California burrito check

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, your weekly window into whatever's on my mind. This one's going to have to do double duty; there won't be an issue next week due to my being on vacaaaaaation (hence no podcast either) -- but don't worry, I'll be back for the last week of June. Oh, I'll be back. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry. Driving in my car today, another way to frame my podcast occurred to me: we're digging around in an archive consisting of every single idea I've ever had for a solid decade, and there are hundreds of them that truly seem to take up the entire span between Genius and Complete Foolishness, for a variety of different reasons. But these are just one person's ideas -- mine. And we only have them because I wrote them down. Does everybody's mind contain the same number and variety of ideas in potentia? Is my archive just a scale model of the creative possibilities of the entire human race? What if what I'm really doing here is just poking at the boundaries of the human imagination? Would that make a good tagline? The current one, which is certainly accurate, is "A guest-guided tour through the junk drawer of one man's brain." But is it perhaps more inspiring to say "A reckless road trip along the boundaries of the human imagination" -- or is that just ridiculous and conceited-sounding? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment. How much the opposite of me is this kid going to end up being? Opinions around a recent table of friends at a bar were (perhaps not unexpectedly) split roughly 50/50 with anecdata about other friends whose kids were either a mini-them or some kind of mirror universe opposite. It's weird; I'm certainly something of an extrovert, but I also have moments of strong introversion when I'm at home and nobody else is around to tell (by design); I wonder which side of me this kid's going to pick up on. Somewhat reassuringly, the only kids who turned out to be true assholes were the ones whose parents were also assholes -- and that, at least, we are not. Right? This is honestly the biggest worry I have: that my kid is going to somehow turn out to be a major-league dick. How early will I be able to tell? Will I be able to distinguish Regular Toddler Bullshit from indications that my kid is going to be an asshole? More on this ... eventually. Who has thoughts? Knowledge to impart? My inbox, as ever, is open. 

Fascination Corner

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

• I think if I were king of America, I would gather its 50 richest people and grant them whatever truly ridiculous noble titles they wanted (which would appear on all official government documents including driver's licenses) in exchange for funding systems all over the country like the sewage recycling Washington DC is spinning up.

• Nobody has to worry about the machines taking over the world when they don't even understand Homer Simpson. Maybe we should prepare a stockpile of Homer masks just to be on the safe side.

• I'll be honest with you: the reason I've never really been enthusiastic about trying LSD is the risk of a bad trip and/or the rewiring of my personality, which I like just fine. It turns out trying to figure out bad trips is complicated. Who knew?

• I do find it at least vaguely reassuring that somebody out there is trying to figure out how to use AI to help poor people.

• I feel like it should be easy to make any Republican who claims to be a "fiscal conservative" sputtering mad just by uttering the words "Kansas Brownback experiment" to him, because that shit was a gigantic, obvious, flaming failure that nobody seems to be learning from except Kansans.

• Body armor based on the interior structure of conch shells is super effective? Of course it is. Is it just me, or is this sort of biomimicry science still basically in its infancy despite the fact that it seems to lead to rad insights most of the time? Why has this not been the hottest field of research for a solid decade, or am I just not paying attention to the right places?

Looky Here

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about. Idea Factory Giveaway 44 - Camerapeople of the Jersey Shore"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Felicia (@reelfeed) clash over proper burrito ingredients before delving into the behind-the-scenes magic of reality TV and at least one excellent party concept." In this episode we discover just who is and isn't a California burrito person. If you don't know what a California burrito is, listen and expand your mind. You can subscribe using:iTunesRSSStitcherGoogle Play Music You can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/ 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape. A band and their album The Many Mistakes of Narcissus, Garbage In/Garbage Out 

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.