face the future and hit the gas

June 08, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's still here as long as you are. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayNo new episode this week. Catch you next week!If you're looking for something to distract you from [waves vaguely around self], you could load up Apple Podcasts and rate us ✨✨✨✨✨ before diving in -- the back catalog is deep and there's no in-jokes to trip up on.Instant Band Night 15: POSTPONEDJuly 9th is looking increasingly untenable, quite frankly, as does September (see the Fascination Corner below for some relevant links), but I haven't had time to update the event page yet. I will, though. I will!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.This started as just an item in Fascination Corner:Here are 8 ideas on how to reform policing that were recommended four years ago and didn't happen, probably because they'd actually work. (Vox)Note that these are different from the 8 Can't Wait campaign, which also has good ideas.That was where the week started. But:On the other hand, we could just defund the fuckers. (~$Atlantic)The Minneapolis City Council is apparently serious about this!!!! (The Appeal)It's a pretty idea, but what would it actually look like? (Mother Jones)Honestly the real answer to "what would it actually look like" is basically "the suburbs," as has been pointed out. Just sayin'. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin is big into repetition right now, in that there's a core set of stories he really wants us to tell him over and over that includes but isn't limited to: 

  • The water cycle

  • The story behind a small Instax photo of me on a couch in our Parisian AirBnB on our honeymoon that hangs on our wall

  • The story of my college band (really just a list of personnel)

  • The story of my other band (ditto)

But the prime story, the one he still wants to hear every night before bed, is the one that began as a retelling of Each Peach Pear Plum before mutating somewhat. Quentin calls it "The Whole Story," and the outline goes like this:Once upon a time:

  • There was a boy with a rainbow heart, whose heart turned his glum town into a place full of colors.*

  • Meanwhile out in the countryside, Tom Thumb decided to read a book up in his favorite peach tree.

  • While he was reading, three Romulans appeared on the ground below him and asked where they were.

  • Tom Thumb told them they were on Earth and invited them to a plum pie picnic with all his friends.

  • On the way there, they saw a happy bulldozer across the road whose scoop was full of dirt.

  • At the picnic, everybody met the Romulans and shared pie and told stories, and they were all happy to be together in community.

  • After everyone was finished, the birds and mice and shy bunnies got to eat the crumbs out of the pie dish.

By request and ritual, Mavis tells Quentin the Whole Story literally every night before he goes to bed, varying the pace by adding dialogue or details (Tom Thumb's experience of being up in the peach tree, the walk to the picnic, etc) so she won't get completely tired of it.** Will Quentin? All available evidence points to no, at least not anytime soon; I'm okay with that as longas Mavis is.* Mavis's office did a Kid Activity Day several weeks ago that involved Drag Queen Storytime, and the book about the kid with the rainbow heart -- which Quentin saw exactly once -- apparently made an indelible impression, because this element got added very quickly to the Whole Story and cannot be skipped.** I would happily volunteer to sub in, but Bedtime Quentin in no uncertain terms prefers to have the Whole Story told by his mama while they sit and rock together in her rocking chair. I've told it to him from the rocking chair on occasion before naptime, which has a much faster/looser ritual. 

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.These protests feel different; here's why. (Vox) 

  • I used to live in Pilot's Row, the Presidio neighborhood literally right next to the Golden Gate Bridge, and I loved it very much. I strongly suspect I would be going mildly nuts right about now from Weird Hollow Bridge Tunes, given that wind through the Golden Gate Channel is pretty much a given at all times and how did the designers of these new railings not take that into account. (KQED) 

  • "How to Talk to Relatives Who Care More About Looting Than Black Lives" (Vice) 

  • What are the chances of Congress actually being able to do something about, you know, all this? (Lawfare) 

  • They already covered this in a Mythbusters episode, but it turns out cussing really does raise your pain threshold. (Ars Technica) 

  • Kpop fans made the Dallas PD's snitch app unusable; good for them. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Good on Tinder users, too, for driving useful donations. Fuck Tinder the company for banning them for doing it. Tentatively unfuck Tinder the company if this statement turns out to have some follow-through, though. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • 200 million eggs go to waste every year; what if you could make a spray coating out of them that keeps produce fresh longer, shields it from microbes, and washes off with water? (Rice U) 

  • "What Facebook doesn’t understand about the Facebook walkout" (The Verge) 

  • Surprising no one, Twitter treats Trump differently than the rest of us; the latest proof comes from an account that simply repeated his tweets word-for-word and got suspended. (Ars Technica) 

  • Solar geoengineering might make the weather worse in lots of ways, just FYI. (MIT) 

  • There's some hope that mealy-mouthed both-sides-ism from major news outlets might someday be on the outs. ($NYT) 

  • If you want to see people and still remain safe, the math says "social bubbling" is the best way to do it: pick some people to see, and then everybody agrees to hang out with just those people and nobody else. (MIT Technology Review blog) (PDF of paper) 

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging is giving us an interesting look at where psilocybin's effect in the brain takes place -- turns out it's in what we think might be the place where our sense of self lives. (Johns Hopkins) 

  • 511 epidemiologists were asked when they were going to start doing various activities; here's the breakdown. I have to say waiting a year to hug a friend is ........ not optimal. ($NYT) 

  • People are generally motivated to be kind, at least according to this 700-subject study. (Ohio State) 

  • Uhhhhhh: scientists just developed an antibiotic that seems literally impossible for bacteria to develop resistance against. (Princeton) 

  • Should we start treating companies like Amazon as nations? (Tortoise) 

  • Researchers in Florida -- Florida! -- have figured out a way to make color displays for electronic devices that use the same available-light principle as butterfly wings, freeing them from the need to self-illuminate. It's a first step, anyway. (U of Central Florida) 

  • Here's another answer to the Fermi Paradox that's yet another bummer! (Science Alert) (PDF of paper) 

  • Superhydrophobic materials would be great for a lot of reasons, but nobody's been able to make a coating that sticks right ........ until now?? (Aalto U) 

  • I would love to know if these synthetic red blood cells -- which can do more than just ferry oxygen around, apparently -- can be mass-produced, and also what happens to them once they've been in the bloodstream for a while. (American Chemical Society) 

  • Otters in Singapore are going buckwild thanks to the quarantine. (Yahoo News) 

  • 'Oumuamua being made out of hydrogen ice would explain a lot of its weirdness. Hydrogen ice is apparently a thing? (Space) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumThe State of Nature, I Stand Here Drowning 

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.