Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that might fuck around and put up the Xmas lights a week early because we could all use the dopamine tbh

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 29: NEW YEAR'S BALL AGAIN

I am sorry to report that if you missed Instant Band Night 28, you missed an incredible time. Our regulars are starting to bring more regulars and extremely cool first-timers who get the assignment immediately, and everybody fucking cooks. Also, we had basically an entire brass section show up independently of each other? More of that, please! You could be up there with these amazing geniuses next time! Or you can just be in the crowd bearing witness to truly incredible feats. There's no other place to get a dose of musical surprise this intensely joyful anywhere in the Bay area; the next installment arrives just a week after the new year, and we're going to dress to impress: be there!!!

✨🪩✨
Jan 9 2025
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.

The next section is very long so I'm just going to use this one to exult in the purchase of InfoWars by The Onion. Yes it's true!!!! (NBC News) You have to read the press release. (The Onion) Delicious.

#dadthoughts

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

Last week I promised you the details of Operation Banestar. Let's dive in.

The following things are true:

• Some friends of ours kindly and generously gave us a staggeringly immense collection of Legos* a couple years ago to be passed to our kids (nothing bad happened to their kid, he just outgrew them)

• The sheer volume and variety of Legos is an indisputable monument to unrestrained love and attention: there's space bits, fantasy parts, Simpsons minifigs, monsters, Technics, etc etc

• There's also a metric fuckton of train parts (our friends' kid was definitely a Train Kid)

• We do not have room for trains of any kind in our house

• Our friends also had three (3) cats

• Mavis and I are allergic to cats and we have every reason to believe our kids would be as well

* So help me if any of you reply to this issue and tell me "the plural of Legos is Lego actually" I will send you a half-pound of antimatter in the mail

So these Legos need to be washed, or at least some sort of attempt has to be made. We received the Legos in three boxes (two small, one big): when I poured one of the small boxes into a staging bin (you'll see why in a sec), a visible plume of dander and cat hair curled into the air. I get it: cat business is eternal, and even the cleanest house on the block cannot prevent entropy. Thus: Operation Banestar.

The process is as follows:

1. Empty a box into the staging bin. The staging bin is more convenient for accessing the Legos to be cleaned while also obscuring said Legos from the sight of any curious children in the house.

2. From the staging bin, transfer about 2 quarts of Legos into a bin in the sink full of warm soapy water and swish 'em around.

3. Pour the soapy bin of Legos into a colander and rinse.

4. Pour the colander of Legos into a big bowl of clean water and swish 'em around.

5. Transfer about half the Legos into a salad spinner and spin repeatedly.

6. Pour the salad spinner Legos onto a towel; roll and press.

7. Pour the toweled-up Legos onto another towel on the kitchen table where a fan is blowing; spread them around in a single layer.

8. Repeat the salad spinner-to-towel process with the other half of the Legos left in the clean water bowl.

9. Go back to step 2 and repeat: if there's no room left on the final drying towel, that means the drying towel Legos are ready to go into the storage bin, which is distinct from the staging bin. The storage bin holds the clean Legos out of sight of the aforementioned curious children.

Because this process takes place 2 quarts at a time, it's easy to identify and separate out train parts: tracks, wheels, obvious car plates, car linkages. The train parts are going into their own bag (or possibly box) for easy transfer to their next owner. The bigger pieces, being easy to spot up front, aren't getting washed — sorry to the next owner — but the other smaller bits are more readily filtered on the drying towel.

FAQ

Isn't there an easier way to do this???
Not that I can figure out, honestly.

Can't you just spray them with a hose and lay them on a tarp in the sun or something?
No: I looked this up and the Lego website advises against leaving them out in the sun lest they warp, also the sun drying would take forever and bugs would inevitably get involved; the whole reason for doing this is to clean the Legos. Also: I can only do this when the kids aren't home, which limits available active hours; see again issues with sun drying time.

How ..... how far in are you?
I've thus far managed to process about half of the first staging bin. I think there's at least three more staging bins' worth of Legos in the garage. I gave it an ominous-sounding name on purpose, but I'm enjoying Operation Banestar: there's a rhythm to it, and it's giving me good podcast-listening time. The big question is what to do when I run up against the limits of the current storage bins, which is going to be a concern: the storage bins I have now will just about hold the contents of one staging bin. I have at least one or two other candidate storage bins somewhere, I just have to find 'em.

Is this even worth it?
Let me tell you something: for his birthday, Quentin got the Medium Creative Brick Box (a holdover from last Xmas, sent by a lovely family member), an excellent starter set that doesn't even come close to filling the size of its own container, and for the next 24-48 hours he went nuts. It was like I could see his imagination glowing blue-white with heat: he forgot entirely about the existence of cartoons and just wanted to build during every available minute. Operation Banestar will result in enough Legos for him to literally take a bath in, and I think it's going to be fucking LIT.

