in which a joke is possibly made

June 17, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that slept funny for 90 minutes for a morning nap and came out with a painful neck-crick that lasted the entire stupid day 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayNo new episode this week on account of travel and such, but there's an extensive back catalog ready for you to (re)visit!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 7-11🎶🍧🎸 Here's the plan 🎸🍧🎶1. Tell everybody you know about 🍡Instant Band Night 7-11🍡 and that their presence is REQUIRED2. There is no step 23. See you there 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I just got back from South Carolina, but this isn't about that. Before we left, we had a minor heatwave here in the Bay that was like being held inside the mouth of a goddamn dragon. But because this is the San Francisco Bay, which is normally pretty temperate, nobody has AC in their houses, so we rely on the electric fans we've accumulated to create columns of livable atmosphere that are maybe 2-3ft wide, oscillating gently. I even took the step of ordering a window fan, knowing it would arrive and be ready for in-store pickup while we were in South Carolina. And of course when we returned, it was back to the usual cool -- chilly, even, at 9p outside of SFO -- so the fan has not been necessary. But I have it. I even set it up today just to test it, and I think I've figured out how I want the airflow to work: it'll be set up in the living room to pull cool air in, while I put a fan up to the kitchen window blasting our warm air the hell out. I think it's going to work. I both do and don't want to test this soon. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.So we flew to South Carolina for a few days, and for the most part, Quentin handled it like a champ. I have a few scattered observations to share:1.Planes might be one of Quentin's favorite things right now. Whenever we're outside, he spots faraway airliners (whether they're leaving contrails or not) and exclaims "Plane! Plane!" while pointing. We always turn to look, and he's pretty much always right. Planes are much easier to spot from the window of an airport concourse, or through a window next to a seat inside an actual plane as it idles and taxis to/from the gate, which is delightful to witness.2.I'm not entirely sure Quentin has the cognitive machinery necessary to realize that he actually rode inside a plane -- one of his favorite things -- for several hours at a time. But I could be wrong! Babies: who knows what's going on in there.3.I think Quentin made his first(?) joke? We were outside the rehearsal dinner under a clear blue sunny sky, and he said "Plane! Plane!" and pointed. I looked. There was nothing there. And he laughed! You got me, bud. You got me!4.The other thing in the sky that Quentin likes to point out whenever he sees it is the moon -- "Moon! Moon!" -- which is definitely something he shares with his mom. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Old but interesting: there actually is a real reason why there are so many Thai restaurants. (Vice) 

  • If you have a minute, this longread titled "Babylon 5 Is the Greatest, Most Terrible SF Series" is worth said 60sec. (It will take you much longer than 60sec) (Tor) 

  • A bigger house will only make you happy as long as you never lay eyes on a larger one. (Atlantic) 

  • Tiny drones are too small to carry good sensors, so they crash a lot. Solution: whiskers. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • A vastly speeded-up PET scanner that can image an entire human in 20sec is really just 8 of the damn things glued together in a row. And you know what, why not?! What other rad-ass things could we make if we just took 8 of something and strapped them together? (Nature) 

  • Shutting Silk Road down did effectively nothing. (NYT) 

  • Here's an interesting analysis of the Twitter followers of the Democratic candidate clown car. (538) 

  • Somewhat unsurprisingly, that tweet of "influencers" taking selfies at Chernobyl [finger_wag.gif] turns out to be bullshit for many reasons. (Atlantic) 

  • Mars! Helicopter! Testing! (Cosmos) 

  • Sadly hilarious: AI object-identification algorithms do worse when you present them with stuff from poorer countries. (The Verge) 

  • So are these scorpion venom compounds antibiotics? Or not? They kill bacteria without killing people, so that's a thing, but could a bacterium eventually evolve resistance to them or what? Is it just too early to ask that kind of question? (Stanford press release) 

  • Shout out to my alma mater for going in on tiny lunar rovers. (The Verge) 

  • This week's self-explanatory headline is What Abortion Access Looks Like in Mississippi: One Person at a Time. (NYTimes Mag) 

  • Some people do not enjoy oral histories, and I say unto you: you are missing out. Like this one where they just talk about Vincent D'Onofrio and his character from the first Men In Black, which I really need to rewatch. (Vulture) 

  • You're gonna want something to smash close at hand after you're done with this. (The Root) 

  • On the one hand, the fact that people do give others money in these Facebook "blessings groups" is proof that there is a nonzero amount of generosity built into human nature, but on the other, the fact that these groups even need to exist in the first place is proof that capitalism is broken as fuck. (Atlantic) 

  • If you could grow roads instead of having to construct them, what .......... I don't even know how to finish that sentence, the idea seems so crazy. And yet! (Popular Mechanics) 

  • The amount of math it must take to attempt to locate a discarded lunar module from the goddamn 60s is mind-boggling; bonus points for it being nicknamed "Snoopy." (TechCrunch) 

  • This might be the best school trip I've ever read about, but I don't know if that's just my inner Ron Swanson wannabe talking. (Atlantic) 

  • Is Ikea, of all companies, trying to prepare us for a solarpunk future? I'm all for it. (Popular Mechanics) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumSmile Dammit, The Shock Has Passed But the Danger Is Real 

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.