in which a spiritual sequel of sorts to Equilibrium is posited

July 23, 2018

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's going on a big trip tomorrow, so there won't be an issue (or new podcast episode) next week. Sorry in advance! Know that you are still loved. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway75 - Rock Show Safety Puppet"Jon (@ferociousj), guest co-host Kelly (@enthusiosity), and special guest Ashleyanne (@wambamash) discover ideas for concert venues, dating services, and dubious cocktails before confirming the utility of the Sword Plan."I left in a bit here where Ashleyanne searches through the spreadsheet for one of the ideas she tagged, because I think it gets across how much fun it is for the guests -- something I hope comes across in every episode, but is hard for me to separate myself from enough to assess??If you haven't yet, subscribe by searching "Idea Factory Giveaway" in your podcast app 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). 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.If we take it as read for a moment that everyone has a type, where does that type come from? What sets those tastes down? At what age or social developmental stage do they get cemented? This is yet another case of Shower Thoughts Strike Again, but I'm wondering if anyone's ever attempted to do a large-scale study of how affinities form -- sit lots of people down and try to figure out what their tastes are, where they came from, etc (I guess it'd just be a longform interview). What if it's possible that with a large enough sample size and sufficiently advanced analysis tools, the investigators could identify commonalities across large swaths of stories? What would we do with that knowledge? Could the origins of affinities be determined, even manipulated?Great, now I'm envisioning a dystopian sci fi story where all humans are assigned a type at birth by a dispassionate totalitarian government ("YOU LIKE: REDHEADS. YOU ARE INTO: MEN WITH LARGE FEET") until One Brave Citizen chooses to stand up for what they truly believe in. I've just now decided it's a movie -- a spiritual sequel to that underrated classic of ridiculousness Equilibrium in fact, this time with Tessa Thompson as the lead because why not. Someone get Christian Bale to teach her the gun katas immediately. Thank you. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Right now we're busy preparing for the first plane trip Quentin will take in his life, or technically the first five by the time this combination wedding/vacation is done. I would ask for plane trip advice, but realistically any advice I receive will be too late to operationalize by Wednesday morning at 5a. Also, we've already taken to heart the bit about putting a bottle in his mouth for takeoff/landing, so the swallowing motion can equilibrate his ears. We tried not to go too crazy packing for this thing, but the unavoidable truth seems to be that babies need a ton of stuff -- the real challenge, as far as I'm concerned, will be fitting everything into the car, though that seems totally doable. But then, I would say that, wouldn't I? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Here's a trilogy of sorts:1. The Recode interview where Zuck verbally flops around and gasps on the floor of Kara Swisher's metaphorical fishing boat trying to state Facebook's position on misinformation.2. The NYT's biting commentary on said interview.3. A piece from the mods of the Ask Historians subreddit that lays out the screamingly obvious reasons why shutting down Holocaust deniers is a good thing; I wonder if anyone's shown it to Zuck yet. 

  • That stupid NFL kneeling policy may not actually happen after all. 

  • Using bacteriophages to kill bacteria instead of drugs seems like a great idea in theory, but why does it still make me nervous? I think I've just absorbed too much sci fi where a targeted microorganism mutates into something terrible. A bacterium-specific virus would need to go through an improbable sequence of changes in order to be able to attack human cells, right? Can someone find me a viral pathologist? 

  • When the guy who wrote The Design of Everyday Things writes a piece about why bad technology is everywhere, you read it, even if it's not long enough. 

  • Did you know repair cafes are a thing? I didn't, and now I'm fascinated. 

  • This technique for isolating and magnetically pulling tumor cells out of the body with tailored nanoparticles is kind of amazing. 

  • I found this heartwarming: following the cessation of hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea, people in both nations started randomly calling strangers in the other country on the phone just to talk, for no other reason than because they could. 

  • Racism still applies to humanoid robots. Fuckin' great. 

  • Hands up anyone else who read The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet: Rolls-Royce is working on fixbots for airplane engines. 

  • CB Insights does interesting briefs; here's one about 11 New Restaurant Concepts Reimagining Fast Food & Casual Dining (I'm a big fan of #3 myself). 

  • The lightspeed limit means we can't directly control robots exploring other planets, not even Mars -- which means the robots have to be smart enough to tell what's interesting on their own, and getting them there is goddamn fascinating. 

  • This article about the neutrino detector at the South Pole reminded me that blazars are a thing that exist; how about that! 

  • Your difficult read of the week is this one on the alt-right lunatic who killed his dad and how he got there; uncomfortable for a host of reasons. 

  • CRISPR might not be as awesome as we think, in that it seems to cause huge unintended errors. 

  • I'll just let the headline do the talking on this one: Photographer Captures Eagle and Fox Fighting Over Rabbit in Midair.

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumBird Explosion, You I Will Strangle 

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.