in the mouth of mango(?)

May 13, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's decided it might always keep a box of chocolate or orange Hostess cupcakes in the house, just to know they're there. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI'll be honest with you: I ran out of time to edit the podcast this week. But that's why there's such an extensive back catalog! I recommend: literally any of them. Seriously, I can't choose a favorite, and you know best which one would appeal to you specifically -- just read the descriptions. I can't do all the work, can I???If you haven't yet, subscribe by searching "Idea Factory Giveaway" in your podcatcher of choice (and let me know if it doesn't pop up). If you're already there, feel free to leave a 5-star rating and a nice review (it helps; algorithms, etc, you know the deal).Instant Band Night 7-11Instant Band Night 10 was a lot of fun, but I'd really love to see more people come to the next one, which happens to be on July 11th (hence the convenient moniker). I think we've finally perfected the Instant Band Night formula, so this one should be can't-miss! All the details are here; do y'self a favor and check it out (and don't forget to invite your friends). 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.May is here and it's feeling ridiculously dense with nerd movies. Detective Pikachu, John Wick 3, and that Godzilla one are all happening almost on top of each other, it seems like, but then we get a reprieve until July when Spider-Man: Far From Home comes out. After that we're in the clear until December and the last Star War, right?* I think I'm honestly good for nerd movies for a while after 2019.I will say that it feels weird that there's no Star Trek-based movie activity anywhere on even the most distant horizon as far as I'm aware, although it seems like they're making enough theoretical future TV to choke a targ. I'm onboard for all of it: choo choo, motherfuckers! Or more like [warp core noise] [warp core noise], motherfuckers!* Technically I know it's not the last Star War, people: there's that Rian Johnson trilogy, and there's the one from the Game of Thrones bros, although I'm not so sure people are gonna be as hyped for that one as they might've been a month ago. You know what I'm talkin' bout. For fucksake, just give me a goddamn Obi-Wan movie -- just one! -- with Ewan McGregor in it, so he can have a Star War in his catalog to be proud of. He needs this. We need this. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin is picking up new words left and right, sounding them repeatedly in his delightful little chirp of a voice. Here's the latest linguistic enigma: Mavis's parents take care of him on Fridays, and for the past couple of weeks, one of the things that's amused him (and his 6yo cousin Sam) is messing around with those little orange flags you might use to mark something on a lawn. When I went to pick him up on the most recent Friday, they reported that he's taken to unambiguously calling these flags "mango." I ......... have no idea where he picked that up. The obvious guess is that it must be a color association, but we don't really have a lot of what I might call "mango-forward" literature in the house; there's one book that displays spreads of foods according to color, and mangoes are definitely in there, but

  • They're shown in the yellow spread, not the orange

  • He doesn't look at this book very often

Wha happen, Quentin? Maybe this is something he picked up at his Monday/Tuesday nannyshare? It's a delightful little mystery, almost as good as whatever it was that happened in this episode of My Brother, My Brother and Me a few years ago (yes, it's a long clip, but stick with it and it will reward you, for various values of "reward").The Missing Objects of the Week are still the same orange foam baseball (at this point I'm just waiting for the next time the cleaners come -- they somehow found his yellow railcar) and the + sign and 4 from his fridge magnet set. Technically, the 4 isn't truly missing, since I know where it is, but I haven't had the time to build the tool I need to retrieve it from where it's sitting way, way under the fridge. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • There's a lot to unpack in this very good piece about Trumpism and white teenage boys and why they reinforce each other so well. (The Baffler) 

  • This is a good take on that Chris Hughes "we should break up Facebook" NYT thing. (Techdirt) 

  • Why have food allergies suddenly exploded? (Leapsmag) 

  • There just might be a way to fix the electoral college problem by 2020. (Politico) 

  • As a naturally social person, I find these efforts to solve loneliness fascinating. (Vox) 

  • What gets me about obvious, barely-competent grifts like this border wall thing is that they seem so fucking easy to set up and get away with. Is Kolfage's bulshit not legally actionable in any way? Or is he too dumb to be properly scared of being jailed or sued into oblivion for fraud or something? And if it turns out nobody can actually go after him, why don't we all start pulling cons like this? The money is clearly out there just waiting for us to take it. Fuck! (WaPo) 

  • Uh: the most common form of water in the universe might be hot, black ice. (Quanta) 

  • The collapse of social robotics companies like Anki, Jibo, and Kuri have some important and fascinating lessons to teach us. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • Oh nooooooo, now I want a secret room in every place I live from now oooon (YouTube) 

  • So Denver decriminalized shrooms! But how are they going to, you know, implement that policy? (CityLab) 

  • Holy shit, endlessly recyclable plastic is possible! (Gizmodo) 

  • Rideshare companies like to talk about how their whole deal will help to reduce traffic in the city, but surprise! A study published in Science Advances calls bullshit, and you can read the whole thing here if you want, but this jives 1000% with my personal observations of pretty much everybody I know, who'd rather spring for an Uber than ride a bus full of poors (only half kidding; the insane convenience of an instantly summonable personal car over a fixed-route, scheduled bus is obvious) (but still). (Science Advances) 

  • Looks like passwords might really be going away at some point. (Fast Company) 

  • Fully 90% of those blockchain-based supply chain things you're already tired of hearing about are dead. Which means 10% of them are still going. Huh. (Modern Consensus) 

  • Wasps are capable of transitive logic and I don't like it. (U of Michigan via EurekAlert) 

  • What would Facebook look like if it had been built with privacy in mind from jump? (Atlantic) 

  • Neural networks don't actually have to be as big as we make 'em now, so we can save a ton of computing power. (MIT News) Speaking of which, a deep learning model built to detect breast cancer based on looking at a mammogram actually works -- and without bias against black people! See what happens when you include them in your training data? (Engadget) 

  • A Frenchman literally crossed the Atlantic in a barrel (admittedly, a large barrel with reasonably comfortable accommodations, but still a barrel with no engine). How long d'you think you'd last on such a trip before losing your mind? I think maybe a week or two -- tops -- for me. (CNN Travel) 

  • Not gonna lie: having used them a few times at this point, I'd be tempted to get my own Bird scooter if they weren't so dang expensive. (TechCrunch) 

  • We need to stop eating fish immediately. I'd be able to effect this transition without much loss, but what about the approximately 59 billion poke joints that opened while you were reading this sentence? What are all those workers to do? (Guardian) 

  • I don't know how much to trust a study that says universal basic income doesn't work (or at least not as implemented in the various tests that have been done thus far) -- who are these people and do they have an agenda, etc -- but I do agree that it still makes sense to try improving public services more. (Guardian) Interestingly, a different study was done here in the US on how easy or hard it'd be to distribute a UBI through the existing Social Security system: turns out not hard! (Fast Company)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumAshley Bummer, The Semblance of Order 

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.