Instant Band Night 24 is NEXT WEEK

January 01, 2024

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that hopes you had a good Liminal Week and promises you a pretty quick one this time 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Instant Band Night 24: NEW YEARS BALLLet's dress up and kick out every possible jam remainingPut on an absolutely goddamn fabulous outfit and immerse yourself in the most concentrated and joyful burst of musical creativity in the entire Bay!! There may be a better way to ring in a new year, but if there is, I don't wanna know about it — bring all your friends and let's! fuckin! party!!January 11 20246p$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 year, new space! Why settle for a boring garden, potted plant, or domicile when you could have a little statue of a crazy-colored tardigrade, a delightful friend to hold your last fruit, a Star Trek buddy in a party hat, or an Ediacaran life form right now. Take a look and consider some clever ceramics for yourself, for family, or for a dear friend far away.Idea Factory GiveawayI think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after two+ years of inactivity, but I'm putting a link to its evergreen 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 podcast 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Just a note here that I'm still aware Tinyletter is closing down and I'm going to have to pick up shop and move, and boy howdy do I really not wanna go to Substack's Nazi bar. Which is annoying because it's clearly the winning platform and there are already tons of people on it, but fuck. FUCK!!! Thomas Zimmer of Democracy Americana has made a persuasive but highly individualized case for why he personally can't really leave Substack; you can read it for yourself. But he's already there. He's kinda trapped. Everyone I know who's there already is more or less trapped. I can't move there knowing it's a goddamned Nazi bar. Fuck! Someone out there please toss a drink in Hamish McKenzie's stupid fucking face for us all. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix has begun the potty learning journey. We spent two days in the No Pants phase cleaning up dribbles and puddles of pee all over the house before moving to the Pants phase; we think he's starting to learn the connection between the feeling of pee and going to sit on the potty. I'm grateful to the concept of hand-me-downs for somehow granting us what feels like two dozen pairs of pants we can put on him, although the number of pants used seems — seems! — to be going down day by day; we'll see what happens at daycare? 

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.(Liminal Week meant there just wasn't a whole lot going on newsletter-wise, folks) 

  • Keeping warming below the Paris Agreement threshold would be a lot easier if we all just fuckin calmed down w/r/t economic growth. (U of Barcelona) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists have figured out a way to cut nitrogen pollution in half by 2030. (UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) 

  • "People aren’t tired of superheroes, they’re tired of bad superhero movies: What a year of flops can tell us" (Polygon) 

  • Have we ............ forgotten how to have fun? What are we doing about it? (WaPo gift link) 

  • Some Engineers think it's possible to build an AR system for driving that essentially fills in obscured objects by projecting an apparent hologram of it onto a notional 360° heads-up display; all else aside, the sheer computational intensity of this notion is staggering. (U of Cambridge) (Paper) 

  • Hoo boy: trying to figure out whether something you read online is true by searching for corroborating info on the internet actually raises your chances of believing misinfo, mostly because search results these days are useless garbage. (NYU) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists think they've come up with a polymer that can kill bacteria en masse without mangling human cells; they just need to test it. (Texas A&M) 

  • Neutron stars are so unbelievably, ridiculously dense that the big ones' cores might be made of quark matter, at least according to some new simulations. (U of Helsinki) (Paper) 

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 Kateryna Hliznitsova 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 Silas Schneider on UnsplashReader Steve has some bad news for us: 

I do not think this band and album are very good. I think there are three of them, I think they're trying to be Weird Al but only Weird Al can be Weird Al and without that ineffable spark of genius it's three guys trying too hard and falling flat.However the bassist went on to have a great second act, playing on other people's albums and doing collaborations with well respected artists, and getting invited to join a couple of those "Them Crooked Vultures" type bands. initially he was very embarrassed about this album but later he got more perspective and realised they were basically just kids when they made it, and he probably wouldn't be where he is now without that early misstep.The lead singer works in project management.

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.