Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that could use a little recipe inspo but also wants the kids to eat whatever results from said inspo, which has the potential to be ......... tricky

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 32: BEACH PARTY

NEXT THURSDAY, the last Instant Band Night until November will kick off another explosion of spontaneous musical creativity and you know you need some of that in your life, whether it's witnessing it as part of a fantastic crowd or making it as part of a spectacular band of like-minded and shockingly talented soon-to-be-friends!! This just might be the highlight of summer, so get your best beach vacation outfit on and bring your coolest friends, let's DO THIS

✨🪩✨
July 10 2025
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 55th St 94609

(Eventbrite) (Partiful) (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

🎃🌴SUMMER SALE/NEW LITTLE WEIRDOS🌴🎃

That’s right, there’s new little guys in there!!! I've been experimenting with new glazing techniques and I have to say I think I've hit upon a winner! Also I have too many things on my "finished work" shelves and it's time to move some inventory, so I've put everything on incredibly deep discount. Decorate your garden or anyplace else that needs a splash of color or whimsy; they also make thoughtful and unique gifts for that special discerning someone in your life.

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after three+ 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.

I don't know if this is going to arrive too late for you, but I have a warning: if you never read PROJECT HAIL MARY by Andy Weir, do not — do NOT — watch the trailer for the movie!! Don't do it!!!! Just go see it when it comes out next March. I can tell you as a person who read the book that it kinda seems like they nailed it. I mean, we all know that a movie trailer is a house of lies and deception (looking at you, Prometheus), but this is one of those long trailers where it seems like they pretty much put the whole movie in there for some godforsaken reason. It's like they bored a deep hole and took a core sample, you know what I'm sayin'? And it looks ......... pretty good, honestly. I'll go! But again: you don't need to watch the trailer, especially if you never read the book. Spoils too much! Just go when it opens. That's all; if this warning saves even one person from being unnecessarily spoiled, I'll feel good about it.

#dadthoughts

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

I think Quentin's on the verge of being ready for laser tag, judging by his reaction to his summer day camp's field trip last week to Scandia Golfland, a family entertainment complex just a little ways north of here. One of the activities on offer was, yes, laser tag, which we did know about beforehand: I spent a little time after dinner walking him through the concept complete with drawings and everything. The part I was most worried about — if you can call it that — was ....... well. You ever tried to play games with kids where you tag or pretend to shoot or hit each other with weapons? There's a lot of "that didn't count" where they say nuh uh, you didn't hit me, not really, that didn't count so I get to go again! It's fine to do that with your other human friends, but you can't really say "nuh uh you didn't hit me" to a focused infrared(?) blast that most definitely lit up your onboard sensor.* Adjudication of whether you got hit, I said, is really not up to you, it's up to the equipment; is that okay? Quentin seemed to fully get it and agree, but it turned out to be a moot point anyway, because he didn't end up playing, which is also fine; a few other kids got too scared? nervous? to play and ended up watching from some kind of observation deck. It sounds to me like he had a good time watching and I've asked if he wants to actually play next time should we ever make our own trip there, and he said yes, so ........ maybe? we'll plan a group trip of some sort sometime??

* It occurred to me I don't really know with 100% certainty what wavelength laser tag guns are working with, but it didn't make sense that they'd go UV with it. Right?

Fascination Corner

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

• What was it like to watch Zohran Mamdani do his thing on a hot summer day before the primary? Hamilton Nolan can tell you. (How Things Work)

• I can smell some of these paintings: "Jordan Sullivan searches for beauty in the circus of America: Hope, hell and human evolution are explored in this painter’s bleakly hilarious takedowns of the United States." (Colossal)

• The Scientists have discovered a tiny quasi-virus sort of thing that they're struggling to categorize on the tree of all earthly life. (Science Alert) (Paper)

• Peter Thiel won't shut the fuck up about the Antichrist, which is hilarious for a guy who pretty much already fits the bill he keeps laying out. (The Nerd Reich)

