whole thing. I might go again?? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We got two (2) normal weekdays in last week beforeWednesday:🤒 Quentin woke up with a genuine fever, so he had to stay home from day campThursday:🤪 Quentin was feeling better but still needed to be homeFriday:🫤 Quentin was again feeling better but there needs to be a 24h gap between the end of fever and return to camp/school😱 Felix's daycare called us maybe an hour and a half after dropoff because the head of the daycare caught fucking covid and everyone needed to come pick their kids up nowSaturday:🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠🫠Sunday:🤒 Felix started to come down with whatever Quentin's mystery fever isMonday:🫥 Felix was fully in the grip of Quentin's mystery cold, but at least all our covid tests were negative!🥳 Quentin returned to day camp, praise be to all the gods above and belowCDC guidance says the daycare can reopen on Wednesday provided people are feeling better (and they're always masked anyway), since home tests can still test positive for days upon days, so we'll see what happens. I personally think Felix isn't going back to daycare until at least Thursday; we don't want to risk giving our daycare providers another virus on top of the damn rona, like they don't have enough to deal with. Anyway, I would like to submit a request to whoever handles these things for a do-over on this entire last week, minus all the microbes. Thanks? Thanks. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Instead of spreading carbon taxes around equally, we could weight them toward luxury activities and achieve 75 goddamn percent of the emissions reduction needed to meet the Paris Agreement. (Cell Press via Science Daily) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists may have found a genetic marker for people at risk of long COVID. (Nature) 

  • Biden is really trying like hell to get those student loan payments off a lot of peoples' plates. (Vox) 

  • Compostable plastic is sort of a lie because it usually requires the use of industrial composting facilities; The Scientists have created a truly biodegradable bioplastic made from algae, but there are a few steps left before it's really ready for primetime. (U of Washington) 

  • Double strike! Double strike! Double strike! I threw some money at the Snacklist to support them while they're not working, an action I recommend, but just a heads up that you're gonna get emails from the LA DSA afterward, which you know what, why not. Somebody out there's doing something. (Vox) 

  • David Roth has another banger for us about, you know, all of this. My favorite quote thus far: "This moment doesn't quite feel like that. It just feels like being chewed, endlessly. No one wants to be food, but it feels somehow more demeaning to be gum." (Defector) 

  • Here's a long and thought-provoking read on the current state of masculinity — turns out nasty-ass right-wing losers like ol' Jordan P and Tucker are kinda the only game in town as far as trying to set down models for men to follow in mass culture, which as you can probably imagine is a huge problem. (WaPo gift link) 

  • OTC birth control!!! (NPR) 

  • The ocean has been slowly but steadily changing color, and it's gotta be our fault. (MIT) (Paper) 

  • Starlink satellites have to dodge incoming objects in space a hundred and goddamn thirty-seven times a day. Maybe there are enough satellites, folks? Maybe there are enough satellites. (Gizmodo) 

  • The Scientists have successfully mouse-tested a great new way to kill tumors. (Wyss Inst) (Paper) 

  • Air pollution might be contributing to the disappearance of bugs. (U of Melbourne) (Paper) 

  • Is it possible the James Webb has spotted stars powered by, uh ........... by dark matter? (UT Austin) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists have combined advanced dye-based microscopy and The Machine to create a technology they call LIONESS that can produce ridiculously detailed images of living brain tissue in action. (ISTA) (Paper) 

  • Experimental evidence indicates the literal sound of silence is something we can actually hear. (Johns Hopkins) 

  • "Being on the same wavelength as someone" is ............ a measurable phenomenon, turns out? (Scientific American) 

  • The Scientists want to use The Machine to see if it can identify endangered species that are likely to be wiped out by predators, so they can intervene before it happens. (Flinders U) (Paper) 

  • Almost half the total trade volume of hazardous chemicals in the world is illegal. Great. (Empa) (Paper) 

  • The potential for DNA as a data storage medium is huge, and The Scientists are starting to make real progress creating an actual useful form of it. (Natl U of Singapore) (Paper) 

  • If you really want to lift people out of poverty, consider posting staff at food banks who can give advice on services that would be beneficial. (U of East Anglia) (Paper) 

  • NO GODS NO MASTERS: birds are out there building nests out of anti-bird spikes. (Guardian) 

  • Some Engineers have built a working model of a soft peristaltic pump, which has lots of applications ranging from cocktail robots to lifesaving biomedical devices. (Harvard School of Engineering) 

  • It looks like Just Going On a Damn Walk for 20m a day at least five days a week can reduce your risk of depression. (U of Limerick) (Paper) 

  • A fish that's been popular in the aquarium trade for a couple decades turns out to be completely new to science. (Florida Museum of Natural History) 

  • "Walled-In; Or, Life In The Bathroom Hiding From My Kids" (McSweeney's) 

  • I will never get tired of The Scientists discovering new hydrothermal vents and new weird animals hanging out there!!!! (Nautilus) 

  • Chipotle is testing a cobot for peeling and pitting avocados so the workers can make guac faster; interestingly, there's no cobot for the mashing/mixing part. Has nobody ever tried to make guac in a stand mixer? How would that go? (Gizmodo) 

  • The Scientists have figured out a way to grow fungi in thin sheets that would make excellent fireproof cladding. (RMIT) 

  • Beavers literally provide extremely local cooling services to their ecosystems. (Vox) 

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 Evgeniy Smersh 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 Aboodi Vesakaran on UnsplashReader Erin says "Emergency Party Procedure's Pull Pin and Throw is The Sea and Cake's electronic dance side project. Like Chris Gaines but way more niche." 

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.