in brief praise of routines

October 18, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that was able to step out onto the front porch last night as a little sprinkling rain hit and breathe the smell of petrichor deep enough to feel long-withered internal cells swell with some unseen nourishment 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayStill no new episode, but the back catalog is deep and inviting; splash around a little, it doesn't matter where! There's no continuity to speak of; isn't that handy?We're so close -- so tantalizingly close -- to 40 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings on our Apple Podcasts page! Will YOU be the one to tip us over?? Why wait to find out! SEIZE YOUR DESTINY WITH BOTH HANDS AND SHOVEInstant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberWe're a month out and I have to tell you I don't know that I feel comfortable hosting an event the size of Instant Band Night when my kids still aren't vaccinated. Right? I think we should push to 2022 when we're really sure we've done what we can. I need to update the event page. Thanks for understanding!Facebook event'll be updated in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook+ + h o w   a b o u t   2 0 2 2 + ++ + h a n g   i n   t h e r e + +

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I'm close to completing the setup for a shade structure on our back deck that can be unclipped and stowed when not in use. We couldn't really do porch umbrellas because of the string lights that we put up already, so I had to noodle for a while on another way to do it, and I think this is going to work, but the gulf between concept and execution is vast and unknowable. Fingers crossed. How are YOU doing? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix's activity is settling into something resembling a known pattern that goes like:10 Awake!20 Nurse!30 Lie around and make googoo sounds while looking at a mobile/hanging bird toy/book!40 Start to make faintly complaining sounds!50 Nap!60 GOTO 10This cycle has a fairly long version after his ~9p nurse, whereupon he'll sleep until sometime between ~4-6a and then start it up again. As routines go, this is reasonably reliable and hence absolutely incredible. It'll change -- I know and accept in my heart that it'll change as his brain continues to grow and his abilities multiply -- but it sure would be nice to just sit in this pattern for a while, wouldn't it? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Zeynep Tufekci has thoughts on the remaining unvaccinated; it's worth reading if you've got a spare NYT click. ($NYT) 

  • "100 Capitol Rioters Have Pleaded Guilty. Here’s What Their Cases Show About The Jan. 6 Investigation." (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Want to guess how fast TikTok will show you some Nazi bullshit if you start to interact with transphobic bullshit? (Media Matters) 

  • Jenny Zhang has an interesting longread up on the notion of marginalized identity and how it interacts with, well, just about everything these days. (Gawker) 

  • The subhead on this article about the male-fragility-to-fascism pipeline sums it up, but the article itself is also good: "Authoritarians know how to play on the gender anxieties of insecure men, building up an army of bitter chumps" (Salon) 

  • "We Accidentally Solved the Flu. Now What?" Seriously: we cut flu deaths by 17,000x last year. Are we supposed to go back to that? (~$Atlantic) 

  • The Paleontological Research Institution in Ithaca has some very good plushes for the relatively obscure prehistoric animal lover in your house. (PRI) 

  • Holy fuck: an entire city might have been leveled about 3600y ago in a Tunguska-size cosmic airburst, which might explain the origin of the Biblical story of the destruction of Sodom. (East Carolina U) (Paper) 

  • Letting the headline do the talking here: "Engineers 3D-Print Personalized, Wireless Wearables That Never Need a Charge" (U of Arizona) 

  • Autonomous racing drones are getting much better at going faster without crashing thanks to doing it in simulation first. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • Is there ............ too much science happening?? (Axios) 

  • Food fraud -- claiming your bullshit strawberries are some rare harvest from the winding hills of Sicily or whatever -- is both real and expensive to bust. Botanists have figured out a faster, cheaper way. (U of Basel) 

  • A six-person team has committed to a month-long stay in a simulated Mars habitat in the Israeli desert. If you squint, their outfits kinda look like a VOY-era Starfleet uniform, though. (Reuters) 

  • It, uh. Hmm. Here's a subhead for you: "What if emotions are not universal and hardwired but exquisite acts of meaning-making specific to context and culture?" (Aeon) 

  • We could generate all the electricity the world needs if we covered half of our existing roofs with solar panels. (The Conversation) Or -- once again -- we could just put them over our croplands and reap all kinds of benefits. (Interesting Engineering) 

  • Looks like we've got a new one for the astronomical anomaly catalog, folks. (PhysOrg) Actually, make that two -- or over 1650, depending on how you look at it. (UNLV) 

  • It works in rats: scientists have invented a system of precision-placed microelectrodes that can interrupt incoming pain signals, providing near-total relief from chronic pain without fucking up the rest of the brain. Let's see where they're at a decade from now with human trials! (Lund U) 

  • There's a theory that all of the native tribes of America are descended from a group of people who came from Japan over the Bering land bridge; turns out they were more likely from Siberia, according to the genetic and skeletal evidence. (PaleoAmerica study group via Taylor & Francis) 

  • The hedges you're walking past on a city sidewalk might be helping more than we thought to clean the air you're breathing. (U of Surrey) 

  • Ever wake up at like 3 or 4a just to ruminate on all your problems? Why are we like this? What do we do about it? This psychology researcher has answers. (The Conversation) 

  • Accept my pledge that every time we inch closer to medi-gel from Mass Effect, I will be there to document it. (KTH Royal Institute of Tech) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some bandsJustice TubeThe Hot SicknessMud Manager(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think any of these bands sound 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.