• A startup called Airloom Energy has a bananas idea for reimagining wind turbines that they're about to prove out near Laramie, and I wish them luck. (TechCrunch)

• The Scientists have discovered a great way to extract gold from e-waste using safe chemicals and light instead of, uh, mercury and cyanide. (Flinders U via Science Daily)

• What happens in the brain when you have one of those "AHA!" moments? (Nature)

• "Cross the Courts Off the List: We have enough information to conclude that the law won't save us." (How Things Work)

• At least one population of orcas has figured out tool use, in this case grabbing hunks of kelp to groom each other. (Science Alert) (Paper)

• That's what I'm talkin' bout: an American hero has built a site that uses publicly available records to identify LAPD officers who've covered up their badge numbers using just a photo. This same guy made a different one years ago that does the same thing with ICE officers [spit]. Nice! (404 Media)

• How big are all the different animals in the sea? The answer to this question is surprisingly difficult to collate and organize, but The Scientists are tackling it and have already made great progress. (Ars Technica)

• Damn, Redwood Materials is really doin' it. (TechCrunch)

• Turns out there might be a reason why cats always seem to fall asleep on their left side. (Ruhr U Bochum) (Paper)

• Fucking what: The Scientists have engineered an E.coli strain that can turn plastic waste into acetaminophen. (Nature) (Paper)

• Why try to control weeds with chemicals (wasteful, bad for crops, etc) when you can blast weeds with lasers instead, ask Some Engineers, and it turns out lasers fucking rule for many good reasons. (PhysOrg) (Paper) (Laser weeder company website)

• Ed Zitron persuasively argues that we need to start holding tech CEOs' feet to the conceptual fire in interviews, and the fact that we haven't been doing this all along is fucking embarrassing. (Where's Your Ed At)

• A company called Novoloop has figured out a way to upcycle discarded plastic for use in other plastic products, which might as well happen if we're going to try to circularize the economy. (TechCrunch)

• Some Engineers have come up with a shockingly simple and long-lasting way to keep CO2 electrolyzers (which take CO2 out of industrial gases and turn it into useful chemicals) from clogging up, extending their life by at least 50x. (Rice U)

• Content moderators are trying to unionize and I wish them well. (Rest of World)

• The Scientists have tested a new gene therapy in mice for Alzheimer's that might actually reverse its effects instead of just stopping it. (UCSD) (Paper)

• "An Open Letter to Everyone Telling My Daughters They Can Be Anything They Want" (McSweeney's)

• Here, have a nice longread about the wildlife of Rome. (bioGraphic)

• I've been staying away from what I think of as Seed Oil Discourse because it whiffs heavily of MAHA bullshit; thankfully a new study from the American Society for Nutrition using actual biomarkers indicates seed oils are actually good for you. (ASN via Science Daily)

• This happened six years ago but we're only hearing about it now: The Scientists wanted to prove how Stone Age Taiwanese guys made it to Japan, so they recreated their journey from the ground up using tools from the era (literal rocks, fire, and logs). (Nature)

• He said it on Joe Rogan [spit], but Bernie has a good point: if AI is going to make us more productive, we should get a 4-day workweek. (TechCrunch)

• Okay!! The Scientists have created a proof-of-concept "building material" made of hydrogels and cyanobacteria that can sequester a crazy amount of carbon while becoming gradually more rigid; the pictures are great. (ETH Zurich) (Paper)

• Some Engineers are hooking old-ass Nexus smartphones together to make mini datacenters that can perform useful tasks, which is a frankly fantastic use for ancient smartphones. (IEEE Spectrum)

• This isn't the first time that Chuck Wendig has talked about being down here in the ditch with us, but I appreciate it all the same. (Terrible Minds)

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 sounds like what we imagine/remember that first Lisa Loeb album to be, except this time by a nonbinary twink with a truly comically oversized guitar relative to their height.

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)!