calibrating the series finale scale

May 20, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wishes to thank Carly Rae for dropping a new album in this, our time of need. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway109 - Proto Health Goth"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Marri (@marri) unearth several solid ideas for the betterment of civilization along with a truly tantalizing D&D notion."I really do want someone out there to investigate this D&D idea and get back to us, because we are about it, and you'll be too once you've listened to it.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 7-11This one's gonna be something special. I'm serious when I say we've finally perfected the setup and running of Instant Band Night to maximize throughput and variety, so this one should be can't-miss whether you're there to play or just watch the acts with your friends! All the details are here; check it out (and don't forget to invite everyone you know) (EVERYONE) [gary_oldman.jpg]. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Not much to tell you about this week, folks, what with the cold (see below), but I will say that on a scale of TV show finales, which I calibrate thusly:1: Battlestar Galactica (a hideous travesty)10: Star Trek TNG (essentially perfect)then Game of Thrones was like a 3.5 or so, shading into 4 territory. How many other shows have really nailed their landings, though? Let me know your thoughts, but no spoilers in case I ever get around to watching whatever you're talkin' bout. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Last week, Quentin brought home the second cold to rip through the whole family. This time, it seemed to hit me the least hard, Quentin himself only a little harder, and Mavis the hardest. Each of us has our own box of tissues. I actually had to go to Target specifically to get more, because we were in serious danger of running out. Now we just have to deal with the cough.What can I tell you about that isn't related to matters microbial? Quentin's starting to show interest in scrawling on paper with various tools (markers, crayons, ergonomic toddler crayons that look kind of like deformed candy), although he doesn't press hard enough with the crayons to make much of a mark, and he thinks the caps of the markers should also leave trails, which given how colorfun they are is honestly kind of hard to argue with from a baby-logic standpoint. At 1.5yo, I'm aware he probably counts as a toddler now, but look: he's my baby until he tells me he isn't. At some point it seems like kids take issue with being called a "baby" and demand to be called something else, but Quentin hasn't done that yet, so there's still time.The cleaners are coming tomorrow, so I'm very curious to see if they find the Missing Objects of the Week: the orange foam baseball doesn't seem like it'd be very hard (but who knows, since it's eluded us for probably a month), but the + sign from the fridge magnet set is probably halfway to Cygnus A by now. I still haven't had the time to build the tool I need to retrieve the 4 from his fridge magnet set from under the fridge itself, but I can feel the time drawing near. The prophecy will be fulfilled. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • It's going to sound like a parody of millenial whining (which isn't even a thing) to you at first, but this little editorial on how annoyingly hard it is to eat healthy actually has a point, I think. (The Outline) 

  • What in the balls: we've fucked up our estimate of how old the universe is. Now what? (NBC News) 

  • All possible respect to Robert F. Smith not just for paying off the Morehouse class of 2019's student loans, but throwing down an unmistakable gauntlet for every other rich person giving a commencement speech this year. (WaPo) 

  • I'm in favor of eating invasive species as long as they're tasty. (Vice) 

  • Gonna let the headline do the talking on this one: "We froze the salaries of 20 executives – and it improved the lives of 500 employees." (Guardian) 

  • If there's something freaky going on in your skin up to a depth of about 1mm, you might eventually be able to just get it laser-zapped without anyone busting out a scalpel. (U of British Columbia press release) 

  • At least in the UK, it looks like teachers can predict student success just as well as test scores. (King's College London via EurekAlert) 

  • Your excellent longread of the week is this one on the civil war being fought inside Google. (Fortune) 

  • I'm putting this in mostly for the picture, which is amazing: 99M-year-old amber with tiny coastal creatures trapped inside. (Chinese Academy of Sciences HQ via EurekAlert) 

  • Universal translator! Universal translator! Universal translator! (TechCrunch) 

  • Escaped pet parrots are now chillin' in 23 US states. (U of Chicago Medical Center via EurekAlert) 

  • Well, at least we're not imagining that the news has become more polarized. (Nieman Journalism Lab) 

  • Did any of the fucking brain geniuses at any TV networks think to do some research on how many subscriptions to streaming services the average person is willing to put up money for? I topped out at two, and I cancelled the second one the instant Star Trek: Discovery finished. I'm content to wait out this current period of insane proliferation and pick it back up when everything collapses back into one or two main services. That's not the main point of this article, but I wanted to know if anyone else out there is with me. (AV Club) 

  • I'm not in a whole lot of group chats; am I ............ missing out? (NYMag Intelligencer) 

  • Twitter is taking baby steps toward being less of a hellscape through the magic of design. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • I just read about this Natasha Tynes thing on Tumblr and assumed it happened ages ago and nothing came of it in the end -- turns out there is joy in the universe after all, and we can share in it together. (The Root) (WaPo) 

  • I like phage therapy as a concept, and am interested in seeing whether phage/host matching can be accelerated with automation and big data and all that, but I also don't ........... fully trust it? Like I wonder if the bacteriophages will just turn against our own bodily cells and wreck our shit if we're not careful? Am I just prejudiced against viruses? (Vox) 

  • Climate change communication is evolving. (NYT) 

  • NASA wants to put a woman on the moon, and the mission is called Artemis. Let's do this. (The Verge) 

  • Here's a fascinating redesign of the grocery receipt. (Fast Company) 

  • Foxconn hasn't done shit with those buildings it bought in Wisconsin; somebody get President Good Deals on the line. (The Verge) 

  • Apple-picking robots are actually rolling out in Washington. (GeekWire) 

  • Brain zapping is really starting to look like it might be a thing. (NYT) 

  • The owner of the restaurant that declined to serve Sarah Sanders has a nice writeup of the fallout a year later. (WaPo) 

  • This is something I've been wondering about: how exactly do antibiotics kill bacteria, and is there a way to tune, elaborate, or mutate those methods? Machine learning is helping to figure that out. (MIT News) 

  • VR is being studied as a component of depression treatment. Makes sense to me, honestly. (STAT) 

  • Disaster response teams need better intel about hazards at the sites where they're needed, and that's where squishy robots come in! (Popular Mechanics) 

  • Looks like adventure playgrounds are starting to gain traction, and I for one am in favor. (NYT) 

  • God damn, can you imagine a train that goes 249mph? (Ars Technica) 

  • Here's a highly persuasive argument for friend portability, AKA the reason quitting Facebook for real is so fucking hard. (TechCrunch) 

  • Everybody look at this Bentley with tank treads. (Popular Mechanics) 

  • Nobody needs to tell me about the goddamn slingshot spider; I am aware. (Science)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some new and exciting words I put together out of the letters on the fridgeBRAULDYSLOPHIENTCRUBE 

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.