essentially victimless crimes

February 25, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's thankful for both Photoshop and MSPaint this week; you'll know why soon enough. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway99 - Co-Host Spectacular Part 1"Jon (@ferociousj), guest co-host Kelly (@enthusiosity), and special co-host guest Besha (@besha) unearth ideas for businesses, art, and at least one (1) grift along with a surprisingly useful dating gambit."I had this notion to put the show's actual co-host on as a guest, with the most prolific guest co-host to help, and it was great. Also, I still maintain that pulling grifts on MAGA idiots is essentially a victimless crime; that money was going to go to something racist anyway -- shouldn't it go to us instead??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 9: PI DAYI know you know about it, but the people who follow me on Twitter and Instagram are about to witness the power of this fully armed and operational amateur flyer design I've cooked up; there may be more than one, tbh. You newsletter folks were warned first.Eventbrite // Facebook 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.And now it's time for ✨🎃JoN's MeDiA wAtCh NeWz🎃✨No spoilers or anything, but True Detective s03 turned out to be pretty good. Way to steer out of the s02 doom spiral, folks. Also, it's gonna be March next week, which brings us one month closer to the Detective Pikachu movie. I still can't believe there are people out there who think fuzzy Pikachu is weird -- were you expecting some kind of neoprene-like texture? Like a wetsuit? That's madness. Madness! Actually, 2019 is going to be an insane goddamn year for nerd movies: Captain Marvel! The fourth Avengers! Another good Spider-Man one! The last Star War!! Surely this is a fever pitch that can't be sustained, right? 2020 will be a year when we all get kind of a breather? Maybe just one or two nerd movies and that's all? Given what we know about how capitalism works, that sounds right, I think. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin is now pretty much over his cold, except he's been left with a cough that seems to mostly pop up at night (mostly), though we do hear it from time to time during daylight hours. We've got a humidifier running in his room, which helps, but yeah: coughing. I mean, I'm still coughing, so it's not like we can be surprised, it's just too bad to see him carrying on the family tradition, as it were. Coughs: they're the worst.Quentin, of course, remains the best. He's become a fiend for elbow macaroni tossed with ground beef and simple tomato sauce, as well as steamed vegetables of all kinds (particularly when tossed with butter). Great news for healthy eating, but also for just making a mess of his hands and face and hair, which I wouldn't have any other way -- I want that on the record. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Jesus. Read this look into how Facebook's content moderators actually live. (The Verge) 

  • A citizen scientist found a truly ridiculously old white dwarf star with rings around it. But why don't all white dwarfs have rings, come to think of it? Don't make me become an astrophysicist, people. (NASA/Goddard via EurekAlert) 

  • There's a contest on right now for kids to design a new Arecibo Message; leaving aside whether it's a good idea to let a kid do that, is it even a good idea to send a message into space at all? (Vox) 

  • There do exist rich people who are at least somewhat human. (NYT) 

  • It may sound weird, but up until now, nobody really knew why zebras have those stripes. Now there's a theory! (Plos One) 

  • If we can pinpoint the exact physical mechanism by which a bacterium defends against a particular antibiotic, does that mean we can do something about it? Please say yes? (McMaster U via EurekAlert) 

  • The Brookings people have some words of warning for politicians re: the uproar over everybody's tax refunds getting fucked with. 

  • A conversation with a true bioaltruist who agreed to be deliberately infected with malaria so data could be gathered -- they do this a lot, it turns out, and they pay reasonably well, and so far nobody's died. Okay! (Vox) 

  • How about an interview with Michelle Yeoh for Elle's "Legends" issue? 

  • What makes a good job? This rumination by a Harvard Business School grad who went to a reunion and observed some of his higher-paid fellow alumni absolutely hating their lives is at turns facile and reasonably insightful. (NYT) 

  • Seth Shostak has some thoughts for us on the Drake Equation. (SETI) 

  • Did you know a fully-charged electric car can power a house for FOUR DAYS? Japan thinks it would be smart to make use of them during natural disasters. (Quartz) 

  • Where do you feel feelings in your body? It turns out we all might feel them in the same spot, although I would be interested to see if there are cross-cultural differences. (Curiosity) 

  • I'm going to go ahead and feel a modicum of hope after reading this piece on our new millenial Congresswomen. (Refinery29) 

  • Oh hell yes: who wants a highly satisfying longread on the current state of the search for exoplanetary life? (National Geographic) 

  • America’s Insanely Expensive Child Care Is a Serious Economic Problem. (Slate) 

  • Here's an interesting profile of the New York real estate developer behind the Hudson Yards project, a thing I didn't really know shit about until roughly three minutes ago. (NYMag Intelligencer) 

  • Time to read about indoor farming with a shockingly low waste output and gaze into the distance wondering about scalability. (Outside) 

  • I still find it ridiculous that harpooning space junk is considered a viable option for controlling it. Doesn't the impact produce more microscopic debris, which is also hideously dangerous? What am I missing here? (U of Surrey) 

  • Companies don't actually care about your privacy or security; here are some numbers that tell a story. (TechCrunch) 

  • Here's a goddamn fascinating read on mapping values to derive cultural profiles, hopefully in the eventual service of moving the needle on climate change. (Riki Conrey on Medium) 

  • I am a total sucker for oral histories of movies I love, but even so, this one for Office Space is still a good time. (The Ringer) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumBaby Problem, A Plunderous Riot 

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.