Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that will never stop going to craft fairs and wants to hear about all of them all the time

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 31: FLAVOR

It's becoming increasingly clear as the year wears on that we need an excuse to experience and/or create surprise and joy that we can see and feel or else we're going to mcfuckin' lose it. That's where Instant Band Night comes in, friends: clear your calendar for the next one on May 8. Mark it now and tell everyone you know: whether you choose to play in one of the bands or just watch it all unfold, it's an almost unbelievably ecstatic celebration of spontaneous creativity that we all need at the cellular level.

✨🪩✨
May 8 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

If you've been looking for a weird little guy to put in your garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then I have the perfect place to start your search. If you know someone else who needs a weird little guy for their garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then you're also in luck!!!!

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.

I'm in the middle of a wild period of sculpture diversification that will eventually see its way to the ol' Etsy shop. Really I just wanted to tell you all about my mug phase, which I think is drawing to a close as the shelves of our home can only support so many of my creations — both because we have several beloved mugs that don't need replacing and because the ones I make are probably heavy enough to crack an assailant's skull open like a pomegranate, likely shattering in the process but obviating the need for a follow-up defensive maneuver of any kind. I haven't had the time to take a wheel class since I joined the pottery, so I'm handbuilding everything I make, which gives my drinkware what I like to think of as a pleasing handwrought ruggedness. I should really take some pictures; it's starting to feel like I should probably make a new Insta account just for the ceramics? Is that a thing I should spin up? I don't ......... like being on Insta, but at present there are no equivalent alternatives worth talking about. Do we think that Bluesky-based one will take off? Or is Insta the Last Photo Platform? Discuss.

#dadthoughts

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

We complete the bedtime ritual at about 745p most of the time, but for the following half hour or so* I need to be on call for the inevitable 1-3 times Felix shouts for me at the top of his lungs. One of those times is usually because he pooped in the potty, an act that we honor in this house with great praise, but the other times are for requests that generally could've waited. At some point in the last few months Felix learned the concept of the "pinky promise," although if I had to guess, I'd say he enjoys the ritual of linking pinkies more than the notion of keeping promises. Still, I did have a moderate amount of luck sometimes getting Felix to pinky promise that there would be no more shouting for Daddy once he'd done his poop business. The other night I tried again, and Felix offered an interesting variation: "thumb promise," which is basically the same as a pinky promise except using your thumb. Is there some logic to this? Does using a sturdier digit produce a sturdier promise? It turns out no, but maybe he wanted there to be — I'm going to start offering a choice between a pinky promise and a thumb promise for the next little while and see if there are differences, just to be on the safe side.

* Sometimes longer: Felix didn't go to sleep until 915p Thursday night, for instance.

Fascination Corner

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

• A paralyzed man who received a stem cell graft can stand up again; the other trial subjects didn't do as well, but that's still a promising result. (Nature)

• The Scientists have successfully engineered microbes that can produce plastic, eliminating the need to cook it up out of petrochemicals. (KAIST)

• Everybody say thank you to the Internet Archive!! (NPR)

• If all matter and antimatter were created at the Big Bang, shouldn't they have annihilated each other? Why is there matter in the universe at all? The Scientists are closing in on the answer. (Nature)

• Some Engineers have designed a simple robot that can walk right off the 3D printer with the addition of a compressed gas cylinder and nothing else. (UCSD) (Paper)

• The Scientists have discovered a very promising new antibiotic molecule in the dirt from a lab tech's garden. (Nature)

• Some Engineers have worked out a way to essentially precipitate a sandlike powder out of seawater that we could use in concrete, taking care of our sand problem and sequestering carbon at the same time. (Northwestern)

• Colorado's trying out shrooms as a legal mental health treatment option. (Undark)

• The Japanese government has now disbanded the Moonies, which just goes to show that assassinating a head of state with a homemade shotgun sometimes shows the whole country you had a very good point and your ideas should be listened to and then implemented. Much to consider. (BBC)

• Data collected over a 22-year span reveals elephants are superb logistical planners who really consider the costs/benefits when trying to figure out where to go in order to meet their admittedly huge need for food. (U of Oxford)

• The Scientists have built a proof-of-concept "nuclear battery" powered by radioactive decay, a finalized version of which would theoretically last for literal millennia. Okay!! (ACS)

• When you run a marathon, your brain might resort to eating the fucking myelin on your neurons, but The Scientists say that's ........ not necessarily a bad thing?? (Nature)

• Great white sharks are scarce in South Africa's False Bay because of, well, people, but also since orcas discovered their livers are delicious. Anyway, their disappearance has now unbalanced the local ecosystem and The Scientists have evidence. (U of Miami) (Paper)

• SEMI-TRANSPARENT WOOD. (ACS)

• The Scientists have proven that it's possible to generate electricity just from the rotation of Earth within its own magnetic field, but the amount is miniscule. Still, that's pretty wild! (Princeton) (Paper)

• I don't know what to tell you if you're not already reading him, but Hamilton Nolan makes a convincing case that "There's No Justice Without Power: A rich guy's lesson for the left." (How Things Work)

• There's too damn many wild horses and we don't have any good solutions right now. (E&E News)

• Rubber tires keep piling up in landfills, but The Scientists have just demonstrated a way to break them down into industrially useful chemicals. (UNC Chapel Hill)

• It sure looks like the tonka bean tree has evolved to both encourage and survive getting hit by lightning, which fries parasitic vines and blasts would-be competitors for sunlight in the immediate surroundings. (Cary Inst of Ecosystem Studies)

• Speaking of trees, The Scientists have discovered a whole new tree species, which is wild when you see how fucking big these guys are. (Science Alert)

• Can animals truly make what we would define as art? (The Conversation)

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 must unfortunately report looks to me like an album of extremely sexual zydeco; I'm sorry for this information.

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)!