Franco forecasting

October 15, 2018

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's still happy to accept new music recommendations if you've got 'em. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway85 - Lateral Criminal Thinking"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Chris (@rdesign) discover highly promising ideas for stories, weaponry, foods, and a 10/10 reality television pitch."We brought my college pal Chris Rugen back for another episode since we lost one of his to technical difficulties, and this one does not disappoint; it's a shame the TV show idea can't ..... well, you'll see once you hear it. Just trust me on this one.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 7: GenerationsUnder a month away!! Reminder that this will be an unofficial celebration of Quentin's birthday even though Quentin himself will not be in attendance, as this is past his bedtime. Cake! A rendition of "Happy Birthday" captured on video! Your presence is requested.Also, you know, Instant Band Night itself. What's that, you ask? Instant Band Night is a party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot.(1)The first rule of Instant Band Night is: 👏 YOU 👏 DON'T 👏 HAVE 👏 TO 👏 PLAY 👏 AN 👏 INSTRUMENT 👏 TO 👏 ATTEND 👏 (2)The second rule of Instant Band Night is: We guarantee you (the audience) an astonishingly excellent time.(3)The third rule of Instant Band Night is: Invite your friends!!!!!!!Here's what happens:1. The stage has a drum kit, guitar, bass, keyboard, and mics.2. We draw names out of hats to make instant bands that get 7 minutes in the green room to plan a 5-minute set.3. A hat-drawn artist will also take the stage alongside each band to draw their gig poster on a meeting room easel pad.Come play or come watch; you'll have fun either way! Bring your people, crack a beverage: let's do this.Thursday November 8507 55th St 946098p$5/personBYOB21+Forward this to anyone you think would have a good time there, or use these Facebook and Eventbrite links if that's more your thing. Thanks!* * *  w e ' l l * s e e * y o u * t h e r e * * *F.A.Q.Q: Do I need to be a musician to show up?A: No. Absolutely not. Hell no. Come see the show and have a good time; you don't have to get onstage.Q: I'm a musician; am I guaranteed a slot in a band?A: We literally draw names written on slips of paper out of coffee cans, so there's a chance you may not be called; in a purely mathematical sense, it's a function of how many musicians of each type show up that night (there are five musician cans -- DRUMS, GUITAR, BASS, VOX, MISC -- and one can for artists who'll be picked to draw the bands' gig posters). We say: surrender to the spirit of random chance, or maybe slip the MC a bribe of some sort.Q: Do I have to be an amazing musician to throw my name in a can?A: Probably not. Your band's only gonna be onstage for 5 minutes, anyway; how bad can you possibly be?Q: I play an instrument other than what'll be onstage, like the sax or trumpet. Can I bring it?A: Hhhheeeeeelll yyyeeeessssss you can bring it. PLEASE DO. We had a guy bring a bassoon once, and he rocked the living shit out of it -- and, by extension, us. Woodwinds and brass, which tend not to need extra amplification for a space of this size beyond being pointed vaguely at a mic, are most welcome. If your instrument requires an amp, that's cool, but you should get in touch with Jon about showing up early for setup.Q: Do I have to pick my cover tune beforehand?A: Listen. You and your band (who you've JUST MET) have 5 minutes onstage to do whatever the hell you can think of in the 7 minutes prior to walking up there. You wanna try to pick a cover everyone can agree on? Great. You wanna try writing something new? Fantastic; it can definitely be done. You wanna pick a key and tell each other to just fuckin' wing it up there? You are a RAGING PSYCHOPATH and we love it. We'll see you in 7; get in the green room!!!!Q: What does BYOB stand for?A: We don't sell drinks at Instant Band Night, so you gotta bring your own. Get a cheap sixpack of something. Maybe a bottle and some cups. We're not here to godmod how you get down.Q: Is this in the East Bay?A: It is. Do not be alarmed: it's within walking distance of MacArthur BART, and as a bonus, you get to tour Oakland's version of the Mission on your way over. Or you could just take a Lyft from SF (or the BART station if you fancy). Got a car? Drive on over; parking around the East Bay Community Space is pretty simple. You can do this. We believe in you. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.A billion years ago when I started my actual personal Tumblr, I made a deliberate choice that my tagging system would be near useless; I don't know why I did this. Literally every post is tagged "nonsense", and the reblogs are tagged "reblogs", and that's about it. However, after a strange spate of dreams (technically nightmares) involving the xenomorph creature from the Alien franchise, I decided to log and tag them separately in an effort to track how often they were actually popping up. On a whim, I checked back in that tag and found something odd; check out the date on this one. James Franco was in Alien: Covenant, wasn't he?* Somehow my dreaming brain predicted his appearance in the franchise a full six years before it happened.* I ask because I have not and will not ever see it; I learned my lesson with Prometheus.**** Okay, technically I didn't really have to ask, because IMDB exists; let me hang onto my scorn. It's all I have. It's all I have!!!! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Parents-to-be, hear me: beware teething. The minute your kid starts to evince discomfort, get on a regular schedule of administering painkillers. Learn from my mistakes!!! This installment of #dadthoughts is short because of a reason. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Dogs actually do understand you, at least a little. (US News) 

