gukh! jaatch!

February 04, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's still thinking about getting some wings the day after the Super Bowl. 

You'll Like This

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

Idea Factory Giveaway

"Jon (@ferociousj), guest co-host Kelly (@enthusiosity), and special guest Ian Sayre (@iansayre) dig up ideas for snacks, comics-themed housewares, and terrible notions for dating and facial recognition implementations."

There's an idea in here for -- let's just say it -- a sex-related product that's either awful or genius depending on how you look at it (my fellow podcasters definitely had opinions), and it's not even mine: Jessie, if I still wore a hat, it'd be off to you.

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 9: PI DAY

It's just about a month away; if you haven't told at least one person about it in person yet, there's still time. Get yourself invited to a cocktail party or three, and we'll see you in a few weeks. Bring your fork: there's pie. Or there will be. There will be.

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.

I don't care if this makes me the Bad Opinion Haver, but I need to get this off my chest: The Orville is pretty decent and you should watch it. It's at least as good as, like, season 2 of TNG. It's essentially sci fi comfort food, and in that respect let me tell you: it goes down smooth. I'm not going to say it's great -- not all the jokes land, for starters -- but its heart's in the right place, and if you were able to stomach season 1 of basically any Trek show, you'll be fine.

As a longtime detractor of Seth MacFarlane's animated shows, I like to think I've been on watch for this one revealing itself to be a sexist nightmare, and I have some interesting data points to bring up, namely:

  • The entire main cast wears standard uniforms; nobody gets crammed into a sexy catsuit, which is a bar that literally no Trek show ever cleared until we hit Discovery

  • 18 episodes in, we've had no less than 3 whose main storyline revolved around character growth for a female crewmember, which is a good ratio compared to (for instance) TNG

  • This might be entirely subjective, but I feel like Adrianne Palicki and Penny Johnson Jerald (herself an alum of DS9) get to do more interesting acting than the dudes

There's probably equally less-good stuff that I just didn't pick up on, so I'm not going to wave a flag for it being Pure Feminist Media or what-have-you (wasn't there a thinkpiece somewhere about "is (media offering) feminist?" being a dumb, reductive question, or did I only skim a headline?). On the whole, though, I think it depicts women as three-dimensional people with agency, so if you were worried about that aspect, maybe you don't gotta. Okay, that's all I wanted to say.

#dadthoughts

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

For at least a few weeks now, Quentin's reached a phase I think we could characterize as "maybe having words?" It's honestly kind of hard to tell whether he's using them intentionally or not. Nahmean? He says "mama" a lot -- sometimes to refer to Mavis, certainly, but sometimes he says it when pointing at a cluster of photos, at least one of which does contain Mavis, but it's unclear: is he pointing at her? Or at a different picture? Or the whole cluster? Or the wall itself? He's deployed certain nonsense syllables in what seem like meaningful ways often enough to maybe be something: "gukh" (a likely corruption of "duck") seems to be an all-purpose word for any object, while "jaatch" (no idea for a derivation there) seems to translate to "this is interesting/exciting to me."

However: this morning he brandished a board book at me and clearly said "BOOK," so

  • I think this bodes well for his language skills

  • He's definitely our kid

Fascination Corner

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

  • I find it odd that anyone was out there trying to promote eating breakfast as a weight loss strategy(??), but the science says it's bunk either way, so. (Vox) 

  • Jesus creeping Christ in the cornfield, what a colossal fucking idiot he is. (Time) (Vox) 

  • The hemoglobin in lugworm blood binds 39x more oxygen than human hemoglobin. What can you do with that? (Hakai) 

  • I'm skeptical of this study's findings that we could theoretically get the drop on fake news through crowdsourcing, but eh. (MIT) 

  • I'm really trying not to pay any attention to who's running for president on the Dem side until we're within spitting distance of the primary, but here's an interesting explainer on five prospective candidates' poverty relief proposals. (Vox) 

  • Should we be putting vitamins in booze? (Undark) 

  • Vox has a good interview with the historian whose mini-rant on taxes over philanthropy at Davos went mildly viral. 

  • Let's all learn: What Is Glitter? (NYT) 

  • Here's an interesting effort to create a predictive model of gentrification with an eye toward mitigating its negative effects (U of Colorado Denver press release). Speaking of which, We're The Four White Guys Bringing Authentic Brazilian Street Cuisine To Your Neighborhood (McSweeney's). 

  • Jesus: e-waste is piling up, it's getting worse, and we need to change our relationship with electronics, like, immediately. (Motherboard) 

  • Elephant seals took over a public beach in Point Reyes during the shutdown 'cause no one was there to chase them to a more secluded one, and now there's no getting them out of there until after they've had their kids. You know what, sure. (AP) 

  • Today's hilariously horrifying historic fact: when The Whites colonized the Americas, they killed so many people that the knock-on effects literally cooled the planet down. (BBC) 

  • Highly targeted viruses programmed to kill cancer cells and only cancer cells could be a thing. (Hokkaido U press release) 

  • I would be curious to know the total amount Munchery owes all its vendors after disappearing abruptly and not paying any of its bills, and what percentage of their VC backing that total represents. I bet it's not large. And people like Howard fucking Schultz wonder why we look at them and flex our fingers as if weighing a brick in our hands. There's a human cost to accumulating that much capital; at some point we're going to figure out how to call that bill in. (Fortune) 

  • Turns out you can teach robots manners. (Science News) 

  • The Murky Ethics of the Ugly-Produce Business. (Atlantic) 

  • Since we're still in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution (as it were), we probably don't have the perspective necessary to really contextualize it. (Quartz) 

  • Climate change affects red states more. Draw your own conclusions; Brookings is surprisingly optimistic about how it'll affect their outlook on the reality of the situation, which is ......... charitable of them. 

  • There are perhaps no two more depressing words to put together in the English language here at the start of 2019 than "toil glamour," which is 1000% a real thing that I hate with the passion of a thousand white-hot exploding suns (side note: Erin Griffith used to write Fortune's newsletter, and she was great there, too). (NYT) 

  • Synthetic spider silk may finally be hitting the market. (Quartzy) 

  • Scientists have figured out how animal darkvision works. (U of Manchester) 

  • Preschoolers already show signs of racial bias. (Quartz) 

  • Today in Fuck Unrestrained Capitalism For Real: 40% of Americans are only one missed paycheck away from poverty. (CBS News) 

  • Let Them Fight. (The Bulwark)

A Fictional Thing

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

A band and their album

RAP GAME HALEY JOEL OSMENT, All That You Loved is Gone From Here

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.