in which the fate of all human waste is greatly simplified

April 13, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's contemplating starting up Avengers Endgame at 1033p on a weekday night because pfflhglbhlghlghb 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayIt's an off week, so no new episode. I'm going to admit to you right now that I had ambitions to go back to a weekly schedule during the quarantine so people would have something to listen to, but time/energy became inescapable factors, and also it turns out podcast listenership in general is slightly down anyway, because nobody's commuting anywhere and guess when most podcast listening seems to happen?We're now at 31 ratings in Apple Podcasts!! This is not a drill!!! I'm going to choose to believe it was one of you and that you are AMAZING. If you've not done this yet, it's clearly heating up and you could get! on! board! Just head on over to Apple Podcasts and make that ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating happen, because you can.Instant Band Night 15: POSTPONEDIt's starting to look more and more like May 14 is probably an over-optimistic goal, but it costs us nothing to dream.And listen, if we do have to postpone 'til July, we will, and just imagine what a party it'll be!!!!It's also still on Facebook if you're there, too* * 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.Two things.1.I went to pick up a burger from a restaurant near me, and it was total chaos in there -- full kitchen staff, but only one person working fulfillment who I think is probably dead from stress now, with a giant pile of ready-to-go orders tagged and bagged behind her and half a dozen delivery people waiting with phones out, all wearing masks. Every 45 seconds, another one walked in. I kept hearing a tone of some sort that I think had to do with online orders coming in; I couldn't tell which were orders from their own website and which were from the various apps whose stickers were plastered to the front of the counter. The little printer next to the register would occasionally spit out orders unbidden, its masters hidden somewhere out there on the internet. It was like hell; I think they were all in hell. Just watching this process stressed me out. I don't use delivery apps. I like to just call the restaurant directly, put my order in, and go pick it up -- that way, I know where the money goes. I realize this involves a certain level of car privilege in that I have one; sorry. Also, I don't want to minimize the efforts of delivery workers from the various apps -- they have bills to pay and it seems like at least one person minimum in this deal is getting absolutely fucked. This is a terrible quadrilateral with points at 

  • This burger joint seemed on the verge of meltdown

  • I really want to truly support local businesses I like

  • Local businesses can theoretically have more reach with these delivery apps

  • The delivery app business model has to produce a nontrivial amount of suffering somewhere

Capitalism! It's turning out to have some problems!2.At some point, we're going to be declared in the epidemiological clear and it'll be safe to see people again. When that happens, we're going to need to figure out new etiquette just for the reunion hugs alone. How many minutes is too many minutes? Who cries first? On which shoulder? Someone let me know. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.One aspect of potty training for which I was not prepared is as follows:Quentin's pretty good at putting his pee in the potty, which means we take it into the bathroom (with a nonzero amount of fanfare) where it's dumped into the toilet before he gets to flush it down. At least once a day I get asked: "Where does the pee go?" My answer is always the same: 

  1. There are pipes under the house

  2. They take the pee to the sewer

  3. The sewer takes the pee to the sewage treatment plant

  4. The sewage treatment plant turns the pee into plain water

  5. Then they put it in the ocean

He sometimes asks this question at random, and in non-bathroom settings, my answer tends to provoke laughter. I wish I could ask him what he finds so amusing about it, but thus far it's a mystery that has yet to be cracked. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • The only explainer you need about pandemic modeling is this long but good comic strip by Zach Weinersmith. (538) 

  • While we're at it with explaining things, though, here's why there never seems to be any damn flour in the store. (The Conversation) 

  • "Our fragile child care 'system' may be about to shatter" -- the quotes inside this headline really kind of say it all. (Hechinger Report) 

  • The math says if we messed with wild animals' habitats less, we'd probably end up with fewer diseases like the rona coming for us. Just puttin' that out there. (UC Davis) 

  • It turns out our memories are incredibly easy to mess with, and it's very hard to tell a fake memory from a real one if you're an observer. (Gizmodo) 

  • This is old, but still good: by challenging raccoons with garbage bins that are hard to open, we're just making them smarter and better at it, so it gets harder and harder to make a raccoon-proof bin over time. (Nautilus) 

  • I think it's extremely wild that we have no idea why our planet had a magnetic field for 2.5 billion years of its existence. (MIT) 

  • The rona has apparently made live music online into a Thing; if I have free time one day, I'll check some of these out, probably! (Vox) 

  • "Flexoskeletons" are a new insect-derived biomimicry concept in robot design; yes, there's video. (UCSD) 

  • Obviously this doesn't work on the rona because it's a virus, but: laser treatment can make metal surfaces antibacterial on contact. (Purdue U) 

  • What makes a job meaningful? (Brookings Institute) 

  • Cargo ships crossing the oceans make clouds similar to airplane contrails; it turns out these might have a measurable effect on global warming, which means maybe it wouldn't be so crazy to contemplate a particular geoengineering strategy called "marine cloud brightening." Okay! (Anthropocene) 

  • Here's a good read on the mobilization of private industry to make supplies for the continued fight against the rona. (Vox) 

  • Scientists have stumbled on an enzyme that can make high-quality plastic recycling a reality if they're able to scale it, which they're optimistic about, so now I am too dammit (Guardian) 

  • Repurposing even just a percentage of your city's green space toward food production could have a surprisingly large impact, at least according to one study done in the UK. (Anthropocene) 

  • If I'm reading this correctly, you can slip something past somebody's visual perception if you can do it in under 100 milliseconds. (NIH) 

  • I feel like this has already been the subject of a sci fi book or story, but if someone wants to point me to a good example, feel free: invasive species that are charismatic are harder to organize controls against. (Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumHandsome Cat, The Fire-Haunted Earth 

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.