age, nothing, number, etc

December 03, 2018

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that still, even now, kind of wants to fall asleep under the Xmas tree while it's all lit up. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway90 - Quantum Ghost Polycule"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Danielle Henderson (@knottyyarn) unveil ideas for TV shows, cultural practices, mottos, and a musical begging to be made a reality."Danielle is an excellent friend from one of my earliest internet eras, and this episode was a delight to record even if it sounds like one or more of us occasionally phase slightly out of this reality due to factors beyond our control. The musical we've brought to light here seems like it could work; get at me, songwriter-playwrights!If you haven't yet, subscribe by searching "Idea Factory Giveaway" in your podcatcher of choice (and let me know if it doesn't pop up). If you're already there, feel free to leave a 5-star rating and a nice review (it helps; algorithms, etc, you know the deal).Instant Band Night 8: The Eighth OneThat's right, it's happening again. Actually, it happens every two months on the second Thursday, so this shouldn't be a surprise by now. January 10! Mark those calendars! Prepare to invite your pals! Just copy and paste this:Instant Band Night is a party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot, and it is some GOOD SHIT. It's a new year, potentially a new you: why not commemorate by getting up on stage and rocking out to something you just made up a few minutes beforehand?(1)The first rule of Instant Band Night is: 👏 YOU 👏 DON'T 👏 HAVE 👏 TO 👏 PLAY 👏 AN 👏 INSTRUMENT 👏 TO 👏 ATTEND 👏 (just come watch, no need to get up there if you don't wanna)(2)The second rule of Instant Band Night is: We guarantee you (the audience) an astonishingly excellent time.(3)The third rule of Instant Band Night is: Bring a friend or three!In case you've never been to Instant Band Night, here's the deal:1. The stage has a drum kit, guitar, bass, keyboard, and mics.2. We draw names out of hats to make instant bands that get 7 minutes in the green room to plan a 5-minute set.3. A hat-drawn artist will also take the stage alongside each band to draw their gig poster on a meeting room easel pad.Come play or come watch; you'll have fun either way! Bring your people, crack a beverage: let's do this.January 108p507 55th St 94609$5/personBYOBYou can use these handy links to Facebook or Eventbrite to invite folks if you're feeling fancy.* * *  w e ' l l * s e e * y o u * t h e r e * * *F.A.Q.Q: Do I need to be a musician to show up?A: No. Absolutely not. Hell no. Come see the show and have a good time; you don't have to get onstage.Q: I'm a musician; am I guaranteed a slot in a band?A: We literally draw names written on slips of paper out of coffee cans, so there's a chance you may not be called; in a purely mathematical sense, it's a function of how many musicians of each type show up that night (there are five musician cans -- DRUMS, GUITAR, BASS, VOX, MISC -- and one can for artists who'll be picked to draw the bands' gig posters). We say: surrender to the spirit of random chance, or maybe slip the MC a bribe of some sort.Q: Do I have to be an amazing musician to throw my name in a can?A: Probably not. Your band's only gonna be onstage for 8 minutes, anyway; how bad can you possibly be?Q: Do I have to pick my cover tunes beforehand?A: Listen. You and your band (who you've JUST MET) have 5 minutes onstage to do whatever the hell you can think of in the 7 minutes prior to walking up there. You wanna try to pick covers everyone can agree on? Great. You wanna try writing something new? Fantastic; it can definitely be done. You wanna pick a key and tell each other to just fuckin' wing it up there? You are a RAGING PSYCHOPATH and we love it. We'll see you in 7; get in the green room!!!!Q: What does BYOB stand for?A: We don't sell drinks at Instant Band Night, so you gotta bring your own. Get a cheap sixpack of something. Maybe a bottle and some cups. We're not here to godmod how you get down.Q: Is this in the East Bay?A: It is. Do not be alarmed: it's within walking distance of MacArthur BART, and as a bonus, you get to tour Oakland's version of the Mission on your way over. Or you could just take a Lyft from SF (or the BART station if you fancy). Got a car? Drive on over; parking around the East Bay Community Space is pretty simple. You can do this. We believe in you. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I'm writing this in the last hour of my birthday; I turned a shocking 39 today. Time: it keeps happening. Mavis and I celebrated by going out to a nice dinner (her folks watched Quentin, or more accurately passed a quiet evening in our living room while he slept peacefully; thank the grace of the genetic lottery that we got a chill baby). Tell you what: next year? 40's gonna be a thing. I don't know what yet; suggestions are encouraged! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin's a lot more active these days: crawling around nonstop, pulling himself up to a supported standing position, "cruising" laterally along furniture and in some cases the very walls to go places, etc. He's not walking yet, but he will at some point; as is, I'm spending a lot more time than I used to on the floor just making sure he's not going to injure himself or upend the living room trashcan. He babbles a lot while he does all this, too, which is adorable, but neither is it necessarily language. This means my floor time is spent watching him and playing with him, but also listening to hella podcasts while I do it, because it's not like we're exchanging sparkling conversation or anything. We don't pass the time in funereal silence: I talk to him a bunch, I just don't pay very close attention to his vocal responses yet. From time to time, we've heard him mimic "hi" and even (very roughly) approximate "thank you," though, so I think I'm going to have to start paying more attention pretty soon! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Last week we had agrovoltaics; this week, meet acoustic ecology and the fact that photosynthesis makes a sound (though admittedly somewhat indirectly). (Hakai) 

