in search of spookiness(?)

October 11, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wonders whether a Bluetooth earbud that requires a six-second button press to deactivate is truly out of line or if this is how they all do it now 

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 there, as ever. It will always be there for you.We've been sitting at 38 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings on our Apple Podcasts page for a while now. I just noticed Fight Island is at 40. With your help we can overtake them!!!!Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberI'll be honest: I don't know if the Delta variant has fucked our plans for November 11th's return of Instant Band Night. At this point I'm assuming everyone reading this has gotten their shot, so what's left to do but wait, cross our fingers, and also run through the streets forcibly vaccinating everyone we can get our mitts on? I'll see you out there.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook+ + g e t   y o u r   s h o t   / /   l e t ' s   d o   t h i s + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.By the time we wake up, the house has become cold enough to warrant turning the heat on for a couple hours; this is how I know fall is really at our doorstep. That, and the disappearance of stone fruit from grocery shelves. But I'm not here to talk about that. I want to talk about whether you peel your ginger before you grate and cook it.Reasons to peel it:a1.) Skin looks like bark or wood and therefore appears to be inediblea2.) Inclusion of inedible skin seems like a bad idea in literally any dishBut it turns out I have friends -- many friends!!! -- who don't bother to peel their ginger before they grate and cook it.Reasons not to peel it:b1.) Skin supposedly becomes undetectable in the final productb2.) Peeling is therefore a waste of time and energyNow APPARENTLY proposition (b1) is true?? The thought to test this has literally never once crossed my mind because of proposition (a1). I'm not sure I'm ever going to cross over; I just don't trust it. To my mind, this is exactly like how kiwi fruit are apparently supposed to be edible with the skin on -- you just bite into 'em -- but I have never met a single living human who has ever done it. Not even the word of the Christian God Almighty Himself could make us. Do you peel your ginger or what? Equally (if not more importantly): what persuaded you to overlook the obvious woody appearance of the skin to try it?? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin's preschool class has been going on little walks around the neighborhood immediately surrounding their school and looking for "spooky houses," aka houses with Halloween decorations on them. This has instilled in him a desire to decorate our own house, but thus far he's been unable to articulate any actual design elements he wants other than pumpkins, two of which now adorn our front porch; they're plastered with stickers from Trader Joe's, some Halloween-themed, some not. The stickers don't adhere very well to the pumpkins' surface -- they tend to curl up and away -- which makes me wonder whether we could paint them in Mod Podge and sort of lacquer them on? Any advice or other thoughts would be appreciated; I saw "4 weeks cure time" on the side of the bottle and that gave me pause. Other than that, it's just going to be a sort of combination waiting/guessing game as Quentin figures out what other decorative elements he wants. This is all very funny to me because last year, he was easily spooked by other houses' decorations, and now this year he's into it to a nonzero degree. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • If COVID restrictions ease up this winter, watch out for the other colds and viruses we used to catch pre-pandemic, 'cause they're gonna make a comeback. I think we should just start wearing masks in winter and on planes from now on as a baseline. (Nature) 

  • This week's Atlantic must-read is on the Everything Shortage, a result of what it calls "a veritable hydra of bottlenecks." (~$Atlantic) 

  • Facebook's PR guy is doing a literally incomprehensibly bad job by professional standards. (Input) Somewhat related is this little thread that talks about why it feels so bad to use stuff like Facebook. (@Klonick on Twitter) 

  • Malaria vaccine?? Malaria vaccine!! (BBC) 

  • Billionaires definitely shouldn't exist, but that doesn't mean I'm against people being rich -- just not obscenely, destructively rich. It would be nice, for instance, to be just rich enough to afford some of this absolutely insane custom design service. (Financial Times) 

  • Pair that with this fascinating longread/book review that wonders: "Do We Need to Work?" No, really, though: where the fuck is our post-scarcity future? (The Nation) 

  • A bear found an abandoned GoPro and managed to turn it on. This tweet (@NE0NGENESlS on Twitter) has a great highlight, and this article has what seems to be almost five minutes of footage. (My Modern Met) 

  • Speaking of bears, the winner of this year's Fat Bear Week was really never in doubt. (Gizmodo) 

  • Scientists have been able to treat one (1) person's severe depression with a specialized brain implant. (UCSF) 

  • Hmm: if you want a robot to walk, maybe put some propellers on its shoulders to help keep it upright. (Caltech) 

  • I seem to remember linking to this method discovered last year at Rice for turning garbage into graphene(!?!), but now they've also found they can use it to recover precious metals from e-waste at much lower energy costs than standard methods. (Rice) 

  • Four -- four!!! -- NFT-based scams all took the money and ran on Wednesday. Should we all be getting in on this?? (Vice) 

  • The science .......... does not seem to be on the side of lab-grown meat ever being scalable. (The Counter) 

  • If you haven't read or heard about the "Bad Art Friend" thing, don't worry about it, don't go looking for any more discourse, and don't read the NYT thing: here's the definitive take. (Rottin' in Denmark) 

  • What if we're all obsessed with status, deep down, and it's fucking us up at the micro and macro level? (Vox) 

  • There was a mass mammal extinction about 30M years ago that we only just uncovered recently. (Duke) 

  • The descendants of Henrietta Lacks are suing, and I wish them good hunting. (AP) 

  • I say this with full knowledge that I'm not a summer person, but heat is the goddamn worst, and scientists agree there should be a focused and organized way to deal with it, 'cause it's sure as fuck not going anywhere. (Nature) 

  • I've missed the University at Buffalo; here they've announced the discovery of a targeted pain-relief injection that's opioid-free and lasts a long time after just one dose. (U at Buffalo) 

  • Dave Chappelle is a fucking bummer now. (GQ) 

  • The idea behind neuroaesthetics is so simple it's almost embarrassing: nice-looking spaces make us feel better. (NEO.LIFE) 

  • If you finished Ted Lasso season 2 then click on this for good reading about Nate. DO NOT CLICK THIS IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED SEASON 2. (Viola Smart on Twitter) 

  • Researchers working on something else have stumbled onto a design for a hydrogel tablet capable of purifying a liter of river water in about an hour with no additional inputs. (UT Austin) 

  • I feel like there's already been a lot of research banging this drum for a while now, but once again it seems that a pretty good way to alleviate poverty is just to fucking hand people money instead of trying to make them sign up for services. (Axios) 

  • Scientists have figured out at least one useful case where microbes can be used directly to battle other microbes. (Center for Genomic Regulation) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumGood Morrow, Lady Winchester, A Tour of the Damage (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.