Instant Band Night 24 is THIS WEEK

January 08, 2024

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that welcomes a brisk, chilly January if only to prove that this part of the globe is still capable of getting cold 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Instant Band Night 24: NEW YEARS BALLTHIS THURSDAYLet'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.Nothing much in this section this week, folks, there's been a lot going on lately. The Fascination Corner has returned to its usual action-packed self, though! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix is now at the point of potty learning where he's decided he's going to just hold onto everything and presumably let it go during naps and sleeping. I'm sure there are strategies for this in the Sacred Texts, but I haven't had time to peruse them lately because the house has also been in the partial grip of a strange cold and it's all I can do to keep the place from falling apart at the seams; you know how it is. I can say it's not covid! But it's kicking Mavis's ass and I'm all-hands-on-deck over here. I'll look later, unless one of you knows what The Advice is and wants to simply transmit it to me; that'd also be great. Thanks! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • "How to Feel a Little Better in 2024: It’s time to let go of impossible-to-achieve health goals and just…do less." (Self) 

  • In perhaps the biggest no-brainer realization that I've never actually stopped to examine, The Scientists are pretty sure we need to tackle income inequality if we're ever going to stop climate change, because the richer you are, the easier it is to do low-carbon stuff. (U of Cambridge) 

  • HUH: flow batteries. Huh!! (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • New dog dropped! This one's sort of corgi-lookin', which is always a plus. (AP) 

  • The Scientists are wondering whether the grammar of gestures is something that's universal across cultures, no matter what actual language you speak. (Georgia State) (PDF of paper) 

  • Some Engineers challenged The Machine to design some new ceramic materials and it came up with some absolutely wild ones that could theoretically survive being dropped into an active lava flow. Experimental testing of a few of them (using my new favorite technique, 🔵ball milling🔵) verified their properties, which is encouraging! (Duke) (Paper) 

  • I think I've heard something like this before and linked to it in this very newsletter, but The Scientists think it might be possible the evolutionary advantages that have made us so successful on a global scale are now actively working against us as we try to solve climate change. (U of Maine) (Paper) 

  • Google's at least trying to make something approximating Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. (The Verge) 

  • If you enjoy Taskmaster, you need to click on this; my friend Seung Lee is a goddamn genius. (Tasklister) 

  • Oooooo, we haven't had a Miracle Material Graphene story in a while! Looks like someone made it into a semiconductor. (Georgia Tech) 

  • Machine study of satellite imagery reveals that fully 75% of the fishing activity on the ocean isn't being publicly tracked. The fuck???? Also, wind turbines now outnumber sea-based oil derricks, which I guess is nice. But what the hell, fisherpeople?! (The Conversation) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists have uncovered fossils of a heretofore-unknown seagoing predatory worm about a foot long that was one of the first carnivores ever, doing its thing half a billion years ago in the Cambrian. With typical scientific chill, they've named it Timborestia, Latin for TERROR BEAST. (U of Bristol) (Paper) 

  • A 400-year-old illustrated story scroll about a bunch of rats preparing a wedding feast is a great little window into what medieval Japanese food prep was actually like. (Science Alert) 

  • Some Engineers have built a soft robotic wearable that helped a man with Parkinson's walk better, and they're hopeful it could do the same for more patients. (Harvard Engineering) 

  • Space travel takes a long time; what are you going to eat on the road, so to speak? The Scientists tried designing the optimum meal (for some reason focusing only on men), and came up with a surprisingly interesting-sounding salad. (ACS) 

  • Here, have a fascinating longread about The Scientists' investigations of rock from Earth's mantle in a bid to nail down the origin of life itself. (Quanta) 

  • We've been lied to! For years it's been happening, and it's all lies, all of it!! Uranus and Neptune are actually more or less the same color. Who's behind this?? What else are they hiding??? Follow the money. (U of Oxford) (Paper) 

  • Some Engineers have created a stretchable solar cell that could theoretically be incorporated into wearables. (KAIST) (Paper) 

  • If the emoji universe mirrored the actual tree of animal life accurately, we'd need about a thousand more bugs; the infographic really is pretty funny. (Scientific American) 

  • The Scientists have successfully tweaked a rice plant's microbiome to make it more pathogen-resistant, pointing the way to a world with less pesticides. (U of Southampton) (Paper) 

  • A new study suggests the reason we keep secrets might be overblown. (Texas McCombs on Medium) 

  • This is a good explainer on why all websites basically look like the same hot garbage. (The Verge) 

  • I'm in my mid 40s and just now learned about the midshipman fish, which makes a sound like a guy with infinite lungs blowing a single low note on a big French horn, and now you can hear it too. (Cornell) 

  • Inspired by octopus skin, Some Engineers have built a flexible "signaling and deception system" that works great and can even repair itself. (UC Irvine) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists have designed a ceramic that reflects a truly ridiculous percentage of incoming solar radiation, which would be great for cooling buildings down — as a bonus, it sounds ........ commercially scalable? Let's go!!! (Hong Kong Polytechnic) 

  • The first lander on its way to the moon in quite a while is in a little bit of trouble; hopefully it'll work itself out?? (CNN) 

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 Pawel Czerwinski 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 Kateryna Hliznitsova on UnsplashReader and resident alternate universe music critic Steve has better news for us on this one: 

I reckon this is a surprisingly good album. Surprising even the people who made it, a handful of guys from other bands putting out a covers album for a laugh, but almost by accident making some really good songs. Turns out they really got on well in the studio and a couple of the tracks on here are pretty special. 

Reader Eden reports in: 

I just finished listening to Nighttime Superman and was greatly impressed. High Velocity Standards never disappoints.This take on restaurant ambiance was so revealing to me, capturing the energy of that underrated French restaurant down the street over the course of a busy Tuesday night. A whole new perspective on kitchen life.I never knew an album could make sense as 40 individual songs, each around 40 seconds, but it worked so well. Jumping between moments in the dining area and hecticness in the kitchen had me engaged the whole time. Music seemed to make itself here.The album cover seemed innocent at first. I now understand that simplicity is only shown.

Just a heads-up that I would absolutely listen to either of these. 

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.