all who are present must begin capering forthwith

July 20, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that feels like it could get a lot done with a functioning Green Lantern ring and about 24 hours, tops 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway143 - The Donuts Are a Metaphor"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Jen (@jennifermarie) explore an excellent spread of ideas for consumer products, services, happenings, and an elite tier of Star Trek fandom."This one is packed with high-quality notions as usual, but I also tell the story of a very good, extremely fake business I took part in; we also set up what might sound like a highly exclusive echelon of Star Trek fandom that actually has an almost trivially low barrier to entry.And we're back on schedule! Hopefully!! Just a reminder that while we're eternally grateful for gathering this many, we've been sitting at 31 ratings in Apple Podcasts for a while, so if you feel like getting us to 33 or even -- dare I imagine -- 35?? -- go ahead and make that ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ happen!!Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberIt seems laughable to try to throw Instant Band Night without a proven vaccine in place. Let's see what's up in November 2021.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook* * s t a y   h o m e   / /   s t a y   h e a l t h y * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.My mind has gone totally blank. This is probably a sign. Let's take a mulligan on this section and I'll see you next week.If there's anything you want to ask me, maybe that could go in here in a future installment? Who's got questions? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.There's no other way to say this: Quentin is starting to dance more. His version of dancing is pretty good: he gets a big open-mouthed grin, finds two things to pick up and smack together repeatedly, and stomps around with great enthusiasm. We can tell it's dancing because he does it when we sing something sufficiently rhythmic or play the right music. One of the first tracks he danced to with reasonable reliability is this C+C Music Factory classic; I don't remember why we first played it in his presence, but it works.An eternity of centuries ago when I was in high school, an album reimagining Schoolhouse Rock was released, and there was a Skee-Lo track on it -- "The Tale of Mr. Morton" -- that became an absolutely irrepressible summer jam for my friend group. I hadn't thought of it in at least a thousand ageless millennia, but I was reminded of it very recently and fired it up on my laptop. Quentin started dancing immediately. Kids: still great, everybody. Still great. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Read "How to fix the Covid-19 dumpster fire in the U.S." and feel the hate for Trump and everyone who serves him flow through you. (STAT) Actually, while we're on the subject of the rona, we shouldn't neglect the excellent work Ed Yong is doing at the Atlantic, which is very confusingly making only some of its rona coverage free. "The Pandemic Experts Are Not Okay" (~$Atlantic) doesn't seem to be part of that batch for some reason, but "America Should Prepare for a Double Pandemic" (Atlantic) is; if you can burn a click on the former, do so. The latter is also important. Of course it is. 

  • Who the fuck are these fuckers in Portland? (NPR) 

  • "Another Dull Quarantine Weekend at Home, Target, Chipotle, Home Depot, and Our Niece’s Graduation Party" (McSweeneys) 

  • It ........... seems inconceivable that the Twitter hack was done just to commandeer prominent usernames/execute a shitty bitcoin scam and not to harvest DMs from important accounts for blackmail purposes. Right? ($NYT) 

  • Here's an interesting and sobering interview with a data scientist who's done some work for the Democrats. (~$NYMag Intelligencer) 

  • If you didn't already read this funny Twitter story about the diver, now there's no excuse. (Chris Jones on Twitter) 

  • What in the shit: we could take 2 billion tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere every year if we just add crushed rock dust to our crops. And it seems like we already have the materials. (U of Sheffield) 

  • Technical job interviews where they make you "code" in front of an audience hurt way more than they help find good talent. (NC State) 

  • Clothes don't recycle well, which is a problem when you consider how much of it we make and toss. Now what? (BBC Future) 

  • We should think about using the rona-induced interregnum to convert urban centers into "15-minute cities," not just because they're more livable, but because it might help the recovery. (Bloomberg CityLab) 

  • Sea turtles are carting around anywhere between 33,000-150,000 tiny organisms at a time, folks! (Hakai) 

  • "Woke capitalism" is a term we should all learn, and quickly. (~$Atlantic) 

  • Commercial planes take weather readings while they fly, so the reduction in flights has led to less-accurate forecasts. (AGU) 

  • An AI survey of tourist photos from Cuzco shows that we all basically take the same picture. (TNW) 

  • The rent is literally too damn high everywhere. (HuffPo) 

  • Scientists accidentally made a hybrid of sturgeon and paddlefish, which doesn't seem like it should be possible on first glance. ($NYT) 

  • There's a much better way to do police lineups that keep innocent people from being misidentified. (Salk Institute) 

  • Four species of baleen whales have changed their regular hangout locations since 2010. (NOAA) 

  • The global population may actually start to shrink after 2064, which has what could be understated as extremely intriguing implications for basically everything. (Science Daily) 

  • Warning up top that this is grim fuckin' reading: an account of some public meetings in Utah where citizens are clamoring against the wearing of masks for just the absolute fucking dumbest reasons imaginable. Are these people salvageable? Honest question. Can we take them into the future with us? (Salt Lake Tribune) 

  • Using lasers, you can etch a pattern into a sheet of metal that'll make it pull water out of a polluted puddle and evaporate it off using nothing but sunlight. Catch and condense that vapor, and the results are surprisingly clean! (U of R) 

  • If home automation is going to make any progress, we have to be willing to start somewhere; why not with this guy? (The Verge) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumMorning Owl, The Many Failures of Anime 

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.