Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that just bought a comically enormous wrench just to take an old hose off a spigot and now owns a legit melee weapon of untold potential power

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.

Instant Band Night 31: FLAVOR

THREE THURSDAYS FROM NOW

Holy fuck do we ever need something to do that isn't worrying about everything around us for at least a couple hours of surprise and joy and music

Mark your calendar for the next Instant Band Night on May 8!!!!! Do it now and tell everyone you know: whether you choose to play in one of the bands or just watch it all unfold, it's an almost unbelievably ecstatic celebration of spontaneous creativity that we all need at the cellular level.

✨🪩✨
May 8 2025
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 55th St 94609

(Eventbrite) (Facebook)

+ + T E L L + Y O U R + F R I E N D S + +
+ + S E E + Y O U + T H E R E + +

Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOU

If you've been looking for a weird little guy to put in your garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then I have the perfect place to start your search. If you know someone else who needs a weird little guy for their garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then you're also in luck!!!!

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after three+ years of inactivity, but I'm putting a link to its evergreen Apple Podcasts presence here, which includes a back catalog over 150 episodes long chock-full of excellent ridiculousness, including an experimental tabletop RPG and a couple of Star Trek fantasy drafts that could almost be their own show if I had the time to make yet another podcast

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.

Hi, welcome to Hater's Corner, please take your seat; the presentation is about to begin. It consists of two slides. Here is the first slide:

This is a watch design that should not have made it off the drawing board. I will show you why. Here's the second slide:

These two elements do not belong together. They just don't. That's an Original Series insignia next to the USS Enterprise from Next Generation. What are we even doing here. "Oh but Jon that's just the Star Trek™ Brand Mark, do you see the logotype next to the—" shut up. Shut your mouth. This is a watch with the fucking Enterprise-D on it, you think it needs the brand on it, Craig?? So people will know it's a Star Trek watch??? Go sit down with your head on your desk until you remember what the TNG-era insignia looks like, Derek. You think it needs the fucking brand mark on it so bad, engrave it on the other side of the stupid fucking thing, then, Cody. Fucking lazy is what it is. Fuck!! You wanna make a Star Wars one that has fucking Jar-Jar and Kylo Ren standing next to each other, maybe it can say "Luke, I am your father" underneath it? Nerds will buy whatever, right?? Get the fuck out of here!!!

"Lazy, but also contemptuous" feels like it should be the tagline for every co-branded merch line that has ever existed. It doesn't need to be — there was a very easy way to make this design at least passable!! — and yet. And yet. It's the year 2025 and still — still! — this is the scorched and blasted earth from which we must attempt to scratch some semblance of sustenance; the pickings are meager indeed.

Thank you for coming to Hater's Corner, that concludes our presentation, drop any questions or comments in the box by the door. Further installments may be produced at inconsistent and unpredictable future intervals; thank you.

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.

A phrase that you'll hear a lot right now if you're around our house is "Felix, inside voices!" usually followed by "Felix, that means be quieter!" This kid likes to holler and he does it a lot for seemingly no reason whatsoever. Mavis says Quentin did this when he was 3, too, which is certainly possible — I don't exactly remember, which is probably a feature and not a bug on the part of my brain for the same reason that we don't recall physical pain with 100% verisimilitude. Experience says this, too, shall pass, but I would love a peek at the timetable just because. Just for a sec. I will say that it hasn't escaped my notice that Felix's exuberance is just that — exuberance — and we feel lucky both to have raised such a happy little guy and to have created a home environment that feels comfortable enough for him to express it. I definitely see that and am grateful for it! But holy shit. If he could read, I would make a shirt that just said INSIDE VOICES on it so I could point to my own chest while putting another finger to my lips. Maybe I should just make it anyway. Hmmm.

