in which the invasion of Spotify commences

October 21, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that dedicates this issue to A+ platinum-grade friend Laura in the hopes of her swift and total recovery from a surgical procedure. 

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 are on Spotify! That's one less excuse to not be listening, though of course if you're just not a podcast person, I understand. I guess.Once again, if you have the spare few seconds to just pop over into Apple Podcasts (this link is the best I can do, I think) and bling us that 5-thing rating, it would grow no fewer than five extra hearts in our chests, like so:💖💖💖💖💖Help make us impervious to harm, and if you can write a nice review, we will shout you out in our next recording. BELIEVE.Instant Band Night: Lucky 13Less than a month out! Read all the details in this handy link and then add it to your (Google) calendar! Tell your friends about it if they don't already know!🦝 Yes, good 🦝🎶 http://bit.ly/instantbandnight13 🎶 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.It's the fault of this Pitchfork list that I finally up and joined Spotify, albeit at the free level, and either I'm too dumb to figure out how their fucking mobile app works, or they really are gunning for my dollar. Is it true that I can't just tap a song on a playlist to play it? I have to be a paid-up member for that shit to work? And my only recourse as a free user peasant is to just hit SHUFFLE PLAY and hope for the best? I'm honestly considering making a thousand single-song playlists just to spite them. Is that technically possible, or do they limit the number of playlists a [spit] free user can create? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Aspiring or confirmed numerologists, is there any significance to the following sequence of digits:1 3 5 3Because this is something Quentin sometimes says when he's in one of his "babble out of the blue" moods, a precious and adorable phase. I have no idea where these numbers came from, but he delights in saying them in that sequence a lot. (Side mystery: he also likes to shout something I can only approximate in text as "Booming bay!" as in "Booming bay and booming bay and booming bay" etc etc -- any ideas?) Is it a chord progression? A luggage combination? The final access code to the OMEGA VAULT???? One thing it surely couldn't be is a small subset of the numbers that he's been learning for months and just decided to recite in a random order that was pleasing to him. Obviously. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • In 2020, there'll be a massive citizen science effort to survey the entire Great Barrier Reef, if all goes according to plan. (Smithsonian) 

  • The Swedes are at it* again! (Reasons To Be Cheerful)* Interesting ways to boost sustainability without sacrificing quality of life 

  • So that UFO group responsible for the release of those videos we all saw is now working with the government on actual applications for ........ whatever it is they've got. Okay. (Motherboard) 

  • Is, uh ...... huh. Is there some whole other kind of virus out there, a virus that can only reproduce with the help of other viruses? Virii? Whatever? What in the fuck is going on out there (Science Alert) 

  • Nobody I know has a so-called "smart kitchen," probably because they don't actually solve good problems yet. (Fortune) 

  • Researchers at Northwestern have built a 3D printer that can make a person-sized object in a couple of hours. (Northwestern via EurekAlert) 

  • Oh great, stormquakes. Stormquakes are a thing. (AP) 

  • Since they're not built the way brains are, it's possible computers can never actually be truly conscious. (The Conversation) 

  • This ......... huh. Okay. Our bodies are constantly at war with themselves on the literal cellular level, which has some interesting implications for cancer treatment if we can ever get a handle on the phenomenon. (Nature) 

  • Gen Z has a somewhat different relationship to tech than you might suspect, in that they're not super keen on it. (Recode) 

  • Melting ice all over the world is revealing new historical artifacts at a rate archaeologists are struggling to keep up with. (~$Medium) 

  • Somebody's put forth a concept for an engine that could theoretically get to 99% of lightspeed, although it's wildly inefficient and the math needs checking. (Science Alert) 

  • California has passed a law that forbids school from starting before 8a. Hell yeah. (Sacramento Bee) 

  • Presenting the "glass floor" phenomenon: rich dumbasses literally can't fail, so they're taking up space at the top where smarter people from poorer backgrounds should go. (HuffPo)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumLuxury Kitten, The Sound of Eating and Being Eaten 

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.