Captain Picard won't save you

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, your weekly window into whatever's on my mind. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.One of my favorite friends moved down to southern California this week after many a long year here in the Bay. Rude! Although not really: she got a job writing for videogames after working very hard for a very long time to break in, so I'm tremendously happy for her. Kate's great, you guys. In celebration of her greatness, I'm listing all seven of the podcast episodes in which she's appeared thus far, either as guest or guest host. To listen to them all would instantly upgrade your mind by at least 5 degrees.37 - Oh, It's THAT Guy35 - Mario Theme Park10 - Contains One Jeopardy! Story7 - Skittle Vintner6 - The Sword Plan3 - Hella Rocks in Space1 - Buy My Book, I'm Dead 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Excerpt from a conversation held in Slack a week or so ago:

In case any of you had any doubts that me and my nerd pals are at all going to change when we enter dadhood (the friend in this conversation entered the Babydome some years ago). The question whose answer I was attempting to discover was: what are the actual tough years of childrearing? One baby expert I know says 1.5-2.5 is the worst; another thinks it's basically 0-5. On one level or another, I know it's really down to every individual child/parent, but I wonder if some useful trend would peek out of the numbers if enough data were gathered. I should ask my own mom what she thinks my worst year was. That's knowledge every child needs to find out from whoever raised them, right? 

Fascination Corner

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

• Can someone point me to research that's been done on the rate and survivability of viral mutation before we go making phage therapy a thing? Like: how often do viruses mutate, and how often do they survive said mutations? Is there even a way to estimate that?

• Bloomberg thinks Millennials Will Aspire to Elected Office, Not Startups. As a person who apparently sits on the cusp between Gen X and Those Darn Millenials, I really hope this turns out to be true because all previous generations clearly fucked up bad, and we need them to save us.

• You know you want to read an in-depth oral history of the invention of the Doritos Locos Taco. Don't try to deny it!!

• Even just the URL of this scathing review of Ivanka Trump's book is worth it, though I do admit I had to look up what Taylorism was. The rest of the review is [that gesture chefs make where they kiss the bunched fingertips of one hand and spread them with a flourish].

• It's time for a longread on the gig economy from the New Yorker. No, really.

• Get a look at this guy's DIY Lego-sorting machine! How else are you gonna deal with two metric tons of the stuff?

• An astrobiologist came up with some pretty decent refutations of all the common reasons we usually give for why aliens would want to invade Earth. It's good, but he left a couple out that I don't know if I wanna get into right now; maybe some other time.

Looky Here

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway40 - Ragequit Simulator"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Yuri (@ync) improve a mystery idea, touch on the ultimate employment opportunity for actors, and uncover a surefire way to terrorize Doctor Who fans."Everyone who listened to episode 38 knows Yuri's great already, but she proved this yet again by almost immediately improving upon an idea that I at best only about one-quarter-remembered.You can subscribe using:iTunesRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou 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 albumThe Large and Angry Ghosts, Out of the Hilltops and Into Your Homes 

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.