Harry Potter and the Abode of Spiders

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, your weekly window into whatever's on my mind. See you Thursday at SPACEGAME (read below)? 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.We spent the last weekend moving to a new apartment a couple miles down the road (like literally a couple miles away along the same road we used to live on), and we're still not fully unpacked -- there's a few chicken/egg problems we need to solve for in terms of storage, so I actually might be driving to the Container Store in Walnut Creek in between taking care of work tasks. I think at this point in my life I've achieved at least a master's degree in Ikea assembly, and I'm starting to wonder whether any of this knowledge would translate into amateur woodworking: there's a space in our kitchen where a quarter-circle corner shelf would be perfect, but we haven't found it out there yet. "Could I build one myself?" I ask, but I have no idea where to even source the wood. These are solvable problems. I'll have to think on this a bit. I wish there were such a thing as the Reverse Etsy I posited in episode 45 of the podcast with Annie -- I could say "here's a thing I need" and artisans could post bids to make it happen, etc. I know it's possible to make custom orders on Etsy now, but this seems more generally useful; maybe the distinction's meaningless? Anyway. See, the title of this section really lives up to the name sometimes. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.So we've moved! The baby's room is at present home to what I've taken to calling the Box City, in that it's crammed with boxes that are full of stuff and empty flattened boxes that sit in a loose pile that's starting to look more and more like an Abode of Spiders with every passing day. Don't laugh -- we moved some boxes and a spider the size of a goddamn quarter crawled out from under one (Mavis captured it with a plastic cup and junk mail because of course she did, and set it free at the gas station on the corner, where hopefully it'll content itself with outdoor insects and never think to come inside again). When we've cleared out enough of the Box City, we'll put the bookshelves where they need to go and commence thinking about Lemon's room rug. We were initially thinking about a space theme because why not, but for some reason none of the ones we've seen look right. The frontrunner right now is this Ikea one, actually, but we haven't gone looking at other places yet. Where does one go to buy rugs if not Ikea? We heard Cost Plus maybe? We're learning as we go here, people. 

Fascination Corner

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

• Okay, this one's literally a critical theory essay about colors and vaporwave and #aesthetic, and it's really interesting.

• I will never stop being fascinated by the absolute fucking trainwreck of Fyre Festival, which as it turns out may have had some significant splash damage.

• Right up front, let me just say that I'm not a rollercoaster person. I can think of at least one other guy I know who (along with me) would black out from sheer terror if he were strapped into this thing.

• It is without question the most tortured acronym I've ever seen, but an autonomous digging robot called BADGER is also a great idea that will absolutely never go wrong at any time ever.

• As a person with a job that's actually required me to watch every minute of onstage activity at every TechCrunch Disrupt for years, I find this Harvard Business Review study of the very different kinds of questions men and women entrepreneurs get from VCs fascinating, and I wonder if they're going to take this into account at future Startup Battlefields.

• Tumblr’s Unclear Future Shows That There’s No Money in Internet Culture. This article comes to some interesting conclusions that I guess we'll just have to wait and see on?

• It's illegal to pick edible fruit from parks in New York, so of course someone just parked a barge in the East River crammed with plants meant specifically to forage from.

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway46 - Toward a Taxonomy of Animal Crackers"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Shayla go to work on some ideas surrounding snacks, cats, dating profile photo shoots, and the gig economy."A lot of the ideas we talk about in this episode would be great events for a dating app that wanted something interesting to which to invite people. I should pitch this to somebody.You can subscribe using:iTunesRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/SPACEGAMEIf you live in the San Francisco Bay area and have ever watched a space battle (whether it was in Star Trek, Galaxy Quest, or Battlestar Galactica) and thought "Damn, that looks fun," have I got some good news for you: I'm throwing the inaugural event of what will be a more-or-less quarterly series at the East Bay Community Space where you can literally do just that. Come play around on a starship bridge simulator in Oakland's equivalent of the Mission district! https://youtu.be/V9Q2X32hZNk507 55th St 94609Thursday July 138-11p$5 door$5 for a slot on a crewBYOBThere's a Facebook event link here. 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumCat Praxis, What You Lookin’ At Tough Guy 

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.