  • It turns out if you find a bunch of people with good business ideas and just hand them $50K, odds are they'll do great and actually create jobs. (Quartz) 

  • Did you know about the Billion Oyster Project? Well, now you do. (NPR) 

  • One Silicon Valley investor calls the entire setup "an enormous multivariate kind of Ponzi scheme" and explains why he got the fuck out. (CNBC) 

  • Your longread for the week is this CB Insights brief on the state of and strategies to counteract memetic warfare, otherwise known as fake news, computational propaganda, and all that other great stuff. (CB Insights) 

  • A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine details a strategy for looking for life in the universe. I haven't read it yet -- it's almost 200 pages -- but I'm damn well gonna (NAS press release) 

  • Someone tried to make yet another dating app for Trump supporters, and its user database was broken into on the day of launch. Check out the screenshot of their dumbass website: they had the gall to put a stock photo of an interracial couple on the front page. (TechCrunch) 

  • Jesus: not only do the two major sides in American politics disagree, they don't even agree on what the goddamn issues are. (Vox) And of course, the one thing liberal and conservative ideologies do enshrine may be destroying the fabric of the nation. Great. (New America) 

  • I feel like I've heard the case for making cities out of wood before, but it really is goddamn fascinating. (Nautilus) 

  • It's becoming increasingly clear that one of the true killer apps of AR is helping workers understand how to put things together, like spaceships. (MIT Technology Review) 

  • FUCK: the surface of Europa is a lot more jagged than we thought. The robots we send really, truly need to be incredibly badass autonomous pilots. (Gizmodo) Or maybe they just need to move like amoebas? (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • If I had stupid rich person money, there's no way anyone would be able to talk me out of a personal submarine, especially one that can go half a mile down. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • Mental health tip: turn off damn near all your push notifications. (Quartzy) 

  • An exploration of the ethics of self-automating your job. (The Atlantic) 

  • There's an interesting trend afoot in distributed restaurants that I had only the vaguest inkling of before I read this. (TechCrunch) 

  • Psilocybin has been recommended for medical use. (NYT) 

  • Climate change actually exacts a measurable psychological toll; if only we could be more like one of the Nobel Prize winners for economics. (Anthropocene) (Quartz) 

  • Taylor Swift caused a spike in voter registration with her Instagram endorsement. Hey, other popular musicians: please also do this. We need all the help we can get to counteract Kanye. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Snoop Dogg Is The Lifestyle Guru We Need Right Now: hard to argue with, honestly. (Quartzy) 

  • The Fyre Festival guy got six years. What I want to know is what happened to Ja Rule in all of this? Was he just a dupe? Is that worse than having been in on the scam the whole time? (NYT) 

  • Why Can’t Democrats Get Angry? (Slate) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumFull Stack Demon, Get to the Back of the Line 

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.