Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that maybe needs to take some notes or just re-read this second Baru Cormorant book more slowly

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 33: BANDSGIVING

It's true: we're gone til November, but that just means you have a couple extra months to build up delicious anticipation for the last Instant Band Night of the year — more time to mark your calendar and tell all your very coolest friends to save the night of November 13 for something INCREDIBLE. Come play or just watch; as always, it'll be like nothing else you've experienced.

✨🪩✨

Nov 13 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

🎃🌴SUMMER SALE/NEW LITTLE WEIRDOS🌴🎃

That’s right, there’s new little guys in there!!! I've been experimenting with new glazing techniques and I have to say I think I've hit upon a winner! Also I have too many things on my "finished work" shelves and it's time to move some inventory, so I've put everything on incredibly deep discount. Decorate your garden or anyplace else that needs a splash of color or whimsy; they also make thoughtful and unique gifts for that special discerning someone in your life.

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.

Are socks just getting shittier or am I doing something to them that's somehow outside their usual design parameters? Am I walking wrong? I'm this close to starting a spreadsheet or something that tracks the day I buy my socks through to the moment a hole appears in one of the heels, because I swear it's like a year or two, tops. In some cases less? I don't think my feet are secreting some sort of sock-dissolving acid. Has anyone else noticed this about how long their own socks last or am I truly an outlier?

#dadthoughts

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

We just completed the third iteration of our annual family pilgrimage to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and I think this was the best version yet! As previously, the itinerary remained generally the same:

1. Drive down in the afternoon

2. Spend the night at a hotel in nearby Seaside that the kids enjoy

3. Go to the Aquarium in the morning (also have lunch there)

4. Head home

Slight modifications this time included:

• Leave on Thursday instead of Sunday

• Arrive in town well before check-in time and head to nearby Dennis The Menace Playground, which is fantastic and gives the kids a chance to get their wiggles out after a long drive

• Go back to the hotel by myself to check us in and get the stuff up to the room while the kids play, so when we actually go back all together we can just go straight there

• No stroller(!!!!!)

• Doing the Aquarium on a Friday means slightly less intense crowd

• Friday return traffic is narsty, but a well-timed stop at a Target for bathroom and new snacks gives everyone a nice break

I can report that this year's selections from the Aquarium gift shop were:

• Quentin: a hammerhead shark stuffy (breaking his two-year streak of selecting a blacktip reef shark)

• Felix: a small sea turtle stuffy

It was a good trip and we're definitely doing it again!!!!

This weekend also saw us make the inaugural trip as a full family to the Gravenstein Apple Festival up in Sebastopol, a destination much beloved by Mavis and me and something to be at best moderately excited about by the kids. The steam machine exhibition and farm animals did hold their interest for a bit, and the fresh apple fritters were devoured, so hopes are high we and the friends who met us there will get more than about 20m of wandering-around time next year; fingers crossed.

So yes: the past several days have been busy, and we're all glad to return to our usual daily routines (Felix back at preschool for one last year, Quentin to his summer day camp for the final week) for different reasons!!

Fascination Corner

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

• There might be a planet in the habitable zone of Alpha Centauri A, just 4ly away!!!!! (Nature)

• "Why the Extremists Took Over on the Right: Fear of a pluralizing America is fueling a radicalization out of a sense of weakness and besiegement" (Democracy Americana)

• That recruiter text spam is real, in the sense that it's an actual scam being run by humans somewhere on this planet; a reporter decided to see where the rabbit hole went. (Slate)

• mRNA vaccines for HIV are showing some real promise! (Nature) Assuming The Scientists still get to work on them after fucking RFK Jr [spit] gets done cutting their funding. (NPR)

• "The hardest working font in Manhattan" (Marcin Wichary)

• We have got to stop saying "the clean energy revolution is inevitable!!!" because while yes that's technically true, it's nowhere close to fast enough right now, and also assholes are doing whatever they can to slow it down constantly. (HEATED)

• Carbon offsets don't live up to the hype; here's how to fix 'em. (Anthropocene)

• The Machine (Generative Flavor) industry has been fucking around for a while now and it's possible they may be about to find out?? (Ars Technica)

• In a quest to develop better and cheaper neural imaging, The Scientists are working on a way to shine a near-infrared laser through peoples' heads. (IEEE Spectrum)

• Diplomats are meeting in Geneva again to try to hammer out a world plastics treaty; good luck to them. (AP)

• Here, have a long and fascinating scroll-read on the NYC textscape. (The Pudding)

• Did they just delete a bunch of stuff from the Constitution on the US government website to see if anyone would notice? We fucking noticed, you fascist pricks! (TechCrunch)

• New poll just dropped on America's most hated foods. (YouGov)

• Okay, so there's bacteria deep down in the ground: where do they get their energy from, because it sure as hell isn't the sun? The Scientists think it might be chemosynthesis from compounds produced during earthquakes, of all things. (Chinese Academy of Sciences via Science Daily) (Paper)

• A homeschooled 17-year-old solved a longstanding mathematical conjecture and is skipping college entirely to enter a doctorate program at the U of Maryland. Good for her! (Quanta)

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:

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think might just be modern instrumental jazz? Whatever Medeski, Martin & Wood were. Are? Jeez, I guess I should see what they've been up to lately.

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)!