Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's not fuckin going anywhere goddammit

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.

Instant Band Night 28: LATER

I'm'a be real with you: you should come to Instant Band Night this Thursday. Come have a fun hang with friendly creative people and just let loose — whether that's up onstage with a band you've just put a song together with or down on the dance floor while one of these newly-created ensembles does something brand spankin' new!! 🎵😎🎵 Know that there's no requirement to get onstage — if you don't feel like rocking out, just show up and bear witness to the most concentrated explosion of joyful musical creativity you can cram into your eyes and ears! Ticket link (including handy FAQ) is right here (as well as below) for convenient forwarding to your top-tier friends.

Nov 14 2024
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 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 YOU

Excellent new tardigrades! Chaos mushrooms! Plus the rest of the almost aggressively whimsical, playfully intelligent catalog you may or may not have come to know already, perfect for yourself or a highly discerning friend in your life: there has never been a better time than now.

Idea Factory Giveaway

I 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.

We gotta look this thing in the face; Hamilton Nolan is there with us (In These Times). Feels bad!!

And yet.

Someone more articulate than me has words for us in this moment, which were written pre-election but are still resonant. Right now I find reading anything written pre-election almost hideously painful but I'm going to provide a link just in case you want to read it (Episodes) — this is the most important bit:

"The longer I live through the world's terrifying lurch toward authoritarianism, the more I think reflexive doom and gloom is, in its own way, obeying the regime in advance. To assume that evil horrors will win the day is to automatically give them power over your life, and even if that power is only emotional or psychological, it's still power. It is not certain that evil will triumph, even when it seems like evil is triumphant. Even in the darkest periods in human history, we found ways to care for each other.

"Indeed, I would say that the only thing that is certain is that every societal reaction provokes its own opposite reaction. Thus, it stands to reason a second Trump term, no matter how horrible, would still lead to people finding each other, taking care of each other, making sure the world will go on for enough of us that it might, eventually, become a better place to live. There has never been an example of tyranny that did not meet resistance, and even when resistance leaders were wiped out, it's not as though their actions became meaningless because of their imprisonments or deaths. Goodness has its own value, separate from its results, even – and perhaps especially – when it is hardest to notice."

Not bad, but how about some advice and perspective for going forward? I want to hear from more women, thus: here's Molly White (Citation Needed) and Talia Lavin (Notable Sandwiches). That does it for this section, but I meant what I said at the top: I'm not going anywhere either, so if you derive some measure of comfort from receiving this newsletter every Tuesday morning, it'll be here for you for the foreseeable. Stay strong.

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.

This one's short because it's been a long weekend (literally) and I'm running out of gas:

The kids are doing just fine! They have no idea who just got voted into power and I'm going to keep it that way for as long as I can.

This morning the boys were out of the house for exactly two hours and in that time Mavis and I managed to do a Toy Purge: get rid of a bunch of junk, put a bunch more old but still valid toys in the garage, present a few choices for the kids to keep or donate, organize the rest. This is all in service of both Quentin's birthday (which is this week) and Xmas, the main attraction of which will be an absolutely mind-melting amount of Legos. Felix is at the age where he no longer crams toys in his mouth and we think he'll do fine (but also I think we're going to keep the Duplos around for a bit). Quentin knows he's getting some Legos for his birthday, which is true! He's getting a very good starter set and will be allowed to pick a couple small sets for himself at a local store or two. But what he doesn't know is that we inherited what I think is maybe 16 cubic feet of Legos minimum from some friends comprising a variety of sets that truly boggles the mind: there's some monsters or dinosaurs or something in there, Technics, some literal Simpsons, fantasy guys, and an absolute fuckton of train parts. The train parts, I will tell you right now, are not staying: they're going into their own box and will be offered up on a Buy Nothing group after I'm done with Operation Banestar. What is Operation Banestar, you may ask? I will have to explain that next week because I'm very tired and I need to wrap this up, but I promise you will have a full accounting of it in next Tuesday's issue.

Fascination Corner

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

• Just so we have it: "Election Grief Is Real. Here’s How to Cope" (Scientific American) Also: "How much should kids know about politics? Even kids can’t avoid election chatter. Here’s how to talk to them at any age." (Vox)

• Look, I'm just gonna put this here in case you need something that's going to keep you from going completely fucking insane: "A Practical Program for Resisting a Trump Second Term: How to fight back against the implementation of fascism in America." (Liberal Currents)

• You probably already know about Wojtek, but if you don't, it's time to find out about a very good bear. (BBC)

• The Scientists created the most detailed functional map yet of the human brain by sticking people in an fMRI and having them watch movie clips. (Cell Press via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Fast radio bursts might be coming from magnetars. (Science Alert)

• No matter what else happens, the bottom of the sea will always have wildly fascinating stuff for us to look at. (Science Alert)

• It sure looks like other cells in the body besides neurons are capable of memory. (NYU) (Paper)

• The Machine gives impressive answers but it doesn't actually have anything approaching true understanding of whatever you're asking it. (MIT)

• Because the universe is indifferent to our suffering, there is no season 2 of Scavengers Reign, but the team did make a spec trailer for what it would theoretically contain anyway, so at least there's .......... that? It is, of course, magnificent. (Polygon)

• There are some areas of degraded land that will turn into natural forest just fine if we leave it the fuck alone, which would be easy! It wouldn't work everywhere, but The Scientists think there's an amount of land on the planet roughly equal to the entire nation of Mexico that fits this bill. (The Conversation) (Paper)

• Fascinating: "Danger! Young Men At Play: On the problem of young men online, games, play, arousal, and transgression" (Harmony Labs)

• We just launched the world's first wooden satellite — made without screws or glue — into space. (Reuters)

• DNA analysis is blowing up a lot of long-held assumptions about the bodies at Pompeii. (Max Planck Inst for Evolutionary Anthropology) (Paper)

• If you're reading Culture Study then you already saw this, but the Consistent Money-Moving Project is very interesting, and probably the sort of thing that both can and should be replicated. (CMMP)

• There's no way we're going to hit that 1.5°C warming target, but that doesn't mean we have to lose hope either. (HEATED)

• Kind of makes sense that of all the tools out there, a watering hose would be the one an elephant would understand the most, right? Also: can elephants be assholes? The Scientists are just asking questions. (Cell Press via Science Daily) (Paper)

• After Mount St. Helens erupted and cooled off, The Scientists dropped gophers onto parts of it for a day to see if they could help revitalize the plant life — and the results are still glaringly obvious 40 years later. (UC Riverside) (Paper)

• Something I've never stopped to consider is that killing almost all the whales in the ocean means we deprived it of a major source of plankton fertilizer — whale poop — and now The Scientists need to figure out how to simulate it. (Hakai)

A Fictional Thing

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

A band and their album

(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:

Cleo's mom says "Steel Wizard is an epic steel drummer and teenage girl from Jamaica who performs in white face to mock White Supremacy and The Patriarchy. Combining cool island vibes with unmistakable Riotgrrl energy, Now Who’s An Asshole is her debut album and includes 10 original tracks with 2 bonus tracks covering Eminem and Matisyahu fan favorites."

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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!