Instant Band Night 21 is THIS WEEK

July 10, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's begun the process of populating its Bluesky account (ferociousj) if you're there 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayThe possibility that we may return to podcasting cannot be mathematically excluded!!!! In the meantime, you can find the show's Apple Podcasts presence here, which includes a back catalog over 150 episodes long chock-full of excellent ridiculousness, including an experimental tabletop RPG and a couple of Star Trek fantasy drafts that could almost be their own show if I had the time to make yet another podcastInstant Band Night 21: MIXERTHURSDAY, THURSDAY, THURSDAYCome through this week!! The most important thing I need to convey to you is that the venue has AC. It's going to get hot over the next few days, and you need to know that Instant Band Night will be nice. Come play or come watch; either way it'll be something you've definitely never seen before, and really, aren't new experiences what we're after here??July 13 2023 (click to add to your Gcal)6p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  T E L L   Y O U R   F R I E N D S  + ++ +  S E E   Y O U   T H E R E  + +Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOUNew stuff alert: there's a bunch in the Etsy shop right now! Brilliant little statues for your garden or home! A place to put your fruit! A little buddy to hold your garlic! What are you waiting for?? 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Nothing to put here today, it would seem; enjoy the rest of the newsletter! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix's ability to use words is growing by what seems like leaps and/or bounds, which is wonderful, but also there are slight downsides; here are two:👉 "This." He wants to know what everything is. So depending on the mood he's in, the act of reading him a book becomes a 3-5x longer endeavor of identifying every animal or vehicle on the page that he can point to before we can move on. "This.""That's a bear.""This.""Elephant.""This.""You know what that is.""Hippo!""That's right!""This."It's adorable! But also we have to put you to bed, kid!📢 The Summoning: Felix sometimes shouts for mama or daddy after we've put him to bed. This happened a couple times last night. He doesn't actually need anything; he just looks up and giggles. He's just happy to see me! It's very cute. But bud, you've seen me all day; it's time to sleep!In Quentin news, he says the other bottom front tooth is starting to get pretty loose. Bets may now be placed on whether we'll be seeing the Tooth Fairy's Liaison again before the next issue of this very newsletter gets sent. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Does the governor of Wisconsin fucking rule? It kinda seems like this guy rules. (USA Today) 

  • For a variety of understandable but unfortunate reasons, the media tend to only cover a small slice of climate stories; the trouble is that this particular slice tends to trigger fear more than anything else. (Anthropocene) (Paper) 

  • HOWEVER, your diet of climate news can also — over the long term — encourage action. (Penn State) 

  • In any case, here are some tips for dealing with your climate anxiety. (Vox) 

  • Trying to restore coral reefs is going to be a headache if we can't figure out which species to sow, especially in cases where funding is limited; fortunately, The Scientists are on it with a surprisingly useful model. (U of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) (Paper) 

  • Calculating the value of carbon offsets is getting too complicated; The Scientists think they've got a better way. (U of Exeter) 

  • Small, rich neighborhoods do a lot to prevent more housing from being built. How do we fix that? (The Conversation) 

  • The Scientists have built a working model for a truly neuromorphic "wetware" processor. (Osaka U) (Paper) 

  • Are Asian women having a moment right now? (Guardian) 

  • Bees are incredible decision-makers when you consider their brains are about the size of a sesame seed. How do they do it, and can it help us make better autonomous robots? Yeah-huh. (Macquarie U) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists did some math and it looks like your risk of experiencing bad arthritis pain can be amplified depending on which state you live in. No prizes for anyone who guesses how red states fare on this particular scale. (U at Buffalo) (Paper) 

  • It only took The Machine five hours to design a functional computer processor — a 1000x improvement over human speed — although the end product was only good by 1991 standards. Still pretty wild, though! (Quartz) (PDF of paper) 

  • "So where are we all supposed to go now? It’s the end of a social era on the web. That’s probably a good thing. But I already miss the places that felt like everyone was there." (The Verge) 

  • The Scientists found a third octopus nursery out there in the ocean; this one's near a hydrothermal vent, which makes sense. (Science Alert) 

  • Grillo's is suing a pickle maker for selling a knockoff version of their pickles to Whole Foods. Here's the thing, though: if the knockoff version comes in a regular jar instead of the incredibly frustrating spill playground that Grillo's pickles come in, maybe they deserve to take Grillo's place in the market. Maybe that!!!!!!! (Food & Wine) 

  • The Scientists have invented a new kind of glass that takes way less energy to make and is at least ten times stronger than regular glass. (Penn State) 

  • "Everybody" knows that honeyguide birds lead honey badgers to hives so they can break them open and share the honey, but it turns out nobody's ever actually seen it happen IRL except in Tanzania. (U of Cambridge) (Paper) 

  • Hamilton Nolan this week makes a good, even darkly entertaining argument that Ron DeSantis is running his state into the ground in vain pursuit of an empty goal and the next few years will prove his whole schtick has been an unqualified disaster; the frustrating part is that we're just gonna have to wait and see. (How Things Work) 

  • Fuck mosquitoes! Literally nothing they're doing is ecologically useful and they can be safely erased from existence without any kind of major impact. The Scientists have come up with a new and better genetic technology for wiping entire populations out. (UC San Diego) (Paper) 

  • The thinking around slapping sails on cargo ships to decrease their carbon emissions is looking good; they're even contemplating better route planning to cut down on the unpredictability of wind. (U of Manchester) (Paper) 

  • Maternal mortality in the US more than doubled between 1999 and 2019. (Mass General Brigham) 

  • The Scientists have developed an instance of The Machine that can watch fruit flies on video and correctly interpret what they're up to, which is a game-changer for research. (Tulane) 

  • As much as we want to believe Anomalocaris was out there crunching down on trilobites in the Cambrian, The Scientists have modeled it out and they think its funny little arms were better suited for grabbing soft prey quickly. (American Museum of Natural History) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists have demonstrated a method for breaking down PET plastics with a catalyst and some electricity. (U of Colorado Boulder) 

  • Some Engineers have developed a new prototype display technology based on tiny fins suspended in liquid which has the amusing capability of being able to lie to people who aren't equipped with infrared detection systems, but so far they haven't been able to make a vertically-oriented one yet. (U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) (Paper) 

  • Fertilizer runoff is a huge problem for the environment, but The Scientists have figured out a potentially ingenious hydrogel-based solution for it that they're hoping to take to field (haha) trials soon. (Anthropocene) 

  • Elephants are like us: they don't really want to eat the same thing every day. (Brown) (Paper) 

  • Where'd these giant stone tools come from? Like: who made them and for what purpose? I love mysteries. (Motherboard)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their album

Photo by Aboodi Vesakaran on Unsplash(I remembered a formula for making fake album covers that involves searching for a random appropriately licensed photo and then applying your best Graphic Design Skills to the result; let me know what you think this band/album sounds like, because your answers are always incredible) 

New Music Roundup

Last week's band/album was:

Photo by Andrey K on UnsplashNo reader interpretations came in for this one, which I suspect is the debut of a singer/songwriter in the vein of a Laura Veirs or maybe Mirah, but with a deeply ironic bent to her lyrics that very few people picked up on. 

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.