Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that can take off the cursed amulet at any time and simply chooses not to for its own personal reasons that have nothing to do with the curse

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 33: BANDSGIVING

Instant Band Night 32 was goddamn fantastic. Thank you to everyone who made it a truly amazing time!!

We're gone til November, but that just means you have a couple extra months to build up delicious anticipation for the last Instant Band Night of the year — more time to mark your calendar and tell all your very coolest friends to save the night of November 13 for something INCREDIBLE. Come play or just watch; as always, it'll be like nothing else you've experienced.

✨🪩✨

Nov 13 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

🎃🌴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 advertise Instant Band Night anywhere, really,* and this makes each Instant Band Night a real surprise as far as turnout goes. It's great every time, even if sometimes there aren't as many people: a smaller crowd just means that more musicians may get more chances to go up onstage, which nobody complains about. In fact, I have a faint worry about what we're going to do if we ever hit capacity on the venue, which I think is around 150? We have a "more bands throughput" model of running the show that I think we'll have to dust off and deploy, something we used to do all the time running ourselves ragged until we realized nobody was asking for it and we were just making more work for ourselves unnecessarily. All this is just to say that we really truly do rely on word of mouth to get people in the door, which seems to be working. I wanted to take a moment to give credit to the amazingly well-oiled machine that is our volunteer team, who I call the Instant Band Night Shadow Council: Avery, Brandon, Greg, Ian, Jenna, Jesse, Katiza, and also Molly and Justin whose keyboard we've been "borrowing" for untold years now. If any part of Instant Band Night is efficient, professional, open, friendly, and/or just plain good, that's on them!!!

You know what, as long as I'm talking about Instant Band Night, if anyone has any theories for why ticket sales always, always slump in September (to the point where we decided to simply not do it), I'm all ears. Theories that sound plausible at first blush but still don't seem to account for the whole story include:

• Heat wave?

• Back-to-school?

• Burning Man?

• People back from vacations feeling burnt out on Attending Events?

What if it's a combination of those last three? Much to consider.

* Unless you count Tumblr's Blaze feature, which I almost don't — it enables you to promote a post to a number of utterly random users within the US, and whether or not they decide to further promote it through reblogs is well and truly up to them. A nonzero number of absolutely fantastic Instant Band Night attendees have been brought in by a Blazed post, which is why I do it every time, but I only spend ten bucks on it.

#dadthoughts

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

Felix turns 4 on Saturday, and party planning (such as it is) proceeds as usual: we're doing the usual Run Around The Park With Your Little Friends sort of party, so there's not a whole lot that needs to be brought together. Interestingly, neither Quentin nor Felix have proven to be big pinata kids in that neither of them has ever (to my knowledge) even wanted to take a swing at one, so we're not doing a pinata. We are doing goodie bags, though, and I think we hit upon a winning formula with Quentin's last party: no candy, no toys, but acrylic gems, which all kids everywhere seem to covet (rightfully so). The ones I got for Felix's party are irregularly-shaped but not sharp and don't seem to be as big a stepping-upon hazard as your average Lego; they're also black and iridescent instead of the usual transparent. We're also including a bag or two of fruit snacks 'cause kids love those. Instead of paper bags: those little organza drawstring ones, 'cause kids also love having a little bag to put something in, and these have fun patterns on the outside! Now that you've read this you must swear not to tell Felix or anyone who's coming to his party; thank you in advance.

Fascination Corner

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

• How do so many independent pizzerias still exist in this day and age? (The Conversation)

• Welp, Yaccarino's out; now taking bets on whether they just let the Nazi robot run Twitter full-time. (The Verge)

• Treating recyclable bottles like mini lottery tickets increases participation in recycling by a huge amount without costing anything extra. (Anthropocene) (Paper)

• In essence this is nothing new, but it's probably still a good idea to refresh ourselves on why there are so damn many sequels and remakes and whatnot out there. (Guardian)

• No really, what the hell is ball lightning?? (Science Alert)

• A mass analysis of electronic health records suggests there are four major diagnostic pathways that lead to Alzheimer's, which means we could theoretically catch it sooner if we pay attention. (UCLA via Science Daily) (Paper)

• The Scientists theorize "dark matter dwarf" stars might exist somewhere out there that aren't powered by fusion (which is wild since that's, you know, the entire basis of how stars work????), but dark matter annihilation instead. (Sissa Medialab via Science Daily)

• Inflammation seems to just be part of the aging process for us humans, but it turns out lemurs don't have to put up with that bullshit, which is giving The Scientists some ideas. (Duke)

• The Scientists have run some simulations and it looks like civilian and military airport radars constitute a significant enough technosignature to be detectable from stars up to 200ly away, which: holy hell. (Royal Astronomical Society)

• Agrivoltaics! Agrivoltaics!! AGRIVOLTAICS (Ars Technica)

• Elements of your personality might determine what workout you like best, so maybe when you say you don't like exercise, you just need to try a different kind; yes the paper has at least a little guidance. (Frontiers) (Paper)

• Some guy back in the 60s invented a whole new and much more cursed version of the English alphabet in an attempt to help teach reading! (Guardian)

• The Scientists saw how much bats like to lick each other and thought "What if we could spread a rabies vaccine for bats this way?" Turns out it works pretty well. I wonder how much antivax bullshit would go away if there were a vaccine for some human disease that you could administer just by kissing someone thoroughly. (~$Science) (Paper)

• A ridiculously simple technology could reduce shipping emissions by half. (USC) (Paper)

• The Scientists used The Machine to design some new proteins to stop bad E.coli from gobbling the iron in our blood and they actually worked pretty well in the lab, which means we might have some new ways to get at antibiotic resistant bacteria! (Monash U via Science Daily) (Paper)

• "I think it's now possible to make a poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts." He's right; read the thread. Because of how Bluesky works, I've linked to the last post in it in order to make it display correctly; just scroll up and ..... enjoy? (@mosheroperandi on Bluesky)

• How about we all just zone out and build little towns with trams in them. (Tramstertram)

• The Scientists think they know where our latest interstellar visitor came from. (Science Alert) (Paper)

• SHIT: melting glaciers might be uncapping volcanoes that were being restrained by the weight of all that ice. (European Assoc of Geochemistry via Science Daily)

• The original art director of Bluey gives a goddamn fascinating account of how the show was designed. (It's Nice That)

• What would happen if you threw a paper plane from the ISS to Earth? (Universe Today)

• Making useful microelectronics is hard: all those teeny tiny little components, etc. How about we just use DNA to self-assemble complicated nanostructures instead. You know, the easy way!!!!! (Columbia Engineering) (Paper 1) (Paper 2)

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 surprisingly subtly layered instrumental house music.

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)!