diversions aplenty(?)

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants to thank everyone who's been curating pictures for the Friend Gallery (explained here): A++ work all around, please continue 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayThe thing about having a 4yo and a baby who doesn't yet sleep through the night is that you can't put them in the same room together overnight, and it's also not possible to put yourself in the room with him without causing even more sleep complications. Long story short, we're sleeping in the office (the house's third and possibly actual master bedroom, considering it has the attached half bath) on the pull-out couch, which is also where my computer is, so the edit on the last episode we recorded (which admittedly was last year) still isn't quite complete. But it'll get there someday!As of the time of this writing, there are still 43 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings, plus howevermany wonderful reviews. You have the power to take us to 45 and beyond: you!!Instant Band Night 15: TIME WARPJuly 14th! The line must be drawn here and no further!! We WILL have an explosive celebration of musical creativity that must be seen to be believed, and you! will! be! there! (Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  r e t u r n i n g   i n   2 0 2 2  + ++ +  h a n g   i n   t h e r e  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.A question I find I've been struggling to answer is "What am I doing with the brief moments of time I get to myself in year 3 of the pandemic/year 1 of parenting two kids simultaneously?" This question is always asked in a well-meaning, casual way, and I always brain-lock for what seems like way too long before finding an answer.Because there are things that I'm doing! I think the reason I hesitate is that I fear the answer will either sound boring or simply hint that I'm losing my damn mind. Here, then, is something approaching a comprehensive catalog of the things I do when I get 5-30m to myself at odd points throughout the day or week: 

• Do the dishes. I've always found this to be a meditative activity, plus it just feels good to have the sink clear for whatever's next; this is undoubtedly a holdover from the Always Be Processing days of Quentin's infancy, but I think it's sticking around forever.

• Check my Slacks. I'm not on a lot of group texts, but I am in at least three different Slacks; there used to be more, but I think three is where my brain maxes out on its Slack capability. This is good and bad -- it enables me to keep up with three different groups of friends in a fairly comprehensive manner, but if I haven't got enough time to get away and look at a computer, none of that happens. Group chats would be easier since my phone is always on me, but perhaps less wide-ranging and active. I'm aware there's a Slack app; Slack on my phone is a suboptimal experience.

• Play a videogame. Honestly, this should just be "play Vampire Survivors," which I'm still getting a lot of mileage out of and would steadfastly recommend. Runs on this game can last up to half an hour, though, which I don't always get in uninterrupted chunks.

• Read. This I do most often if I'm able to eat lunch or breakfast by myself: new books, comfort reads, or cherry-picked material from the stack of New Yorkers that Mavis accumulates.

• Play with clay. This one I mostly do at night when I'm positive I won't be needed for anything urgently, because it makes my hands very messy. There's a shelf in the garage that's home to a slow but steadily-growing gang of weird little lawn ornaments and whatnots that I intend to send to friends. At some point I'm going to run out of people, at which point I might start selling these guys somewhere; stay tuned.

• Watch something. After the childs have been placed in their bed locations, Mavis and I often crash on the couch and watch something (Taskmaster, celebrity Bake Off, etc -- we also recently enjoyed both seasons of Starstruck), but sometimes when it's just me, I also like to watch things, although they're usually shorter offerings pulled from YouTube. Lately I've been getting a lot of satisfaction watching Simone Giertz build things, but there's also always old Monster Factory, which if you've never heard of it is a beloved series wherein two brothers try their hardest to make the ugliest custom videogame character possible.

I might be forgetting something, but I feel like that's probably close to 95% of whatever I'm doing when I'm not child-wrangling. I will eventually add "social time with friends" back into the mix, but when exactly is still up for grabs. I suppose there's no better time to do it than now while the fresh covid antibodies are still swirling up in there, huh? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We are beginning to receive encouraging signs that Felix's nighttime sleep might possibly be in the realm of potentially stabilizing. His current schedule looks more or less like this:7p: Put to bed~7-750p: Fall asleep somewhere in this area after 0-50m of screaming~930p: A 10-20sec interval of crying, followed immediately by more sleep~1030-1130p: Sometimes (but not always) a true wakeup that requires a bottle/nursing~330a: Sometimes (but not always) a true wakeup that requires a bottle/nursing~630a: Peacefully awake for the morningThat last bit is conjecture; all I know is that around the time Quentin usually wakes up, I wake up and check the monitor, and usually I find that Felix is already inspecting a paci or waving his arms around -- but (crucially) he's not crying or complaining in any way. There have been nights where he forgoes one (or even both!!!!) of his wakeups, which you'd think would make him a very hungry boy indeed come 630a, but for whatever reason, he remains placid and easygoing for a shockingly long interval until Mavis makes her presence known, at which point he remembers he wants milk. We remain grateful for the less-interrupted sleep. 