Fascination Corner

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

• The Jimmy Dubs has detected a possible biosignature on exoplanet K2-18b, 124ly away in the constellation Leo. (U of Cambridge) (Paper)

• Hoo boy, that Blue Origin "space" flight; here's the only take you need. (Guardian)

• I gotta say I do love this: "Fired Govt Workers Are Pissed Off and Running for Office" (The Bulwark)

• The Scientists have discovered a whole new phylum of bacteria living deep underground. (Michigan State)

• "We’re on the verge of a universal allergy cure: The one allergy treatment to rule them all, explained." (Vox)

• The Scientists have invented a pollen substitute for food-stressed bees that basically takes the form of Honeybee Powerbar. (Washington State) (Paper)

• Behold a verified Good Dog. (NBC News)

• The blessings of Father Indictments are not all of equal size, but we accept them when they come nonetheless: charges for all six of those jumped-up "private security" shitwads who hauled that woman out of the town hall back in February. (Idaho News 6)

• A surprisingly widely-accepted theory says the water on Earth essentially came from asteroids during its formation, but new findings suggest it might've just been here the whole time™ in the form of locked-up hydrogen. (U of Oxford) (Paper)

• It sure looks like going outside and gardening has a measurable therapeutic impact for people with mild-to-medium mental health conditions, at least according to one study in the UK. (U of York) (Paper)

• The Scientists have cooked up a transparent, shapeable, biodegradable paperboard that we could make cups and straws and presumably packaging out of, replacing single-use plastics. (Anthropocene) (Paper)

• I cannot decide which of these two stupid motherfuckers is the bigger idiot and one of them is in charge of Health and Human Services for fucksake. (AP)

• Video footage of a living colossal squid (a baby) has been captured for the first time ever. (Science Alert)

• A new study suggests surviving climate trauma like a dangerous wildfire renders you less able to make decisions that involve long-term benefits afterward. (UCSD) (Paper)

• Currently we can really only grow cultured meat in sheets because anything thicker would require blood vessels to distribute oxygen and nutrients, but The Scientists used a set of artificial tubes to mimic the functionality and it seems to work okay. (Cell Press via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Just fyi, "Corporate Lawlessness Comes Next: Trump's attacks on workers will soon become something even worse." (How Things Work)

• Some Engineers built a lab-scale proof-of-concept for a system that could theoretically harvest electricity from literal falling rainwater. (ACS) (Paper)

• An exoplanet with the truly fucking wildest orbit you've ever seen was just discovered circling a pair(!) of brown dwarfs. (ESO) (Paper)

• It looks like citizen science works, at least if you're doing anything with birds. (UC Davis) (Paper)

• The Scientists trying to puzzle out the Hubble tension suggest a fascinating new solution: what if the entire universe is rotating? (U of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) (Paper)

• Menstrual blood is a criminally overlooked resource for crucial medical research. (The Conversation)

• By comparing the size of 50,000 houses over the last 10,000 years at 1000 sites, The Scientists have tentatively concluded that inequality is not, in fact, a historical inevitability. (Field Museum) (Paper)

• What if we could grow building materials out of fungus that then self-mineralized or used bacteria to help? The Scientists are working on it. (Cell Press via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Preliminary mathematical modeling suggests that community cohesion in the face of adversity works great up to a certain level of adversity, past which a "fuck y'all I got mine" mentality may take hold. (Stevens Inst of Tech)

• The Scientists have worked out a way to turn PFAS forever chemicals into ........... graphene? Okay!!! (Rice U)

• A little something to put a smile on your face: Mike Lindell says he's ruined. (ABC News)

• We should think for a sec before we toss wildflower seeds on degraded urban land: the plants that grow might suck up heavy metals and poison the pollinators who visit 'em. (U of Cambridge) (Paper)

• Surprising no one, the weather on Jupiter sounds absolutely fucking insane. (UC Berkeley) (Paper)

• Hormbles Chormbles. Hormbles Chormbles. Zero sugar? I ........ I kinda want some? Does anyone wanna go in on a sampler pack with me? You can have the salted fudge one. (Eater)

• The Scientists changed out a couple atoms in LSD and ended up with a non-hallucinogenic, neuroplasticity-boosting antidepressant that's done pretty well in mouse tests thus far. (UC Davis) (Paper)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.

A band and their album

(I remembered a formula for making fake album covers that involves searching for a random appropriately licensed photo and then applying your best Graphic Design Skills to the result; let me know what you think this band/album sounds like, because your answers are always incredible)

New Music Roundup

Last week's band/album was:

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think is a fuzzy, washed-out, reverb-heavy helping of Japanese indie rock that's a spiritual sonic cousin to Blonde Redhead.

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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!