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greetings from a pasta heretic

greetings from a pasta heretic

January 13, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that really should've stockpiled those mini gingerbread men with the white fudge backing from Trader Joe's. Oh well; goodnight, sweet princes: I'll be reunited with you next Xmas season.

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI know there's supposed to be a new episode this week, but I have to level with you: I had a ton of work-related projects suddenly fall into my lap in the last week, and I had to prioritize those instead. Fear not for the podcast: there are at least two episodes in the can that I need to edit! I admit this! But hey, at least there's an extensive back catalog for you. Why not investigate it? Also, as long as you're there, feel free to lay down that ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and maybe leave a nice review! We'll shout you out in our next recording.Instant Band Night 15: NUMEROLOGYI have to tell you something about Instant Band Night XIV.If you don't already know, the deal with Instant Band Night is as follows: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 5 minutes in the green room to plan a 5-minute set.The green room has a number of tools to theoretically help bands with songwriting: cards from a creativity game specifically about music, a notebook for scribbling lyrics in, and various tables with numbered columns and dice to roll. There are also lightweight chalkboards for scrawling chord progressions on, and there's an easel set up in front of the stage for putting the chalkboard in a place where as many people as possible can theoretically see it.For Instant Band Night XIV, we shortened the green room time to 5m, partly for logistical reasons and partly to see what would happen.What happened was (a) nobody used the chalkboards, and despite therefore having nothing written down to refer to onstage, (b) all the bands were fucking incredible. Some of this might also have been down to my excellent drummer friend and stalwart setup warrior Brandon making use of a remote-controlled mixing board+iPad combo that allowed him to dial in the vocal and keyboard mix precisely for each group on the fly, but also there was just a shocking amount of talent in the room, which is specifically something I do not mandate. An attendee told me unprompted: "Some of these bands are better than opening acts for bands that I've paid real money to see." What a night! Seriously!Weirdly, the next one takes place on March 12, rendered 3/12 in numerical form, and as we all know, 3+12==15. That's some kind of cosmic coincidence at work, people, and I say we TAKE ADVANTAGE.🎶 PREPARE TO ROCK 🎶(or swing, or headbang, or jump up, jump up, and get down)(I would really love to see more weird rap, which I know is a hard ask for something that gets put together in 5 minutes, but there are workarounds I'd be happy to dispense to anyone who asks)Send everyone you know this link immediately:http://bit.ly/instantbandnight15 And/or invite your top 50 fun crew on Facebook

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Pursuant to last week's Medium Ramble about possibly heretical curry pasta, I have an update:It's fucking delicious.I had a strong suspicion it might be, and it turned out I was right. You should make this if you want tasty curry but for some reason don't want it to go on rice. Here's my recipe:YOU WILL NEEDTwo big potsINGREDIENTS

A pound of diced chicken breast
A brick of Golden Curry
A pound of pasta, radiatore if you can find it
An onion, diced
3 potatoes, diced
5 carrots, diced
A head of broccoli, diced
Somewhere between 2-4 cups of chicken broth (You could, of course, just use water instead of broth, but wouldst thou not like to live deliciously?)

Fill one pot with water and salt and put it on to boil.
Dice your vegetables.
In the other pot, cook your diced chicken.
Then throw the diced onion in there.
Break up the curry brick and throw that in there, too.
Pour in a cup of broth and stir until the curry brick is well and truly dissolved; you may have to throw another cup of liquid in.
Toss in all the vegetables.
Pour in more broth until everything is ALMOST covered; stir. (If you ran out of broth, just use water)
When the curry's boiling, bring the heat down to a lively simmer instead of a hopping boil.
Back to the boiling water pot: throw the pasta into the boiling water.
When the pasta's done, drain it and store it in the big pot.
Check the curry and see if your potatoes are done.
If your potatoes are done, pour the entire curry pot into the drained pasta pot, or v/v -- whichever pot is biggest.
Stir to combine and eat like some kind of out-of-control god-monarch of this Earth.

(You could probably make a vegan version of this by leaving out the chicken and using vegetable broth)(This makes a ridiculous amount of food, btw: share it with pals or freeze it for later consumption in single-serving portions)

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.My brother and his wife are very good at Quentin-gifting. Their latest was a simple flat stuffed koala that he hugged immediately, and was almost as immediately incorporated into the gang Mavis and I call the Crib Crew. The Crib Crew are the stuffed animals that Quentin has indicated he prefers be kept in his crib for sleep; they're his bedtime buddies, basically, and they are:BunnyDeerPenguinKoalaAdmittedly, he hasn't been very creative with the names, but he's only 2. What I find interesting is the slow expansion of the Crib Crew: at first it was just Bunny for a long time. Deer was a hand-me-down from our 7yo neighbor who was incorporated fairly quickly. Penguin was a surprise addition; Quentin's had Penguin for a while -- there are a lot of other stuffed buddies in his room that he interacts with less frequently, of which Penguin was one until he was abruptly called up to the Crib Crew a couple months ago seemingly out of nowhere. And now there's Koala. I wonder who the next addition will be, and how quickly it'll happen? Is it selfish of me to wish it'd be one of the Goth Snoopies? Or regular Snoopy, for that matter? There are signs that Bun-Bun, Quentin's first real stuffed pal, might be under consideration. Further updates as events warrant.

