You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 35: THE 35TH ONE

We're about a month and a half out from the best possible way to spend your Thursday night if you enjoy hearing or making music and/or really like surprises. Mark your calendars for March 12 and prepare for another series of onstage explosions of creativity and joy with the best audience in a 50mi radius!!!!!

✨🪩✨
March 12 2026
6p
$13
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

I'm cooking up some new weird little guys for the shop already, but did you know there are now enough purchases for the reviews down at the bottom to constitute some lovely little reads? It's nice beyond description to know that these things I'm making have found homes with the right people. Go have a look; eagle-eyed viewers may notice a new bunny has snuck in there.

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after four+ 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.

It's occurred to me that some of you might not know that I actually do write for a living, and in the age of the various flavors of The Machine there are still some kinds of writing it can't do (and other kinds of writing that need to be done if you are going to use The Machine). Take a look around your office for a sec and then open this deck and see if anything in there resonates; let's get you in the queue!!

#dadthoughts

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

Something I have got to get a goddamn handle on is stressing needlessly over some mixture of time and focus. The kids are getting to the age where they can sit at the table and talk at each other seemingly endlessly about Pokemon or Kirby while ignoring their meal, and at some point I always feel like I have to intervene and tell them to please eat, eat your lunch, eat it, it's time to eat, fellas. And I almost certainly don't have to. Right? They'll eat eventually, won't they? It'll just take a thousand years. But most of the time it's not like we're in a hurry, either: there's no schedule. Admittedly, it would be stupid to let dinner go on for so long that we run right into snacktime and then head upstairs to get ready for bed. But that hasn't happened too terribly often, at least not so much that I should regularly feel some kind of way about how fast a given meal is going. Relax. At the very least I should really try to see what happens if I sit back and say absolutely nothing — but do I announce what I'm doing, or just try it and see how it goes? Feels risky, like they might not eat anything (Felix in particular is a shockingly light dinner eater as-is), but I guess that's what experimentation is for. What goes on in your house when it's mealtime?

Recipe Nook

I'm skipping the "choose one of the three recipes I'm presenting to you" phase this month and going right to this chicken piccata pasta a friend of mine* passed me; I already do a nigh-version of this in that I'm always trying to double or triple the sauce so I can put it on the noodles I cook to go with the chicken, so this is just a nice way to get it all done for real.

*Btw, if anyone needs a genius program manager based out of Denver who can coax an entire conceptual ecosystem from nothingness, hit me up!!

Fascination Corner

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

• Don't — do not — get into a goddamn Tesla robotaxi. (Electrek)

• There's a coyote on Alcatraz right now living his true best life, although it's possible they may have to move him if he gorges himself too much on all the unprotected birds nesting there who never thought they'd have to deal with a damn coyote!! (~$SF Standard)

• Oh, now Dario Amodei is worried about the economic impact of rampant AI adoption? (Dario Amodei's personal website)

• That said, The Machine is starting to get sort of reasonably good at suggesting how to synthesize new molecules, which is a gigantic pain in the ass for The Scientists right now. (Nature)

• Sarah Jeong has a very good read for you on uhhh well the "Best gas masks: On tear gas, and what it means when the government uses it on civilians." Really truly, though, read it. (The Verge)

• Pair that with some very interesting reads from our compatriots on the literal front line: "The Noise Demonstrations Keeping ICE Agents Awake at Their Hotels: A Model from the Twin Cities" (CrimethInc) and "Crossing the Line: It Really Is Safer in the Front: Surrounding the Portland ICE Facility" (CrimethInc again)

• Last word on this but it's a good one, on the Cookie Theory of Collective Action. (Snack Stack)

• The Jimmy Dubs has been giving The Scientists a look at the very early universe, and it's so baffling that now they're making theories about whole stars made of dark matter to try to explain what they're seeing. (Colgate U via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Now that's what I'm talkin' bout: two freshmen at Rice have created an interactive map of all the ICE activity around the country. (The Rice Thresher) (ICE Map)

• If this is what "soft" sales look like for that Melania documentary, we may all regard a cubic-inch sample of aerogel as having the weight and density of a 10lb sledgehammer. (Guardian) How is it, though? Prepare to be the opposite of astonished. (Independent)

• "Recreating the smells of history: Using chemistry, archival records and AI, scientists are reviving the aromas of old libraries, mummies and battlefields" (Knowable)

• The Scientists think they've figured out what caused last year's UK octopus bloom (which I'm only just now finding out about presumably alongside the rest of y'all) and warn there might be more coming. (The Conversation)

• It looks like vitamin B1 is the key to figuring out your poop schedule. (Science Alert) (Paper)

• The knowledge that ICE personnel are starting to feel bad about themselves should keep us all warm at night; I wonder if anyone's tracking suicide numbers for them specifically? (Independent)

• I'm putting this recipe in here because I've literally never heard of spice bag until this instant and I regard this as a structural failure of the information ecosystem at large. (Serious Eats)

• The Scientists suspect wolves in Alaska are starting to eat sea otters but haven't been able to catch them in the act yet. (URI)

• Some Engineers have worked out a way to etch metal surfaces to make them literally unsinkable, which in theory should scale to ship size. What. (U of R)

• Parker Molloy gives voice to something that's been bugging me for literally years: "This is Literally the Job: Political journalists need to stop pretending they don't know what Republicans are going to do." (The Present Age on Substack)

• A truly incredible Cambrian-era fossil site has been uncovered, yielding a staggering variety of specimens previously unknown to science. (Science Alert)

• It's not as bad as The Scientists thought it might be, but it reeeeeally does seem like a bad idea to go ahead and mine those polymetallic nodules at the bottom of the ocean. (U of Gothenburg) (Paper)

• "What we get wrong about forgiveness – a counseling professor unpacks the difference between letting go and making up" (The Conversation)

• The Scientists have run the numbers and it looks like a used EV gives you the most savings over its lifetime of use! (UMich via EurekAlert) (Paper)

• Well we blew it on 1.5°C; now what? (Nature)

• Some Engineers have successfully tested an autonomous system of cooperating robots that can map and enter a cave, which will come in super handy if we ever want to put a base on the Moon. (U of Malaga via Science Daily)

• The Scientists have mouse-tested a promising way to treat cancer by activating the immune cells inside tumors, destroying them from the inside. (KAIST via Science Daily)

• Hamilton Nolan has words for us (and the rich) on what he calls "The Staircase of Oppression" that would be good to keep in mind. (How Things Work)

• "I Went to a Sleepaway Camp for Adult Women to Make Friends: It can be hard to form new relationships as an adult. Could Camp Social be the solution?" (Elle)

• NASA used The Machine (Generative Flavor) to plan a route for the Perseverance rover on Mars and it worked okay. (JPL)

• The Scientists are worried that we're causing all the wildlife in the world to kind of average out to a smooth global sameness in the advent of something they're calling the Homogenocene. (The Conversation) (Paper)

• What in the motherfuck are people doing with The Machine??? (Simon Willison's Weblog)

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 Mike says this one "is an experimental melodica/hurdy gurdy/bagpipe situation. The Plants May Change But The Garden Smells The Same is an album of grunge covers."

I still could use some more submissions to build out a notional Reader Submission Month for band/album/artwork combos! Feel free to send something in; just tell me how you want to be credited!

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 this page right here (which also has the archive)!