in which a novel and entertaining auction is proposed

July 27, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that deeply and sincerely wishes a multitude of poxes on every federal employee in body armor out there on the streets trying to beat down ordinary citizens. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayNo new episode this week, but we've got plenty in the works, people!!🎉 AW YISS 🎉We've gotten to 32 ratings in Apple Podcasts, and another (excellent) review! Heartfelt thanks go out to this lovely and amazing person; may your step be light and your days untroubled at least until the end of the week!If you'd like to join the ranks of optimum humans like these, go on ahead to ye oldynne Apple Podcasts and make that ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ happen!!Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberIt seems laughable to try to throw Instant Band Night without a proven vaccine in place. Let's see what's up in November 2021.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.I'm not gonna link to the pictures -- you've seen the pictures by now, or you haven't -- but NOT ONLY should people wearing masks with swastikas on them not allowed into stores, they shouldn't be allowed to walk the streets leading to the stores without incurring severe physical harm. This is not up for debate. Nazis want entire populations of humans killed for their ethnicity or sexual orientation. That is unfuckingtenable. We had a whole war about this 60ish years ago. I'm not kidding about this: Nazis getting public beatdowns should be an accepted social norm in this, the year 20goddamn20. They should be getting swarmed by everyday citizens wielding bats and bricks. Where they find comfort, they can proliferate: deny them this space. The next time a Nazi walks into a Walmart, you and everyone else should be running for the sports aisle and grabbing baseball bats. There are probably hammers in the tool department. A bottle of wine wielded correctly can do some damage. You have many options, and if we're doing this right, lots of company. We've been lax. That ends now. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.While it wouldn't take a lot of work for me to believe that Xmas is every kid's favorite holiday by default on account of the presents, I'm finding it a little odd that it seems to be Quentin's favorite, given that he's only 2.5yo and (I'm assuming) lacks a deep understanding of the whole Xmas/present confluence. I say this based on the following evidence: 

  • Two of his favorite songs right now are still -- inexplicably -- "Jingle Bells" and "Jingle Bell Rock." He just started requesting them out of the blue a month or so ago (it's not like we were playing Xmas music in the house in May, we're not psychopaths)?? One great wrinkle: a couple nights in a row, he insisted on requesting "Jingle Bell," a variation of the song in which we made all the bells and references thereto singular as opposed to plural. He found this extremely funny.

  • One of the books we've been reading repeatedly is The Night Before Christmas, which he pulled at random off the shelf and now requests at least twice a day. Does he just like the consistency of the rhyme and meter, or is it the visual stylings of Tomie dePaola (RIP)?

I wonder what's going to happen once Halloween is over and actual Xmas music starts to get played?? Or when we put the tree up?? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Prepare to scream: if physical distancing measures are relaxed too soon (for instance, while there's no vaccine), the number of infections will end up about the same as if we'd never fucking done anything in the first goddamn place. True, the shape of the curve definitely matters, but still: fuck. (UCLA) 

  • Deep breath: it might be psychologically helpful to think of this whole pandemic thing and the vaccine as a journey rather than a destination to be reached. (Stanford Business School) 

  • "Facebook is hurting people at scale" is both accurate and much more interesting when it comes from inside the tent. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • We like to think dogs are smart, but what are the ways in which they're ........ not? (Gizmodo) 

  • "Corporate America was here for you on coronavirus until about June." (Vox) 

  • Here's a good writeup on mascot performance as a career; the NBA is apparently the best place to be a mascot. Huh. (538) 

  • Japanese distillers and pork farmers have discovered that feeding pigs the leftover barley and whatnot that remains after making shochu results in measurably happier, healthier, tastier animals. (U of Tokyo) 

  • It's possible to identify misinformation as it spreads in real time. Ahem. (Princeton School of Public and Intl Affairs) 

  • Multi-generational housing is coming back. I mean, you probably knew that already, given [gestures vaguely at the economy], but just to make it official. (Fast Company) 