Fascination Corner

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

• "So What Does That Mean in Practice? Democrats ponder whether to do real or fake populism." (How Things Work)

• The Scientists say there are a bunch of microbe-based climate solutions we aren't thinking about hard enough. (Nature)

• A saber-toothed kitten 37 millennia old was found so perfectly preserved in the permafrost that its little toe beans are still clearly discernible. (Science Alert) (Paper)

• Some Engineers have built car-scale radar that would be a game-changer for robot vehicles. (Penn Engineering)

• If you have the money and the inclination, there's a cruise line offering a four-year voyage specifically so you can just skip the second Trump administration entirely. (Quartz)

• Feel at least a little joy today: Rudy's legal team is bailing. (NBC News)

• Sure, why not: here are some little ways to improve your quality of life. (Practical Betterments)

• The Scientists have done some testing and announced that coral reefs may not be doomed after all — if we can fucking hit our goddamn climate targets. (Anthropocene) Meanwhile, CO2 emissions hit a record high this year. 😑 (U of Exeter)

• So many of these seem to be popping up that I wonder if they're all going to sit down and talk to each other at some point: The Scientists have worked out a method for cracking polystyrene for recycling that's cheap, sustainable, and makes hydrogen as a byproduct. (Wiley)

• It looks like we think harder about purchases made with cash than cards or digital beepboops. (U of Surrey)

• Some Engineers have created a legitimately cool new take on the wheel. (Reuters)

• Here's a nice little thread from somebody on Mastodon (I know, I know) about some true videogame altruists. (Masto Reader)

• The Scientists have figured out how to recycle lithium ion batteries cheaply and efficiently using nothing but citric acid. Okay!!!!! (Wiley)

• Some Biomedical Engineers worked out a way to make a "biocooperative" material out of, uh, a person's own blood? that helps to heal bones and can be 3D printed into useful structures. I can't think of anything more metal-sounding than implants made out of your own blood. (U of Nottingham) (Paper)

• Real nerds know the Drake Equation, but The Scientists have come up with a new version that takes dark energy into account. (Royal Astronomical Society) (Paper)

• Long may he keep his job: "The Verge Editor-In-Chief Nilay Patel breathes fire on Elon Musk and Donald Trump's Big Tech enablers" (Status)

• Some Engineers built robot shorts that can help people (especially older people, for instance) walk without using as much energy. (TUM) (Paper)

• A new study suggests queer students are 3x more likely to be depressed than their peers. (Taylor & Francis) (Paper)

• The Scientists have created a single metagenomic test that can quickly identify any pathogen in a fluid. (!!!!!!!!!) (UCSF) (Paper one) (Paper two)

• I don't know a single person who thought it was a good idea to add "San Francisco" to the name of Oakland's airport, so I hope this injunction sticks. (Oaklandside)

• When your cancer returns but you also happen to be a virologist who knows some things, do you try an experimental treatment on yourself? S'not even a question, is it. (Nature)

• Some Engineers built an extremely cool sci-fi-esque whole-body scanner that works great for small animals. (POSTECH) (Paper)

• Is the information environment too poisoned to be recoverable? Who the fuck are all these people falling for this Machine-generated inspirational Elon Facebook slop? (404 Media)

• Let's get the fuck out of here: a design contest for a generation ship has been announced by some outfit called Project Hyperion. (Universe Today) (Project Hyperion)

• Two new snail species have been named after characters from Lord of the Rings by a scientist who offers quite honestly a pretty sensible reason for it (other than that it's fun and cool). (Pensoft) (Paper)

• Fuck GDP for real: The Scientists proclaim a better, more holistic way to measure policy would be something they call the "resilience index." (U of Southampton) (Paper)

• Some Biomedical Engineers worked out a way to insert a neural interface without drilling the skull open — instead they go in through a hole in the lower back?! (Rice U)

• Fibers from carpet scraps and discarded clothes make concrete stronger and more crack-resistant. (RMIT) (Paper)

• Reprogrammed stem cells have successfully restored vision to a few people, so it seems like a bigger trial run is definitely in order! (Nature)

• Some Engineers used The Machine to enable a surgical robot to learn how to perform tasks just as well as skilled human surgeons just by watching videos of the procedures. (Johns Hopkins) Another instance of The Machine can spot leftover brain tumors with accuracy that far surpasses human abilities. (Paper) You know what, how about a trifecta: this one identifies potential disease in tissue samples faster and better than people. (Washington State) (Paper)

• Maersk is adding fuel-reducing high-tech sails to five of its tankers (out of a fleet of 240, but you gotta start somewhere). (gCaptain)

• The Scientists have created a 3D map of a mouse embryo at the cellular level, visualizing almost 8 million cells — and they say the tech could be used to make similar maps for any other species. (Nature) (Paper)

• Can we live on the planet without destroying it? Yeeessssss, but we need to actually make and follow through on policies that make a difference. (U of Groningen) (Paper) Just four policies could reduce plastic pollution worldwide by 91% in 25 years!!!! (UCSB) (Paper)

• The absolute dumbest, laziest insurance scam I've ever seen involves four rich idiots and a bear suit. (BBC)

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:

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think is from a solo artist only slightly more intense-sounding than Damien Rice.

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)!