Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that can't wait to shake the dust off and see what everyone does up there

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

Instant Band Night 33: BANDSGIVING

INSTANT BAND NIGHT IS THIS WEEK

What a fucking ride these last few months have been. Get up onstage and let's play some music about it, or come be in the best crowd in the entire Bay Area and witness some creation. Secure your ticket and spread the word!! Now more than ever we need something to do that brings genuine joy and delight, and there's a good chance there'll be cake!!! 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) (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

🪓🐰 New little weirdos on sale NOW 🪓🐰

I made a bunch more! Due to circumstances previously described, the last batch of heavily armed bunnies sold out almost instantly. I've made these ones slightly more expensive in the hopes that they won't all be gone immediately — I did make another Tumblr post and the same thing happened when I Blazed it; as of the time of this writing the (truly ridiculously boosted) campaign is still underway and two have sold already, so if you had some holiday shopping in mind then you might wanna step on it. I am, you may rest assured, at work on yet more little weirdos, not all of them bunnies with weaponry. Shocker!!!!

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.

Nothing for this week but a reminder to send your Bay Area pals the link to Instant Band Night 33 and an exhortation to come out yourself!! We have some feelings to get out and how better to do it than in musical form!!!!!!!!! (Eventbrite) (Partiful)

#dadthoughts

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

I haven't put the Xmas lights up yet but I can feel in my bones that the hour is approaching. We're going through a couple days of obscene warmth around here, but the weather is returning to winter-normal starting tomorrow, so that may accelerate things.

Recipe Nook

I still haven't decided on this month's trio of new recipe candidates to present to the boys, so instead I'm going to offer my very simple recipe for pretty good saucy cauliflower pasta, courtesy of our dear friend Maya, perhaps the best intuitive cook I know.

• Cauliflower

• Jar of tomato sauce

• Box of pasta

• Shredded cheese, 8oz, pepper jack is best but whatever you like

• Package of meat: pound of ground beef? bulk Italian sausage? chopped andouille? Follow your heart

• Pinch of sage

• Oregano

• Basil

• Two big pots (A and B)

1. Put a whole bunch of water to boil in POT A.

2. Chop your cauliflower up into chunks, whatever size you like; something you can get in your mouth, let's say.

3. POT B: cook your meat; throw the sage, oregano, and basil in there once the meat is nearly done.

4. When the meat is done, throw the chopped-up cauliflower and jar of sauce into POT B as well; stir, turn the heat down to medium, and put the lid on.

5. By this point the water in POT A should be boiling (or if it isn't then it will be soon); put a bunch of salt in it and empty the box of pasta in there.

6. When the pasta is done, drain POT A and throw the cooked pasta into POT B.

7. Turn the heat off under POT B and toss the shredded cheese in there and stir it all up.

8. Enjoy!

You can fancy this up by chopping an onion and garlic and putting those guys in POT B after the meat step, before you toss in the cauliflower and sauce, but it's not a requirement, especially if you use a jar of tomato sauce that's got a bunch of stuff in it!

Fascination Corner

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

• The Scientists have invented a new vegan meat based on sunflower seed flour. (FAPESP)

• New data from the Cassini mission suggests Enceladus is leaking heat from its poles, which means its subsurface ocean is probably warm enough to support life — assuming it's old enough, which The Scientists don't have the data to figure out yet. (U of Oxford via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Who's primarying Chuck Schumer?!?!?! Someone please get this useless fuckass out of here!!! (The New Republic) (Politico)

• If you're tired of crying while cutting onions, get the sharpest knife you can lay your hands on and do your cutting slowly, according to the latest findings from The Scientists. (Cornell)

• A succinct and tonally correct obit for Dick Cheney [spit], may he rest in piss. (Defector gift link)

• Here are some actual good ideas for a humanoid robotics challenge. (IEEE Spectrum)

• It looks like deep-sea microbes are starting to figure out how to eat plastic, which kinda rules, but it's not happening fast enough to be helpful at the scale we need. (KAUST) (Paper)

• Thomas Zimmer takes democracy's temperature 😬😬😬 but he's not altogether without hope, at least?? (Democracy Americana)

• A new study seems to indicate there actually is such a thing as having too many plants in the room. (PhysOrg)

• The Scientists have concluded that not only is the universe we're living in not a simulation, it would be impossible to simulate in the first place. (UBC Okanagan) (Paper)

• If you didn't get a chance to watch it or (like me) don't seem to have the time to watch a 23m video, here's the text of Zohran Mamdani's excellent victory speech. (Guardian)

• Speaking of: putting an all-woman transition team together is great on its own, but getting Lina Khan specifically to co-chair is [chef_kiss.gif] (TechCrunch)

• Let's all learn about the fascinating concept of phytomining. (bioGraphic)

• It's hard to put a finger on, but preliminary self-reported data on memory and thinking problems among people under 40 is trending in a troubling direction. (American Academy of Neurology)

• Can The Machine understand comic strips? What do you think? (Paper)

• This is a long but truly goddamn fascinating and brilliantly-illustrated explanation of how a mechanical watch works. (Mechanical Watch)

• Sandwich guy walks, thank fuck! Or more like thank the jury, who obviously knew exactly what time it is. (NBC News)

• "Do What You Believe In: How to navigate a complex political world." (How Things Work)

• One of The Scientists thinks self-replicating robot probes could theoretically be in our neighborhood, and based on his (admittedly highly specific) notion of how they would power themselves, we should be looking for evidence of their activity on the Moon. (Universe Today) (PDF of paper)

• Here's an interesting longread on the automation inside Hyundai's most advanced factory in America. (IEEE Spectrum)

• Microsoft ran a simulation to see how "agentic AI" actually fares doing the kind of tasks customers would ask for in the real world, and the results revealed some ......... problems. (TechCrunch) (Paper)

• On the other hand, The Machine (Analytical Flavor) did spectacularly at modeling hurricanes this year. (Ars Technica)

• "The Broken Logic of 'The Best Place to Retire'" (Culture Study)

• The algorithm over on X (The Everything Site!) really truly does push new users toward right-wing garbage, according to some investigative journalists who gave it a try over in the UK. Unsurprising! But still dismaying!! (Sky News)

• I'm just putting this here so nobody sends it to me: the world's largest cooperative colony of spiders (two species living harmoniously together, even) has been found in a cave on the Greece/Albania border, a place I'm happy I will never have cause to visit in my entire life. (Science Alert) (Paper)

• The Scientists are getting better at using The Machine (Analytical Flavor) to say what people are seeing just by translating brain activity, which yes does sound like mindreading, but we don't have to worry about that for a while yet. (Nature) (Paper)

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 unfortunately electroswing + dubstep + at least three (3) distortion pedals.

I still could use some more submissions to build out a notional Reader Submission Month for band/album/artwork combos! Feel free to send something in; just tell me how you want to be credited!

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)!