Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that really needs to do a purge of all the outgrown kid clothes in the house from top to bottom

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.

"You know," a friend of mine said to me in a conversation whose retelling here is highly paraphrased, "the Left used to be scary. Back in the 60s and 70s, I mean — yes, there were all kinds of peaceful protests and whatnot, but what actually got us out of Vietnam was the fact that we were firebombing recruitment offices on a near-daily basis for years." He talked like he was there although he's not old enough.

"That's an interesting thought," I told him, and admitted to not knowing a lot about that particular point in history beyond the broad strokes of whatever they taught us in high school.

I understand to a point why nobody teaches about the violent parts of protest, but you can't help but think (for example) that learning about the Weather Underground back in the day might've been useful to us in the here and now. Anyway, did you know that if you append the word "libguide" to a topic search, it'll bring up academic library guides that list primary sources and further reading? History is fascinating.

#dadthoughts

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

Summer continues to rocket along. What the hell do you mean it's almost the end of July???? Next week Felix's preschool goes on summer break for two weeks, so he's just going to be hanging out at home, although I do plan on trying to get him out of the house with me as much as possible.

Speaking of Felix! He is now 4. His party was a success: cupcakes were eaten, friends were played with, and on Monday we brought the remaining goodie bags to school for distribution, so theoretically every kid should now know the joy of owning magical-seeming gems whether they managed to attend or not (also what were we going to do, hoard them? Felix has the leftovers and seems highly contented). Interestingly, Felix refused to blow out the candles on his cupcake and had Mavis do it instead; I wonder at what age this concept will truly click with him. Quentin is, I think, looking forward to his November birthday and the candle-extinguishing that implies, although I guess we'll have to see!

Fascination Corner

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

• For the second time in his life, a scientist's cat has helped discover a new virus. (U of Florida)

• "Financing Our Own Destruction: Are we taking this fascism thing seriously?" (How Things Work)

• In a game-changing breakthrough for vaccine development, The Scientists have worked out a way to see antibody response to viruses using — yes, for real — only about a drop of blood. (Scripps via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Speaking of blood, be glad you're not the only person on the entire planet with your blood type, the unfortunate fate of one specific woman in Guadelupe. (The Conversation)

• Anne Helen Petersen has a great longread for us on "The Great Feminist Exhaustion And a Partially Formed Theory of 2025 Culture" (Culture Study)

• Oddly compelling: installing stained glass in the rusted-out corpse of a Porsche. (Designboom)

• Some Chemical Engineers say they're using The Machine (Analytical Flavor) to make an essentially self-driving lab that runs materials discovery experiments much faster with way less waste. (NC State via Science Daily)

• Long but worth it: Ed Zitron gives us "The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble" (Where's Your Ed At)

• Nobody knows exactly what it is, but something in dry skin swabs from people with Parkinson's can be identified by dogs with surprising accuracy, which is a fascinating and adorable potential early detection mechanism. (U of Bristol via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Okay: soup can help you get better from a cold faster, it's just that The Scientists aren't exactly sure how it works. (The Conversation)

• There's a rainforest plant in Fiji that grows little houses for ant colonies to live inside for symbiotic reasons, but it's also evolved to give the houses entirely separate entrances — otherwise there would be only ant war. (Washington U in St. Louis via Science Daily)

• We knew this was where it was headed, but it's still just depressing as fuck to see: "The Hyperpersonalized AI Slop Silo Machine Is Here: We are on a path to where social media will feed you hyperpersonalized AI slop about anything and everything." (404 Media)

• The Scientists have proposed a new theory that maybe solves the Hubble tension but also introduces a new problem in the standard cosmo model, so who knows hahahahahaha (Royal Astronomical Society via Science Daily)

• Heads up: new emoji coming in the fall! (Unicode Blog)

• I don't love this for many reasons, so let's just pick one: how rich is this guy whose brain was so susceptible to being fucking melted by ChatGPT? (Futurism)

• So-called "three-person IVF" is real and solves an otherwise intractable problem at the cellular level. (Nature)

• Everyone wants to have a smaller carbon footprint, but rich people are especially bad at estimating how big theirs is. (Anthropocene) (Paper)

• Truly fascinating: Some Chemical Engineers put together a little startup that turns essentially worthless rock into three different useful materials (including a battery ingredient) with zero waste. (IEEE Spectrum)

• Matter and antimatter annihilate each other on contact; this is known. At the instant of the universe's creation, all the matter and antimatter should've destroyed each other and left an empty cosmos; obviously this didn't happen because somehow there's more matter than antimatter. Why? Why, though? The Scientists are getting closer to the answer. (Science Alert) (Paper)

• Newly-discovered ancient Peruvian city just dropped. (~$The Art Newspaper)

• Sounds like Elon's new AI pals are about as mature as you'd expect. (TechCrunch)

• I'm just going to put the headline here on the table and walk away: "Why do ageing rates vary by country? Massive study says politics play a part: Social inequality and the decay of democratic institutions are linked to accelerated ageing — but education seems to slow the process." (Nature)

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:

Reader Neal says this one is "an electro neo-ska album. Best listened to after taking cocaine and painting tiny warhammer figures."

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)!