Instant Band Night 3 is this Thursday

March 05, 2018

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's weirdly addicted to oatmeal raisin cookies from Safeway. Not just bought at Safeway: the actual "in-house bakery" kind that come in the big plastic clamshell. No shame. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway63 - Potato Version"Jon (@ferociousj), guest co-host Laura Glu (@lauraglu), and special guest Fiona dive into ideas surrounding food, vacations, and DIY civil engineering."We make a very strong generalization about a certain kind of driver in this one, but we all feel confident our assessment stands, tbh.You can subscribe using:Apple PodcastsRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/Instant Band Night 3: The Search For RockThis week! Thursday! Be there! If you can't make it, invite a few people local to the San Francisco Bay area.* SERIOUSLY.1. The stage has a drum kit, guitar, bass, keyboard, and mics.2. We draw names out of hats to make instant bands that get 10 minutes in the green room to plan an 8-minute set.3. A hat-drawn artist will also take the stage alongside each band to draw their gig poster on a meeting room easel pad.507 55th St (@ Telegraph)Oakland CA 946098p$5 doorBYOB* There are details and FAQs on Eventbrite and Facebook if you're into that sort of thing. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.This week I hope to go see Annihilation in the afternoon on Friday, if it can still be found in a theatre for an afternoon showing. I'm super curious to find out what happened in the book. Which, btw, I read. Twice. And I still couldn't tell you jack shit about it. Some of this is undoubtedly down to me possibly being the world's laziest reader, but I'm also comfortable laying some of this blame at the feet of Jeff VanderMeer -- a good writer, let me hasten to add, but I don't think I'm wrong if I say he's sometimes interested in different things than his audience might be. Without getting too spoileriffic, Annihilation sets up a lot of intriguing mysteries, things like: 

  • What is Area X?

  • What are the things that are inside it?

  • Where did they come from?

  • What happens to people when they go inside Area X? Why?

Don't these seem like interesting questions? Well, good fuckin luck, then, pal, because you are not getting answers to any of them. Not in this book, at least, and not in the second (which I did read, albeit only once), and almost certainly not in the third, at least not from the Wikipedia summary I read because fuck you if I'm going to waste my time on a third one of these goddamn things. Jeff VanderMeer can set a mood like nobody's business, but reading Annihilation was like viewing a set of beautiful but disconnected paintings hanging near each other in a tastefully darkened gallery. Buddy, I came here for a story, not some kind of New Weird Tone Poem.So anyway, I hope the movie's still out. I want to finally know what went on in there.Also, VanderMeer's latest book, Borne, has quasi-chapters with highly satisfying titles that go like: 

  • What I saw when I went in the room

  • The thing that happened overnight

  • What was in the bucket

I mean, I'm paraphrasing here, but not by much; they really are that flat and declarative, which makes me wonder if he wrote that book directly at me. "Here you go, you crabby plot-driven bastard!" The possibility cannot be mathematically excluded. Anyway, Borne is good, and I will never ever finish the Southern Reach trilogy. Fight me. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Last Thursday Mavis returned to work, to great acclaim by her team and the company for which she works as an HR professional. This was also the first full day of The Plan in action, where she goes to work and I stay at home and do mine, and also take care of the baby.Friends, it was good. Quentin didn't have any serious meltdowns (he's just not that kind of baby) (yet???), he got all his meals, he even managed a couple of naps, and there was only one diaper containment breach. For now, where "now" can be defined as --now (n): The period of time in which:1. Quentin sleeps through the night2. Jon's work is relatively uncomplicated3. Quentin remains where he is set down and does not wander off-- I've got this shit on lock. So, you know, for the next couple days. Or whenever. I gather we're about to enter the zone where Quentin will show signs of independent movement? We've discovered him scooched down to the foot of his co-sleeper a few times, and he's managed to roll onto his side once or twice, but he hasn't done a full barrel roll yet, so crawling seems like a ways off. R-r-right? I know the Terrible-Day-That-Comes is on the horizon, but when. When??? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • I think the title here speaks for itself, but it does offer at least one reasonable-ish idea on how to make things better: News in a disintegrating reality: Tow’s Jonathan Albright on what to do as things crash around us. And actually, this piece from Buzzfeed (which makes great companion reading) more or less arrives at the same notion. 

  • Food waste recycling from restaurants, y'all. Yes. YES! Somebody out there is thinking!! 

  • The list of journalistic failures over the last few years is long and well-deserved, and I want to add another item: why the fuck would you mention Barbra Streisand cloned her dogs and not fucking tell us how much the procedure costs?? This is like the #1 thing I want to know, and I would bet I'm not alone. Is it stratospherically out-of-reach for civilians? Or are people like you and me going to be able to clone a beloved pet in the not-too-distant? That's the only thing I want to know, now that I've been made aware it's fucking possible! 

  • In an outcome that was the exact opposite of what was promised (and which we really should've seen coming), ridesharing has actually increased the number of cars on the road. 

  • Meanwhile, work on roach-sized robots proceeds apace. 

  • Did you know there's a debate raging about autonomous drone weaponry? Well, now you do. 

  • OKAY, PEOPLE. If it turns out astronauts are going to have to wear what look like spandex suits to keep their bones and organs in place, why not make them look like TNG season 1 Starfleet uniforms? I am serious about this 

  • New Report on Emerging AI Risks Paints a Grim Future. You can read the article for the short version, but it does link to the full report in PDF form, which I downloaded and read. It's ... it's something. 

  • Now that we're this far into the future, I no longer have any way of knowing whether this proposed space launch technology is unbelievably crazy and stupid or actually viable. Maybe I would if I were a mechanical or aerospace engineer? 

  • You want something that approaches hopeful reading about democracy? I got your cautious optimism right here. 

  • Just read this piece on the practical imperfections of universal basic income (and a good suggestion for what to work toward in the near-term instead) for its title if nothing else: Towards the Garfield Left (Away from Basic Income). I swear it makes sense if you read it. Shoutout to my friend Mike, who I haven't seen in a minute. 

  • I do want to stay in an inflatable space hotel room, but I also kind of don't until we have a super solid space junk mitigation plan in place. I'm just sayin'. 

  • Mike Monteiro is right about Design's Lost Generation. 

  • Tell me you don't love a summary of recent trends in startup naming and I will call bullshit on you. 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumFogbaby, The Worship of Idols 

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.