forward motion achieved

May 23, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants to thank everyone who puts together a progressive voter's guide for local elections 

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 not only 43 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings, but someone managed to slip past the perimeter and enter another lovely review, which I only just saw now! Whoever you are, you have not only our thanks but our favor should we ascend to the throne. The rest of you: a new standard has been set!!Instant Band Night 15: TIME WARPFor real, though, we're doing this on July 14th. You must be vaxxed and boosted to get in the door. If you've got kids under 5 and they haven't been able to be vaccinated by then, maybe give this one a miss. Unless they already caught covid like my kids did a month and a half ago! 🤪 (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.I'm still in the ideation phase of considering a new suit, and now that Instagram has started serving me ads from suit makers, I haven't been able to shake the notion of another one with a Mandarin collar. Here's the thing, though: of the two suits I already own (both black), one of them also has a Mandarin collar. Do I risk becoming Mandarin Collar Guy? Considerations include:🤔 Maybe that's an acceptable level of guy; i.e. at least I'm not Waxed Curly Mustache Guy🤔 I do look really good in that type of jacket🤔 2 out of 3 suits with that collar, though: is that too muchI haven't made up my mind yet. Also, interestingly (or not), this is mostly the fault of ads from a company called French Crown which a quick Google has told me is based out of India. You couldn't find a more local brand, Insta ad algorithm? Maybe that doesn't matter anymore; I'm seeing a lot of Indochino ads, too, which I guess is technically Canadian. Fashion, folks: my knowledge in this area is highly deficient!! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix's top front teeth are definitely coming in. He still hasn't quite managed to fully kick the pre-midnight wakeup. These two things may be related? He's also figured out a rudimentary form of forward locomotion that looks sort of like a cross between crawling and getting ready to sit down on his butt. This has necessitated the purchase and use of a baby fence: a cheerfully-colored six-panel collapsible corral which I once called the Thunderdome in Quentin's presence; he subsequently referred to it as the Lightning Dome and you know what? That's a pretty good name, too, folks. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • An easy half-dozen Republican Senate candidates have been spouting racist "great replacement" garbage; they make mealymouthed denials about the specificity of it, but experts on hate speech don't buy it in the slightest. (AP) 

  • Related news: maybe don't go to Idaho. Or do go to Idaho with thousands of friends and start burning down some houses? I can't decide. (HuffPo) 

  • "The Real Dividing Line on Abortion" (538) 

  • Trying to assess your covid risk is still a madness-inducing task; try managing what you can instead. (The Conversation) Especially because risk of reinfection has gone up thanks to Omicron's children being a bunch of tricky motherfuckers. Great. ($NYT) 

  • Monkeypox, huh? Here's Ed Yong. (~$Atlantic) 

  • "The Madness of King Musk" (Ed Zitron on Substack) 

  • Really, though, what's going on with these UFO hearings? (Politico) 

  • The Scientists have run some tests on a wavelength of UV light that can wreck shop on airborne pathogens without hurting people. (Physics World) 

  • Hahahahaha WHOOPS: "Miami’s mayor backed MiamiCoin crypto—then its price dropped 95%" (Quartz) 

  • Cats may have been responsible for the extinction of more than 60 species and we need to take the job of curbing their feral populations seriously. (Hakai) 

  • Some Engineers have figured out a way to grant robots vision using wifi signals instead of visible light. (UCSD) 

  • Beep beep b'deepdeep beepbeepbeep HAUNTED DOLL WATCH: thieves stole valuable idols from an ancient Hindu temple and were so plagued by scary dreams that they brought the idols back. Or at least most of them. Sounds like they kept at least one, which I assume must not have been haunted. (Guardian) 

  • Women who hug their romantic partners for 20sec before doing something potentially stressful get measurably less stressed out, according to this study. (Paper) 

  • Are pet praying mantises really becoming a thing? (Pensoft) 

  • Let's be clear that whenever some bullshit crypto nonsense implodes and some of us cheer, it's because we're rooting for the entire concept of cryptocurrency to die faster so that fewer poor people will get suckered into it in the first place. (Ed Zitron on Substack again) 

  • This week's Thing That Popped Up Because Of Tumblr is the Wikipedia page for species that were presumed extinct but then popped up again out in the world. (Lazarus taxon) 

  • A British study concluded that basically everyone in the country is lying about how much food they eat, to the tune of roughly three cheeseburgers a day. Probably isn't just limited to the UK, I imagine. (U of Essex) 

  • Speaking of cheeseburgers, this story's pretty good. (CTV News) 

  • Looks like dolphins have figured out how to use specific coral species to develop a skincare routine. (Cell Press via ScienceDaily) 

  • [pounds fist on table] Goddammit I LOVE LIBRARIES (Civil Eats) 

  • Some Engineers have built a working supercapacitor from cheap materials that can absorb CO2 while it charges. (U of Cambridge) 

  • Has the BLM movement had any impact on cops killing people? The trouble is we can't anwer that question accurately unless we have the data. (Undark) 

  • The Scientists are still trying to work out the discrepancy between the expected measurements of the Hubble constant and what they're actually seeing, and one of the new theories involves a mirror universe of ghost particles overlaid on top of ours that we can't see or interact with aside from gravitational effects. (U of New Mexico) 

  • Let's all learn a new word: a new idea for an antimicrobial coating for medical devices involves something called zwitterionic materials. (UCLA) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumBob Goblin, All The Ways This Has Already Gone Wrong(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think one or all of these bands sound 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.