Fascination Corner

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

• BA.2 is now the dominant variant of the rona in the US. ($NYT) If you're over 50, get your second booster. (CNN) 

• "The US labor shortage is the deserved outcome of a systemic failure to value workers" (~$Quartz) 

• Why is everybody acting a fool out there? Experts weigh in. (~$Atlantic) 

• Your unsurprising news of the week is that climate change is going to fuck up supply chains worse than you thought (Yale Environment 360), and that the people in charge are actively avoiding doing the things they said they would to mitigate it (and time is running the fuck out). (Vice) 

• Somebody stole half a goddamn billion from a stupid crypto videogame and it took the people in charge almost a week to notice. This is a good writeup of the whole thing. (Ed Zitron on Substack) Speaking of which, Ed Zitron turns out to have been a good subscribe -- here's a meditation from him on the scam that comprises office culture. (Also Ed Zitron on Substack)  

• That Staten Island Amazon warehouse voted to unionize. Hopefully theirs is a model that can be exported to all the other ones!! (NPR) 

• The Scientists are wondering if it might be a good idea to put some structure around the notion of social media refactoring. (Nature) 

• How are things going down by Salesforce Tower? (SF Standard) 

• The Scientists have discovered that a few fish species can perform simple math with results good up to five; anything above that is hrair. (U of Bonn) 

• Here's a surprisingly in-depth look at a team trying to figure out how to make robots give good hugs. If this was an April Fool's prank, it was a surprisingly elaborate one. (IEEE Spectrum) (Paper) 

• At least somebody's thinking about how humans might handle food production in the aftermath of a nuclear winter. (Penn State) 

• What are the neurological effects of your first love? (Big Think) 

• The Scientists have written a new message they think is suitable for beaming into space at potential alien civilizations, which I'm starting to believe is a less-good idea with every passing year. (Vice) (Paper) 

• Let's start crumbling old tires into concrete already. (U of South Australia) 

• How to forgive someone who isn't sorry. (Vox) 

• "Why We Have the Uncontrollable Urge to Spill Secrets" (The Swaddle) 

• The Scientists have created a material capable of storing and releasing heat that can be incorporated into buildings to save energy. (Martin Luther U) 

• We might have a candidate for a universal flu vaccine on our hands, folks. (National U of Singapore) 

• Research indicates the kind of place you grew up in can influence how good your sense of direction is. (CNRS) 

• The Scientists have made an attempt to build a mathematical model that shows the best way to spread positive societal change. (U of Maine) (Paper) 

• Hubble has spotted a star that formed within the first billion years of the universe's lifespan. (NASA) 

• How do gig workers assert themselves when dealing with assholes? Is that even a thing? (Wharton) 

• The Scientists have discovered a fungus capable of controlling invasive crazy ant populations in Texas; conveniently, it only seems to like those specific crazy ants and nobody else. (UT Austin) While we're on the topic of fungus: while I enjoy the concept of radiotrophic organisms that could one day protect human space travelers, the apparent evidence that they developed this capability by incorporating melanin into their structure is .......... creepy for some reason. (Atlas Obscura) 

• Recordings from Mars indicate not only that sound travels at different speeds there -- not surprising, given the lower density of the Martian atmosphere -- but that there are different speeds for different frequencies of sound. (CNRS) 

• What stops people from being kinder? (BBC Future) 

• Having a really profound trip on psychedelics increases the likelihood that you'll attribute consciousness to a wider range of living and nonliving objects. (Johns Hopkins) (Paper) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some bandsPain TrailerUnaccompanied MinorLoyal Animal(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because now I'm curious) 

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.