Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that only needs 3 colors of sweater apparently

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 35: THE 35TH ONE

If you weren't able to make it to Instant Band Night 34, I must regretfully inform you that you missed the fuck out on some truly spectacular acts that will never again be seen onstage in that exact combination, but the good news is more are coming!! In exactly two months!! Mark your calendars for March 12 and prepare for another series of onstage explosions of creativity and joy with the best audience in a 50mi radius!!!!!

✨🪩✨
March 12 2026
6p
$13
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

I'm cooking up some new weird little guys for the shop already, but did you know there are now enough purchases for the reviews down at the bottom to constitute some lovely little reads? It's nice beyond description to know that these things I'm making have found homes with the right people. Go have a look; eagle-eyed viewers may notice a new bunny has snuck in there.

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.

ICE murdering someone in cold blood on the streets of Minneapolis sparks a rage in me that would result in an absolutely unpublishable rant.

• So instead I'm going to link to this piece that's, well, the opposite of that. (The White Pages)

• In case you're still angry, though, and you'd like an easy rhetorical target, all the centrist mealymouths who opposed "defund the police" make a good one. (How Things Work)

• You know what, there's a really good barn-burner of a post about the disappointing sadsack high-level Democrat response just titled "How Hard Is It To Oppose Murder?" (Defector)

• Thomas Zimmer breaks down what needs to come next toward the end of "When the State Terrorizes the People". (Democracy Americana)

• "Want to Stop ICE? Go After Its Corporate Collaborators." (The Nation)

• Having said that, Ryan Broderick was in Minneapolis for four days and what he saw should concern us all. (Garbage Day)

Next week I promise something decidedly more lighthearted in this space unless something even more fucked happens!!

#dadthoughts

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

Quentin came down with a little cold over the weekend, mostly just a runny nose and a fever, thank fuck, but now we're waiting to see who else caught it, so there's a Damoclean sword of illness dangling over the whole house in a state of quantum superposition where it both is and isn't there. In Mavis's case it seems to have resolved in the unfortunate Yes state, although it remains to be seen whether it's one of those colds that's just as mild in adults or if the grownup version is (for some stupid reason) an ass-kicker; thoughts and prayers. Thus far Felix and I seem unaffected, but rest assured I now blow my nose in a very careful, self-assessing way!!

Recipe Nook

Once again I'm chickening out of nominating three recipes to put in front of the kids and see which one they choose, but only because of the aforementioned quantum Damoclean sword. But in the interest of this space not remaining totally empty, I'm going to give you the recipe to something our house calls "boyfriend soup," named during the era when Mavis and I were dating and I made this for her during a cold. According to my very faint memory, it's sort of a riff on tortilla soup, but no tortillas are necessary.

Ingredients:

• 1 kielbasa, sliced

• 1 onion, chopped

• enough garlic, minced

• 2 jalapenos, finely chopped

• about a tablespoon of cumin

• 2 bell peppers, chopped

• 2 red potatoes, cubed

• 1 can of black beans, drained

• 1 can of white beans, drained

• 1 can of whole kernel corn, drained

• 1 big can of crushed tomatoes

• about 4 cups of chicken broth

• salt to finish

Process (very complex):

1. Throw a glug of olive oil into a big pot and cook the kielbasa in it.

2. Throw in the onion, garlic, and jalapenos and sweat those guys.

3. Throw in the cumin and stir.

4. Throw in literally everything else and stir it all up.

5. Simmer for at least half an hour until all the flavors are friends, then see if it needs any salt.

6. Serve!! Goes great with a slice of bread!

Fascination Corner

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

• Renee DiResta has a good term for that stupid fucking Nick Shirley stunt responsible for kicking off the entire invasion of Minneapolis by ICE and what we can do about stuff like it, which mostly still remains to be seen 😬😬😬 (Agents of Influence)

• "'Cloud Dancer': A Measured Response" (John Paul Brammer on Substack)

• Animals without brains still sleep, a discovery that bolsters at least one prominent theory about what sleep is for in the first place. (Nature)

• What does it mean to trust your coworkers and how does the company exploit it? (Culture Study)

• This thing where people are prompting Grok to produce all kinds of nasty abusive bullshit is just going to get worse. (Guardian) Doesn't it seem weird that nobody can seem to do anything about Elon? (Read Max on Substack)

• It turns out you actually can get useful DNA from the meals of living mosquitoes, enough to conduct a survey of the wildlife in a particular area, which is a neat little slice of "Jurassic Park was right" to serve yourself on a mental plate. (U of Florida) (Paper)

• The Scientists just want everyone to know we might be looking at a tipping point this year for whether or not the coral reefs still remaining survive or don't. Just sayin'. (The Conversation)

• Sure looks like going out into the world and helping people can slow cognitive decline, which immediately brings to my mind a certain cohort of people who I guess are going to get stupider faster; what then? (UT Austin)

• Would you like a collection of 15 black swan events of varying magnitude? Just askin'. (Politico)

• McMansions have a new look that the popularizer of the term "McMansion" has deemed "McModern" and you know what, she's right. (Architectural Digest)

• Looks like we should be letting teens sleep in after all. (U of Oregon via Science Daily)

• New calculations suggest there may not actually be enough tectonic activity on Europa to support life, which is not really news I needed today or really ever, but who knows?! (Wash U in St Louis via Science Daily) (Paper)

• The Scientists have assumed this whole time that birds can't taste spice on account of their seeming nonchalance about eating hot peppers in the wild — in fact the two have essentially coevolved from a seed-spreading standpoint — but if you try to feed them some artificially-heightened Hot Ones-level bullshit, they nope out. (Audubon)

• Some Engineers have created swimming robots the size of a grain of salt that are capable of receiving and processing instructions. What!!! (UPenn) (Paper)

• Is Craigslist the last real place on the internet? (Ars Technica)

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:

Alternate universe music critic Steve says this is "a student band kind of name that the Jalapeno Version chose in about two minutes and now regret five albums in. I think they're a female singer, a beardy guy who does beeps and beats and sometimes keys, and a clean shaven guy with a guitar who also does harmonies.

"I think 'keep a fist clenched just in case' is a beautiful set of songs about a struggling family beating the cost of living and finding some stability, but also there's a couple in there about always being ready to do some civil disobedience or de-arrest someone if you have to."

I still could use some more submissions to build out a notional Reader Submission Month for band/album/artwork combos! Feel free to send something in; just tell me how you want to be credited!

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 this page right here (which also has the archive)!