holiday cards as low-key reunion praxis

November 29, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter whose birthday is on Friday and is about to turn the Douglas Adams Number 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI'm no longer as confident in my ability to get the edit of the most recent episode we recorded done by year's end owing to what I'm going to generously call Felix's newly diffident and attenuated approach to napping. But by hell and high water, I'm gonna try.I want to take a moment to really appreciate the 41 of you who've left ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings on our Apple Podcasts page, not to mention the smaller but even more radiant subset who've left reviews: you are brilliant and almost blindingly attractive humans, every single one of you.Instant Band Night 15: January Dreamin'That's what we're calling this, the fifteenth installment of Instant Band Night, unless it ends up getting pushed to March. In which case it'll need a new name. Whether or not it comes to that is dependent entirely on the vax schedule for kids under 5! (Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  r e t u r n i n g   i n   2 0 2 2  + ++ +  h a n g   i n   t h e r e  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.It's that season: I've already started getting holiday cards from my friends. This is not a complaint: I fucking love them. Which has sent me on a bit of a mental journey; strap in.A thousand eons ago in the year 1996 in the months between my junior and senior years of high school, I attended a summer college program at Harvard: stayed in the dorms, took a couple of Actual Classes, and had what I can confidently say was one of the most intense, densely-packed social/friendship experiences of my entire life. I think it lasted maybe a month and a half, and in those few weeks we made friends quickly and fiercely. We were all deeply strange, freed from our pasts to present ourselves and our quirks gleaming and new to a whole different set of people, and it made the bonds we formed about a thousand times more genuine; our in-jokes were dense and nonsensical -- my notes from that time are nearly unintelligible. When the program ended and we all packed ourselves up and returned to every corner of the continent, we Harvard Summer School (HSS) friends vowed to keep in touch. Even though most of those connections faded, they would still flare up from time to time -- what seems like a few years but was in reality probably a decade ago, I led an HSS pal through the Mission on a quest for an authentic burrito, and for a few years whenever he was in town, another HSS buddy faithfully got in touch and we'd hang.Earlier this year I had a dream about yet another HSS friend that prompted me to get in touch, which sparked a joyful mini-reunion comprising three of us over Zoom that's now become a semi-regular occasion much looked forward to. As we close in on the end of the year, I remember an HSS pal who sent me an Xmas card the year HSS ended, and possibly a year or two afterward. To my bewilderment, I don't remember whether I answered her or not (it was a literal quarter century ago, which is a number I can barely believe). I think there might be a nonzero chance I could get her current address,* as well as the addresses of a half-dozen other deeply treasured and long-lost pals whose names have come up since the three of us started talking again. Should I send them all an Xmas card? I don't know if I have an end goal -- arranging a meetup sometime post-pandemic? does everyone have time to join a Slack or a Discord? maybe just an email thread? a group text? -- other than to simply let them know: Hey, I've thought of you recently and the time we spent being amazing and weird with each other, and I hope you're well even though we haven't spoken directly in years upon years. I think it'd be nice, but I don't know if there's some hideous downside I can't see because I'm blinded by nostalgia. Is there one? 'Cause I hope not.*I'm mentioning this in an aside because it bears somewhat on the decision: she's become a legit famous person in the years since HSS, like "included in photo roundups of the Met Gala" famous, and may have genuine reasons to guard her privacy or possibly have someone else filter her mail. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.I'm writing this at the close of Saturday on what I think of as Black Friday Weekend. This year seems to have been the year Quentin really truly grasped the concept of holidays, and let me tell you, he's on board. He was the one who wanted to decorate the house for Halloween, within the admittedly narrow parameters he set out that wouldn't spook him too badly). One of the first things he told me on Thursday was how excited he was that it was Thanksgiving; when I asked why, he said "because we get to eat all the yummy foods." Ever since we brought it up a few days ago, he's asked repeatedly when we're going to put the Xmas lights up on the front of the house. I keep telling him it's going to be today, but then inevitably the day gets away from me; today he evinced serious doubt when I said it was going to be tomorrow for sure, full stop: "But you keep forgetting!" I did go out and get us a tree after dinner, which he absolutely could not wait to water; we're going to decorate it tomorrow.PS: I'm writing this on Monday night. Quentin loved decorating the tree, and he told me that the tree topper, which is an LED star, is on "beautiful mode" when I set it to shift continuously between red, blue, and green. Also, I did get the lights up on the front of the house, which have met with Quentin's unambiguous approval. Thanks, buddy! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • It took a concerted campaign of public scrutiny to even bring charges, but at least these racist fucks got theirs. Let's see what the sentencing is like. (BuzzFeed News) Speaking of racist fucks, I don't know that these pricks actually have the money to begin with, but surely whatever they do have will shortly be gone from them, which we may all celebrate appropriately. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • The Facebook Papers will be released publicly at some point. (Gizmodo) 

  • Hurry the fuck up with the vaccine approvals for under-5s, goddammit: cases of the rona are increasing among children. I'm not even mentioning Omicron because nobody knows anything yet and I refuse to contribute to the signal:noise ratio in the wrong direction. (Ars Technica) 

  • Looks like e-bikes are the real future of electric mobility, at least if you go by sales numbers. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • The answer to the question "WhY aReN't MiLLeNiaLs HaViNg KiDs??" is actually very simple. (@Whatapityonyou on Twitter) That kind of pairs with this very interesting analysis whose optimism about the shifting demographics of progressives I desperately want to believe, but also find myself doubting because I want to believe it so badly, if that makes any sense? (Data for Progress) 

  • If zebrafish are anything to go by, our need to sleep might be driven by a need to repair damage to DNA. (Bar-Ilan U) 

  • I don't think I'm going to be able to handle it if it turns out Keanu Reeves is actually a monster of some sort, because pieces like this are just too goddamn delightful. (Esquire) 

  • Hilariously, ConstitutionDAO fell apart even more quickly than we thought. (Motherboard) 

  • An experiment by the NYU Center for Social Media & Politics seems to indicate warning messages to vicious shitheads on Twitter can temporarily reduce their use of hate speech. (CSMaP) (Paper) 

  • Pew did a survey of Americans to see where they think suffering comes from; turns out it's other people. (Pew) 

  • Even if we can use microbes to make precursors for petrochemicals instead of actual petroleum, doesn't the use of those products still contribute to climate change? Or am I just underslept? Genuine question. (UC Berkeley) 

  • Okay, how about batteries for large-scale power storage made from wood? (Linköping U) 

  • The demographics of the sample are skewed to say the least, but a recent study seems to indicate that the longer a hug goes, the better. (Science Alert) 

  • On paper at least, we should be able to turn captured methane -- a Climate Problem -- into commercial fish feed for cheaper than what we're doing now. (Stanford) 

  • It ............ might be possible that staying physically active into old age is actually what we're meant to do. (Harvard Gazette) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumThree Card Wizard, An Artifact of Human Frailty(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because now I'm curious) 

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.