  • Let's get into the world of mall Santas, everybody. (Vox) 

  • There's a company that'll take a scoop of your cremains and loft them into an orbit that decays after about two years, turning part of you into a literal shooting star. Okay! (company site) 

  • Deep-sea microbes have been identified that eat hydrocarbons, which could be good for oil spills, but what do they metabolize them into? That also seems like important information ........ right? I'm just sayin'. (UT Austin press release via EurekAlert) 

  • Fancy restaurants used to be quiet. What the hell happened? (Atlantic) 

  • Solar panels have gotten ridiculously cheap to manufacture in the last four decades, and it's pretty much down to smart public policy. Fingers crossed we can keep it up, I guess???? (Vox) 

  • Nobody's figured out how to recycle old textiles, so researchers decided to turn them into what sounds like a building material comparable to particle board. I want to see a picture of this, but the actual paper's behind one of those science paywalls. (Anthropocene) 

  • Alphabet's putting some muscle behind efforts to eliminate mosquitoes. (Bloomberg) 

  • It's possible we may be over-celebrating life events, and social media (surpriiiiiiiiise) is definitely a factor. (Atlantic) 

  • When Craigslist comes to a town, people start throwing away less. It's not, like, a giant amount, but still perceptible. (Fast Company) 

  • Here's a quick little read on one possible reason why there's a north/south language divide in the US (think "you guys" vs "y'all"). (MIT Technology Review) 

  • What's it like to be a dog? Brain imaging is starting to give us an idea. (Quartz) 

  • Intensive early childhood education has a seemingly profound impact on how fairly you treat others, according to this study. Huh. (U of Montreal press release) 

  • Picking up stakes and moving to a place where there's more economic opportunity isn't happening as much as it should -- the reason why isn't surprising, though. (Brookings Institute) 

  • The cult of creativity is making us less creative. (Quartz) 

  • Conventional wisdom has held that when a coral reef dies, you get kind of an algae-based wasteland afterward; it turns out that sometimes you get sponge reefs instead, which might support whole different ecologies that we don't really have a good handle on yet. (Anthropocene) 

  • Companies like Facebook offer empty apologies that we more or less accept by staying on their platforms because we have literally nowhere else to go. So now what? (TechCrunch) 

  • Did you know that birds like to rub ants on themselves? Well, now you do. And nobody knows why. (Atlas Obscura) 

  • Two years later, Apple's decision to get rid of the headphone jack still proves to be a completely fucking stupid idea. (Fast Company) 

  • Smart car technologies have saved drivers a collective $6.2 billion in fuel costs. (Stevens Institute of Technology press release) 

  • Forests and grasslands are burning faster than we can replace them, but that's why we invented drones that'll reseed them intelligently and at scale, if everything goes right. (TechCrunch) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumFunbadger, No One Else Has Hair There 

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.