  • There's a lot of people in the Trump regime I don't enjoy, let's just put it that way, but also fuck this stupid clown who got appointed to the Iceland ambassadorship. Assuming a Biden victory at the end of the year, who gets to fire these dumbshits? Traditionally they're supposed to resign, but I cannot imagine a 100% compliance rate from Trumpworld, I just can't. This means someone has to fire them. Can I be that someone? Can we raffle that off, maybe? Raise some money for BLM or teachers or something? Firing them likely won't hurt them financially, but imagine how wonderfully personally humiliating you (read: I) could make it. (CBS News) 

  • Without NASA, biology as we know it wouldn't exist. How about that! (Undark) 

  • I've been thinking about this tweet and its particular English dialect ever since I saw it. I've never heard of Mackems before, and now I want to know how they differ syntactically or lexically from Geordies (also an unknown faction to me prior to this tweet). (@danielhowdon on Twitter) 

  • This article from a Constitutional law scholar about how masks don't violate anyone's Constitutional rights would be a good one to force an anti-masker to read, if you could find an anti-masker who can read. (The Conversation) Speaking of masks, here's a design for an easily-sterilized, reusable one from MIT. (MIT) 

  • It's time to reframe how we approach the problem of Kanye West. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • The headlines you've been reading about how Covid-19 immunity might not last very long are a little premature, to say the least. (~$Atlantic) 

  • CAMERAS THAT FIT ON BUGS. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • All the polar bears will be gone in 80 years unless we do something. ($NYT) 

  • GPT-3 is pretty good, y'all. (~$MIT Technology Review) Of course, you might already know that if you're a Star Trek fan and you've been following a certain Twitter account, which I can personally verify posts genuine GPT-3-generated episode summaries for nonexistent or weirdly parallel seasons of Trek shows, as well as other genuinely excellent material. (@StarTrekAI) 

  • Plato was right: on average, the Earth is basically made of cubes. (U Penn) 

  • All zoos everywhere should have their animals paint art for fundraising at all times. These are delightful. I would love to know who gets to title them?? (KOB4 News) 

  • It looks like high-density, long-life batteries for high-power applications (like electric planes) could theoretically be within reach much sooner than we think. I'll believe it when I see it. (Lawrence Berkeley Lab) 

  • A travel writer couple crunched a variety of different rating indexes and discovered that out of 35 countries surveyed, America is next to last in overall "raising a family" score, and honestly it's damn near impossible to argue with. The full USA writeup's at the bottom of the page, and it gives both hard numbers and anecdotes. (Asher & Lyric) 

  • Oxytocin might be a key component in fighting Alzheimer's. Which is kind of oddly poetic, when you think about it. (Tokyo U of Science) 

  • Badass: scientists have developed a non-cuttable material they call Proteus whose structure is inspired by grapefruit rinds and abalone shells. It could make theft-proof bike locks and amazing body armor, and that's just for starters. However. What the hell are you supposed to use when you want to cut it? (Durham U) 

  • Here's a set of backyard offices you can look at for a second and feel a modicum of peace. (Dezeen) 

  • Corporations: Black artists can tell exactly what you're doing when you reach out to them with sudden offers of work. ($NYT) 

  • Narcissists don't learn from their mistakes because they don't think they make any. (Oregon State) 

  • We need to start thinking about what to do with solar panels that have reached their end-of-life; the solar recycling industry could be big money in about 30 years. (E&E News) 

  • WaPo talked to Susan Orlean about her amazing drunk tweets the other night. ($WaPo) 

  • Twitter ........ did something? ......... about Qanon?????? (The Verge) It's almost certainly way too late. (~$MIT Technology Review) 

  • I love this extremely data-driven examination of which songs actually belong in 90s canon, even if I disagree with where that Lisa Loeb song somehow ended up. (The Pudding) 

  • Everlane's whole "radical transparency" thing might have just been a load ot hot, stinky cat dookie. At this point I would love a definitive list of companies that have managed to 100% walk their talk. Is anybody maintaining one? I can't imagine it's a lot of work. ($NYT) 

  • The fact that teachers even have to organize to resist reopening schools -- which, again, should not even be on the fucking table in this country right now -- is emblematic of the shitshow we've made of this whole thing. (BuzzFeed News) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumCracker Conference, Your Artisan Wreckage Inspector 

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.