i'm a product development KING, obviously

August 15, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's taken to using its second monitor to display a Google image search for grasshopper mouse instead of Tweetdeck and is pretty well satisfied with the results 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayIn the back half of 2022 I hope to recover enough energy to restart some hobbies, and this podcast is on that list. Until then, you have over 150 episodes in the back catalog to amuse and delight, including an experimental tabletop RPG and a couple of Star Trek fantasy drafts that I would quite honestly and happily make into a whole 'nother show if I had the time!Someone out there has left another incredible review, btw: thank you from the bottom of what remains of my heart. Should anyone else feel inclined to make my day (and Besha's too, probably?), you can drop your 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 at the usual place with the knowledge that it will add at least 5HP back to our health stats.Instant Band Night 16: SWEETOh, this is happeningIf you missed the return of Instant Band Night in July, don't sweat it — just come to the next one in September! September 8, to be specific. If you've never been and are wondering what the hell it is: imagine a party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot. Nobody's forced to play; you can just come watch. I guarantee you haven't seen anything like it!! One of the links below will tell you literally everything you need to know. EVERYTHING.Sept 86p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  S E E   Y O U   T H E R E  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Star Trek Unlimited, a company that appears to have the license for making Trek-related merch, tweeted that they're taking ideas from us, the general public, and I proceeded to raid my idea spreadsheet for all the Trek-related notions I've had over the years. I then went HAM on their submission page, which was implemented as literally just a Google Form. 

  • Starfleet admiral baby onesie: Self-explanatory. A onesie patterned to look like the uniform of a Starfleet admiral. If you've ever seen a baby, you know this would sell millions.

  • Baby onesies in uniform eras that are non-TNG/TOS: Also self-explanatory. There are lots of these on Etsy,* but none in DS9/VOY patterns, or Disco, or Lower Decks era. C'mon. I'd even take a Wrath of Khan-era Santa suit.

  • White noise machine that looks like an LCARS wall panel: You know the panels that are on the walls in the cabins of the Enterprise-D? Make something like that you can hang on a wall, but with pre-programmed buttons that cause it to emit soothing Trek-based white noise, which you can absolutely find hours upon hours of on YouTube.

  • Laser tag but make it phaser tag: There are laser tag kits for sale in the toy aisle. Why not make the weapons look like a TNG-era type 2 phaser? Other factions could be Romulan, Klingon, Cardassian, etc. I think we can all agree the Ferengi whips would be a non-starter.

  • Borg-themed dice for tabletop players: Standard Borg vessels are a d6, but we've seen the Borg do spheres, too — why not other regular polyhedrons? Why, I ask you

  • Vulcan ear headphones: Over-the-ear headphones shaped to look like Vulcan ears. Make everyone do a double-take on the bus.

  • Duffel bag that looks like the thing Data packed his shit in during Measure of a Man: This thing. I want a duffel bag that looks like this. You could even do two versions: screen-accurate plastic version for carrying fragile items, and a big fabric one with wire hoops at either end to maintain shape but still make it useful for actual duffel bag purposes.

  • Screen-accurate Klingon d'k tagh letter opener: Would make opening junk mail a much more satisfying experience.

  • Star Trek: The Motion Picture pajama set: The uniforms they wear on TMP look like PJs. They really, really do. Why not make a set of PJs that look like 'em? It wouldn't be hard. 

