everybody in the ornithopter

September 14, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that downloaded a manual camera app just to be able to take a reasonably accurate photo of the fucking orange sky we had to deal with last week. Those of you who live somewhere other than the West Coast, look at the blue sky above you and give thanks. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway147 - Non-Euclidean Dice"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Arlette (@arletterocks) reveal some exceptional consumer products and blogs of varying usefulness, plus a couple of video series that'd be great for wildly different reasons."Arlette's latest appearance delivers some quality booze notions and at least one kind of d6 that I would -- no kidding -- really like to see.We're tantalizing close to 35 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings in ye oldynne Apple Podcastes -- what else do you have to do but click around in there and leave a lovely review??Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberIt seems laughable to try to throw Instant Band Night without a proven vaccine in place. Let's see what's up in November 2021.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook* * s t a y   h o m e   / /   s t a y   h e a l t h y * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Jesus creeping Christ in the cornfield: plastic recycling is bullshit, it always has been, and the entire plastics industry has been collaborating since the mid goddamn 70s to dupe us into thinking it was viable at scale. (NPR) How much more of shit like this are we going to take before we all collectively decide we've fucking had it? What if we woke up tomorrow to discover the following post had been sent to every social media service by every person? 

To the C-level executives and boards of the following 100 companies: you have 24 hours to issue directives taking immediate and concrete action that will zero out your climate impact by 30 days from now, after which you will begin the implementation of clean energy. Should 24 hours pass without these directives being issued, we will declare war on you. You and only you. You will not be safe. We are your employees. We know your names. We know what you look like. We are tracking your location. You will not be safe. We live on this planet with you, and we are everywhere, because we are everyone. Collectively, we have every weapon, every tool and technology, knowledge of every poison and method of delivery. We are 6 billion sets of unblinking eyes. We are all committed to this mission. You will not be safe. Eat at a restaurant and your fellow diners or house staff will slit your throat. Shop at a store and you will be bludgeoned, strangled, beaten. Show your face in public for any reason and you will be spotted, chased, shot, thrown into traffic, drowned. Check into any hospital and you will not emerge alive. You will not be safe. We are literally everyone. We are literally everywhere. Hide and we will find you. Hire an army and we will infiltrate it. Seal yourself in a bunker and we will dig you out. And when you are dead, and your replacements take command of your companies, we will issue this same demand to them. If they do not comply, they will join you in death, and so on and so forth until your corporate structure answers us or is destroyed. We live on this planet, and we have determined that you and only you are standing in the way of its future. We will no longer tolerate this. Make the changes we require, or make peace with your maker.[list of the 100 companies that contribute to 70% of climate change]

Or is that too much? Compared to what? I'm just sayin'. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.One of the play concepts that's been getting a lot of mileage in our house is a shallow cardboard box with a bunch of dry rice in it ideal for little construction vehicles to drive around and dig up with their little scoops. Something Quentin discovered is that the back of the IKEA LILLABO front loader fits an upright cardboard toilet paper tube, which means the following procedure can be enacted:

  1. Put a cardboard TP tube upright into the back of the LILLABO front loader.

  2. Painstakingly fill it with as much rice as you can gather with your hands or with the help of various other construction vehicles present at the work site.

  3. Lift the tube up.

  4. Watch the mass of rice inside the tube suddenly bloom out of the tube's bottom as it lifts and spill all over the vehicle and its surroundings!

The sheer delight the last step gives Quentin is truly a spirit-lifter. A+ would recommend. You can get one of these shallow cardboard trays free with your next 24-pack of soda or water or something, but you'll have to also source a toddler who'll be turning 3 in November, which could be a great deal more complicated. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Ed Yong, never leave us. "America Is Trapped in a Pandemic Spiral" -- this one's free, folks. (Atlantic) 

  • Phosphine has been detected in the atmosphere of Venus in amounts that are not explainable by any chemistry we know aside from biological processes. Could that mean life exists in the clouds over there? Maybe! (Royal Astronomical Society) 

  • What'd happen if all personal data everywhere leaked all at once? (Gizmodo) 

  • People planted the mystery seeds. WHY DID PEOPLE PLANT THE MYSTERY SEEDS. (Vice) 

  • The current rona death toll in the US is sixty times that of 9/11. But we don't have anything like the national unity of grief we did back then. Why? This one's worth burning an Atlantic click on, folks. (~$Atlantic) 

  • Here's this week's "Facebook has had an appallingly disastrous effect on the world" read, and let me tell you, even for this particular genre, it's a fuckin' doozy. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Mice that were genetically engineered to be super buff got sent into space to see if they'd retain muscle mass; turns out yes. This is important because losing muscle mass in space is something we're very good at and haven't yet figured out how to stop completely. (AP) 

  • The universe's matter is spread out too thinly to satisfy the models we worked out. Shit?? (Quanta) 

  • Violence from extremist groups is only going to continue. The countermeasures this person imagines might stop it or at least slow it down don't sound like they'll be implemented anytime soon to me, but I suppose I could always be surprised. (The Conversation) 

  • Scientists have worked out a way to basically see through a wall of foam that might lead to a way to do the same for clouds and fog. (Stanford) 

  • This list of little ways to prepare for a pandemic winter is actually helpful. (Vice) 

  • Talk about an unbelievably shitty economy: this haunting read about people living in an abandoned motel in Florida will make you want to run out and hang every Republican policymaker you can find from the nearest lamppost. ($WaPo) It's especially frustrating given that clean energy jobs could do some real economic heavy lifting. (Brookings Institute) 

  • The Irish lacrosse team withdrew from the next international tournament so the team from the Haudenosaunee nations (who literally invented the sport) could play in their place. (CNN) 

  • A survey of 10M stars yielded no evidence of alien radio technosignatures, but take heart: 10M stars isn't actually all that many, and we've only been emitting radio for about 100 years ourselves. (Gizmodo) 

  • Mammal extinctions have increased by 1600x since about 129,000 years ago, and it's pretty much our fault, not climate shifts. (U of Gothenburg) The World Wildlife Fund is probably already aware. (BBC) But so: "Protecting half of the planet is the best way to fight climate change and biodiversity loss – we’ve mapped the key places to do it" (The Conversation) 

  • I didn't realize that the Pringles can is such a nightmare to recycle, but it makes sense; looks like they're trying to make it less of one. (BBC) 

  • It's sad that we've gotten to a place where this might actually be effective messaging: "What If Democrats Just Promised to Make Things Work Again?" (~$New Republic) 

  • The 2020 Comedy Wildlife Photography finalists are here. (Bored Panda) 

  • An examination of fish skeletons concludes that there may be as many as eleven currently extant species that are technically capable of walking. Watch out for these crafty little bastards, I guess? (Florida Museum of Natural History) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some bandsTerrible OrbThe Destructive ImpulseHeatripper 

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.