Fascination Corner

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

Fans of this section of the newsletter may also be edified by this book that just went up on ye Kickstarter: Neo Life: 25 Visions for the Future of Our Species. I have it on good authority that if you back it, you'll actually receive a product, unlike some other Kickstarters I'm sure we could all name. (Kickstarter)
It has come to my attention that not every single human on the planet has gotten hooked on the Bon Appetit Cinematic Universe, so here's an explainer (Jezebel); for those who already have, here's an old but still good interview with Claire (also Jezebel).
Robot dogs showed up forever ago with the Aibo; I guess it's time to give robot cats a shot. (TechCrunch) Actually, speaking of CES, you need to watch the video embedded in this one, if for no other reason than a corgi is involved. (TechCrunch)
How the fuck: "New study finds most Americans don’t really care about inequality." (~$Quartz) That article is especially galling because according to tests run by a game theorist, the existence of sufficiently rich people in a system ruins the chances of cooperation within that system. (Nautilus)
We could use abandoned agricultural land for actual conservation if we got our shit together. (Yale School of Forestry)
Sing it: "Low unemployment isn't worth much if the jobs barely pay." (Brookings Institute)
Researchers found a 100-million-year-old slime mold trapped in amber that was so well-preserved, it could be scientifically classified -- because it belongs to a genus that's still the fuck around. Slime molds, people. (University of Göttingen)
There's a theory that having a lot of diversity can actually speed the formation of consensus, and it turns out to be true; here's a highly technical paper about it that I only understood a percentage of. (Proceedings of the Royal Society)
Here are four pathways to changing the minds of climate deniers, even if they're not super well-explained. (Stanford)
Drugs show up in our wastewater; that's a problem. It's possible to clean the water, which is good, but it's expensive, which is bad. (U Buffalo)
Increasing the minimum wage by one (1) dollar during times of high unemployment produces a measurable decrease in the suicide rate. (Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health)
That "time well spent" thing didn't work at all; we spend even more time on our phones than before. Is that actually bad, though? (Recode)
There are enormous blobs of hot rock inside the planet, and nobody really knows what they're doing there. (Quanta)
A Japanese billionaire is giving 1000 people the equivalent of nine grand in yen to see if it makes them happier long-term. I suspect: highly probable. (Reuters)
Fusion power is hard. The newest(?) idea, blasting a pellet of fuel with a laser to compress it to fusion density and temperature, requires extremely precise control of said laser. Innovation: blast it with another laser also. (Osaka U)
A lot of microplastics enter wastewater through our washing machines. There's a way to filter 'em out using soundwaves, but it doesn't work super fast right now. Presumably that's the next step. (Anthropocene)
Yesssssssss: field tests are complete on a rover designed to hug the underside of Europa's ice crust and roll around. They're probably a ways off from getting it to navigate independently (we can't even make cars do that on Earth reliably), but it's an important step nonetheless. ($NYT)
Sometimes you have to glue 3D glasses to a cuttlefish in order to figure out how its brain does depth perception. (U of Minnesota)
We've found another Earth-sized planet in the habitable zone of its star! (Nature)
I just like the title/pic combination on this one, and also the article is interesting: "To help forests adapt to climate change, consider small mammals" (Anthropocene)
Has human body temperature been dropping over the last century? (Science Alert)
What is with those boys (they're always boys) who wear shorts all winter? (~$Atlantic)
It's theoretically possible to give a cancer patient their entire course of radiation treatment in literally a second if you use the right kind of radiation. That would be insanely badass, but I wonder whether it would feel too short? Like maybe you'd have to build a speaker into the machine to have it emit a cosmetic ⚡TeChNo ZaP⚡ sound to make it seem like it was Doing Something? I nominate the photon torpedo noise from Star Trek TNG, obviously. (Penn Medicine)
Ariel Waldman went to Antarctica and built this so you, too, can look at the weird little beasties that live under the ice there. (Life Under The Ice)
Dogs and wolves seem equally good at cooperating, which means their common ancestor also had this ability. (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History)
Finland's new prime minister would like to advance her country toward a 4-day workweek, but right now the government isn't seriously considering it. A shame, but interesting nonetheless that it even got brought up. (~$Quartz)
Ro-bot far-ming! 👏👏! 👏👏👏! (IEEE Spectrum)
At least some part of the fashion industry is trying to deal with its significant waste problem. (Vogue Business)
Huh. New York is trying to figure out a "public Venmo." (Vice)
"The “Star Wars” Misinformation Hell Is The New Future Of Everything" is very good. Here's a quote for you: "Except there is no "mainstream" culture — just as there is no central Star Wars fandom anymore. Today, popular culture is just Gamergates of varying size." (BuzzFeed News)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumClay Dad, The Chase Begins Anew

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.