I desperately want to see the entire list that resulted from this initiative, if only to know — or at least get some vague idea — where I stand relative to all other Trek fans who have ideas for merch they want to see in the world. Who has better ideas? Who has crazier ideas? Who submitted a dozen ideas based around an extremely specific fetish that only they have which they erroneously assume to be universal? I'm dying to know.* The submission form, btw, wants to know if your idea appears on an Etsy store or something elsewhere. Nobody there seems to be powerful enough to have thought of any of my other ideas, but TOS/TNG-era baby onesies are definitely present. Nevertheless, my answer for this submission was "I am not a snitch." 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.I think the boys are getting used to sleeping in the same room, or at least Quentin is starting to learn that if he makes a lot of noise, it keeps Felix up, which produces results nobody likes.The one thing we still haven't cracked is that Felix reliably wakes up a good hour before Quentin does and cannot be coaxed back to sleep because why would he. The only solution to this that I can think of is to just bring Felix downstairs to his playpen full of toys and let him have an early morning while I try to sleep on the couch. The first part of this strategy seems to work just fine in that Felix is happy to play with his toys, but I can't really get back to sleep. Eagle-eyed readers will note that this means I'm now getting up about an hour before I'd really like to, which produces a sleep deficit. And yet: if I nap for too long during the day, I have real trouble getting to sleep at night. It turns out the sweet spot (or at least the thing that works right now) is a literal 15m catnap at some point before lunch.The big news this week is that Quentin starts transitional kindergarten (TK) on the day you're reading this. TK was not a concept back in the 80s, so this is already different from what I have very dim, vague memories of, but I think it's sensible. He's been excited for it to start, and today we went to a little orientation where everyone got to look at the room and meet the teacher, and it was Very Good. It looks great; I'm excited for him. New friends and adventures in a new fun place! I guess I'll have a report for you all next week — try to contain your excitement!!!!!!! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • There's a school librarian in Louisiana who is tougher than 99.99% of us. Imagine the sack it must take to actually legally go after the MAGA dipshits trying to paint you as a child pornographer or whatever — how exhausting, frustrating, disheartening, etc etc. I hope her lawyers (metaphorically) butcher them alive and hold their (figurative) bloody spinal columns aloft from atop a (symbolic) parapet for the rest of the world to (allegorically) see. (NBC News) 

  • "How Policing Has — and Hasn’t — Changed Since George Floyd: More than two years after millions took to the streets to protest police violence, the problem persists. That doesn’t mean nothing has changed." (The Marshall Project) 

  • The Republicans are still in thrall to Trump even now, which is: not great, considering we still have elections to run. (Vox) 

  • Moderation alone isn't a solve for the problems social media generates; what if we started treating the platforms like literal polluters? (~$MIT Technology Review) 

  • We all know AC as a technology isn't great for the planet, but Some Engineers out there are working on it. (Vox) 

  • Ipsos has something it calls the Two Americas Index, which ............ doesn't sound reassuring, tbh. (Ipsos) 

  • The Scientists have invented a bioengineered cornea implant based on pig tissue that's unequivocally restored sight to a truly shocking number of people in its pilot test. (Linköping U) 

  • Agrivoltaics as a concept has already been shown to be quite promising, but now the US Dept of Agriculture is starting to tout it; good for them. (USDA Climate Hubs) 

  • The Scientists have developed yet another cheap material for carbon capture that seems promising even for individual car tailpipes this time around. (UC Berkeley) 

  • A surprising percentage of people with locked-in syndrome are actually fairly happy with their lives. (Undark) 

  • [Morpheus voice] What if I told you that just 2-5min of walking after a meal can help moderate your blood sugar levels? I'm going to start doing this immediately. ($NYT) (Paper) 

  • What in the motherfuck: the dwarf galaxies in the Fornax Cluster (which is close by) don't, uh .............. don't appear to have any dark matter in them. What?????? (U of Bonn) 

  • Food brands big and small are starting Discords, which you know what: why not. (Eater) 

  • These sea pod houses are ridiculous in many ways, plus I still have no idea how they're supposed to stay afloat, especially in inclement weather. (designboom) 

  • According to The Scientists, teaching kids spatial thinking can improve their verbal reasoning ability, which has Implications for curriculum design. (Georgetown) 

  • My alma mater's at it again: Some Engineers have built an AI piloting system capable of navigating crowded airspace. (CMU) 

  • Trying to design molecules is hard because at the molecular level, your tools get kinda blunt and nonspecific (how do you modify one particular carbon atom and not, like, all the carbon atoms? etc); amazingly, The Scientists have cracked just such an editing technique for a class of molecules crucial to drug design. (Scripps) 

  • And speaking of designing molecules: natural enzymes that degrade plastic are hard to come by and finicky to work with. The Scientists are trying to design artificial ones, and they're getting there. (U of Manchester) 

  • "Future cities: How the pandemic is driving us to build the metropolises of tomorrow" (Science Focus) 

  • Thinking hard really does produce measurable buildup of actual biochemical bullshit in your prefrontal cortex that makes thinking more costly as it accumulates. In other words: it looks like mental fatigue is a real thing with physical causes. (Cell Press via Science Daily) 

  • The balance between people who like to cooperate and selfish freeloaders has been mathematically modeled with interesting results. (U of Oldenburg) 

  • The Scientists are figuring out ways to make cement out of lunar and Martian dirt, so we can build bases there without having to lug construction materials with us. (U of Delaware) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumGhostpony, I Was Just Leaving(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.