important astrophysics question within

February 15, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants your opinion on which Taskmaster seasons out of 1-8 is the best and why. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI think we're gonna take this thing monthly as soon as we can manage to record our next batch of episodes. It's gonna happen!!!Instead of giving me any belated valentines, you can just slip me one of those ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings in Apple Podcasts, please and thank you.Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberNow that proven vaccines exist, let's wait til November and hopefully -- hopefully! -- we'll see you all at the next Instant Band Night.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook* * s t a y   h o m e   / /   s t a y   h e a l t h y * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Does anybody know off the top of their head how fast a theoretical Alcubierre warp drive would actually propel a ship? Every time I see it mentioned, every article has invariably just said "faster than light." Okay. How much faster? 1.5c? 100c? 1000000c? Also, I don't care how feasible it is; I don't want to hear about how much energy it would take or how much exotic matter we'd need to generate or whatever. I just want to fucking know how fast, in theory, we could go. If you don't know off the top of your head, do you have a direct line to an astrophysicist who does? Thank you. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We've had a little rain lately, which means Quentin gets to gear up in his rain suit (which I think is getting a little small on him) and rain boots and go outside. He's starting to discover the fascination that a stream of water running through the gutter can provide, whether that means stomping in it to make a splash or seeing how far the tiny leaf he dropped into it will travel. Remember doing that as a kid? I'm here to tell you: it's still very good. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Fucking Christ: GoFundMe's CEO published an op-ed in USA Today called "Hello Congress, Americans need help and we can't do your job for you", which is something he's probably known for a long, long time; I think about "We Could Use A Few Fun Ones" almost every week -- one of Brennan Lee Mulligan's best performances. (USA Today) 

  • This has been apparent to some of us for a while, but there really is no reason to pay attention to Seth Abramson's ravings, and there never was. (Columbia Journalism Review) 

  • Here's something nuts to play around with: a visual search engine powered by neural networks. Just click on a pic and it'll find more with, well, the same energy. No tags, no metadata; it just works off the image. Impressive! (Same Energy) 

  • California likes to style itself as progressive, but actual on-the-ground evidence of progressive policy is ........... scarce, which is troubling. ($NYT) 

  • Machine learning might be able to identify existing drugs that could be put to other uses. (NEO.LIFE) 

  • "In America’s ‘Uncivil War,’ Republicans Are The Aggressors" -- we fucking know this already; can someone please goddamn tell the Democrats this. (538) 

  • Vertical fish farming! It can happen! (Hakai) 

  • If you've got an Atlantic click left, why not burn it on an interesting meditation on the explosion of extremely specific personal aesthetics on the internet? It seems "Cottagecore Was Just the Beginning" (~$Atlantic) 

  • A big conch shell that was probably used as a wind instrument 18,000 years ago has been picked up and blown again, and you can listen to it right now. (CNRS) 

  • What's going on in Buffalo? This is the second week in a row I've put something from that university here. This time it's researchers who've built a radiative cooling and heating system that doesn't use electricity. (U at Buffalo) 

  • This is almost certainly not surprising, but societies where money plays an extremely minimal role appear to be happier than, well, ours. (McGill U) 

  • MIT has built a facility they call the LaserFactory that's essentially a one-stop shop for 3D printing functional robots. (MIT) Speaking of which, the first 3D printed house in the US has gone up for sale. (CNN) 

  • Scientists have found multicellular life under an Antarctic ice shelf where they expected, well, nothing. (Guardian) (Paper) 

  • Builders are planning a 29-story highrise in Berlin made of wood. (Bloomberg CityLab) 

  • A couple sociology professors took a look at some Boomer survey data and discovered that moms who got straight As have the same leadership opportunities as dads of comparable age who got Fs. Great. (The Conversation) 

  • This week in thermoelectric generator news: how about a wearable one that converts your own body heat into power? (U of Colorado Boulder) 

  • The infographic in this article about how researchers have been tracking the spread of QAnon nonsense looks kind of like a lion's mane jellyfish from hell. (Nature) Relatedly: "WHO Is Fighting False COVID Info On Social Media. How's That Going?" (NPR) If Nextdoor is anything to go by, anyone trying to do that's got a long row to hoe. (Vox) 

  • I think what this extremely brief press release is saying is that if you have some kind of heart condition where you might die within a year, some researchers have made a machine learning system that can narrow the prediction down better than a human can. (Geisinger) 

  • There might be a specific part of your brain responsible for your instinctive response to people with weird-looking faces. As a bonus, this study also contains a side discovery that rich people might indeed just be a bunch of fucking assholes. (U Penn) 

  • Once again, having a civilian response team for non-emergency calls instead of cops with guns turns out to work just fine. (Denver) 

  • I'm not tired of interviews with Avi Loeb yet, because "It Might Be Aliens" sometime eventually, dammit (Supercluster) 

  • There's no time like right now to inject a huge amount of funding into this woman's business that turns plastic waste + sand into paving bricks and make her a global magnate immediately!!! (UNEP) 

  • Someone at NYT Opinion seems to think regulators and workers are gearing up to take on Amazon for real. ($NYT) 

  • Damn hell ass; how many colors do you see in this rectangle? I vacillate between 11 and 12. (Science Alert) 

  • This surely must be the ultimate case of squeaky wheel/grease. (Ars Technica) 

  • Here, have a surprisingly delightful meditation on mushrooms and the growing thereof in your own home. ($NYT) 

  • The next time someone asks how you're doing, maybe just send them this: "I Can't Complain" (~$The Cut) 

  • Study seems to indicate that ketamine delivered in low doses mixed with orange juice can help people who experience chronic suicidal thoughts. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

  • If we actually want to meet the Paris Agreement's goal of cutting warming by 2°C, we need to retarget our emissions reduction by 80% over the current goal. (U of Washington) 

  • A bear broke into someone's house looking for food and briefly played the piano. (Anchorage Daily News) 

  • It's at least theoretically possible under controlled conditions for an AI to learn to manipulate human behavior. (The Conversation) Pair that with this study, which seems to indicate you can make adjustments to your personality just by messing with an app for three months. (U of Zurich) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumThe Gradual Decrescendo, No, YOU Clean It Up 

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.