an enmity for eggs

December 10, 2018

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that really enjoys the holiday craft fair season for no clear reason. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway91 - The Great Mafia Bake Off"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Amy uncover a wealth of game-changing ideas for TV shows and contextually valuable gadgetry before Amy drops some ideas of her own."My friend Amy is a goddamn delight and now the whole world is going to know, or at least the fraction of the world that listens to this podcast.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 OneWe're just about a month out, so mark that calendar and I'll see you there! If you happen not to live in the Bay, that's fine, just invite everyone you know who lives here and we'll call it good. You could even just forward them this, honestly.Instant Band Night is a party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot, and it is GUARANTEED to entertain. 2019 is, after all, 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 the lovely and scenic Temescal district 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.Find ye here the definitive translated guide between the Netflix version and the actual British version of the Great British Bake Off:Netflix Great British Baking Show Collection 1: Series 5Netflix Great British Baking Show Collection 2: Series 4Netflix Great British Baking Show Collection 3: Series 6Netflix Great British Baking Show Collection 4: Series 7Netflix Great British Baking Show Collection 5: Series 8Netflix Great British Baking Show Collection 6: Series 9Netflix Great British Baking Show: The Beginnings Season 1: Series 3I can only assume we're going to get another Netflix season of "The Beginnings" so they can put up Series 2. Because there's at LEAST one more holiday Bake Off Netflix could throw into the mix that features Mary-Anne from s02, Norman from s05, Cathryn from s03, and I think .... Ali from s04? It's a real good time.I typed all of this out because (a) I am a crazyman (b) I suddenly had the thought: who's the best baker out of all of them? And my mind went into convulsions. I have no idea how to even begin to approach this. What the hell have I done 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin's begun the journey into true solids now that he's got a few teeth up top and below. On the one hand, even though we're some number of weeks into it, it's still almost unbearably precious and adorable to watch him grab a piece of food and stuff it into his mouth all on his own. On the other hand, each meal now takes approximately 8 billion years: I have to give him his food in small chunks, and the chunks need to be doled out only a few at a time, or else he just stuffs everything into his mouth at once and chipmunk-packs his cheeks, which results in him ejecting the entire half-chewed bolus into his bib instead of swallowing it. An entirely reasonable reaction to having that much food in his mouth, honestly, but the whole point is to not let it get that big! Hence: small chunks, dispensed only a few at a time, to ensure that he chews and then swallows before getting more.Gratifyingly, he eats a lot of different foods, but he's definitely rejected scrambled eggs out of hand, as well as cooked orzo, which I made in two varieties (tomato sauce and butter). We think it's a texture thing? Plus Mavis hates eggs; perhaps he's inherited her enmity for them. I may try again later as his palate matures; that's a thing, right? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Aside from Trump and Mitch McConnell, let's all agree as a society to spit when Paul Ryan's name is mentioned from here on out. (Vox) 

  • All right, so we've all read this thing about the women who raised $12.5K to burn away $1.5M in medical debt for strangers, and it's supposed to be feel-good? But if medical debt is that cheap to get rid of (a 120:1 ratio), then that means the $750B in total existing medical debt could be erased with the application of $625M in one fell swoop. That's pocket change for a Jeff Bezos. That's an extremely well-subscribed but not completely unheard-of funding round for a tech company (Magic Leap -- remember them? they're still out there -- took in a $793.5M series C alone). Fuck you to our entire healthcare system for creating this insane mountain of debt in the first place, how about, and fuck the rich in general for not just fixing it in a weekend. I'm just sayin'. (NYT) 

  • Let's all join hands and read about this hideous sexist nightmare of a blockchain cruise. (Breaker) 

  • There's a new theory about where all the missing mass in the universe is that unifies dark energy and dark matter into ....... some kind of ........ negative-mass fluid???? (U of Oxford press release via EurekAlert) 

  • The Last Days of Rookie. (New Republic) 

  • A satisfyingly elegant trap laid for German neo-Nazis tricked them into outing themselves. (Daily Beast) 

  • You might've missed this article last year that explains in stark, irrefutable terms why millenials are living in Hell World, whose fault it is, and probably the only viable way to fix it: Fancy version / easier-to-read print version. (HuffPo Highline) You can also get a more concise writeup that's less of a gutpunch at the Atlantic: Millennials Didn’t Kill the Economy. The Economy Killed Millennials. And you know what? Follow that up with this other Atlantic piece on how startups aren't cool anymore. 

  • Whuck? The Kids are apparently using Instagram to invite people to parties, and oh look, the clock says I'm ten thousand years old (Atlantic) 

  • A quiet, contemplative retelling of the Thai cave rescue from front to back. (GQ) 

  • If we're going to get a true Internet of Things going, the sensors need to be made of something other than silicon, like paper or plastic, and we're getting there. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • A slightly old but still good read on The Amazing Psychology of Japanese Train Stations. (CityLab) 

  • It's not the worst worst case out there, but this story about a startup that stranded its customers overseas with no way home is still kind of a fuckin' doozy. (Bloomberg) 

  • What's the retail apocalypse actually look like out there? (Atlantic) 

  • There are interesting points in this article about how cities are actually good for rural areas. (Brookings Institute) 

  • [pounds fist on table] Ship organs for transplant with drones! Ship organs for transplant with drones!! (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • If there's a big blowup and a bunch of brands end up leaving Amazon, I wonder if a strong competitor will emerge. Uber has Lyft; Amazon will have ..... ? (Recode) 

  • Finally, someone found a commercial use for a quadrupedal robot. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • Is goddamn everything going to be a subscription business from here on out? Here's an interview with a guy who says yes for some reason. (Fast Company) 

  • The only flavors of AI I'm unequivocally fine with are generative design (BBC) and whatever you want to call this technique for making whole scenes out of simple sketches. (MIT Technology Review) 

  • To my mind, geoengineering seems all but inevitable when it comes to helping us not be completely fucked by global warming, so we might as well test the plan from The Matrix and hope it ends better for us than it did in those movies. That whole "crops need sun to live" thing is gonna need looking at, though: just a thought. (Vox) 

  • Researchers think they've identified the traits that make a healthy personality; the article includes a link to a test you can take. (UC Davis press release) 

  • Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha Milo tried to ha ha ha ha start a Patreon and ha ha ha ha ha haaaaaa he lasted all of a single day ha hahahahahhahahaahahahaha (The Verge) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumStare Problem, Not From Stress Alone 

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.