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

Instant Band Night 34: NEW YEAR'S BALL III

We're only a week into the new year and it's already a fuckin' lot, isn't it, which is why it would be a great idea to come to Instant Band Night

Put on your party clothes and let's blow off some steam, because we could use it already and there's honestly no better place to do it than with a crowd of happy, friendly people doing something spontaneous and creative! There's no pressure to actually play onstage if you don't want to — just hang back and watch an explosion of musical inspiration roughly every 9 minutes; I guarantee you'll leave with a smile on your face!!!

✨🪩✨
Jan 8 2026
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

I'm cooking up some new weird little guys for the shop already, but did you know there are now enough purchases for the reviews down at the bottom to constitute some lovely little reads? It's nice beyond description to know that these things I'm making have found homes with the right people. Go have a look; eagle-eyed viewers may notice a new bunny has snuck in there.

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.

The kids are now about as close to fully obsessed with Pokemon as I think we're gonna let them be, and this is based entirely on (in roughly chronological order)

1. Whatever playground Pokemon knowledge Quentin has been osmosing over the last couple years

2. The Pokemon guidebook we got him

3. The various Pokemon manga he discovered at the public library (XY? Adventures? Ruby and Sapphire? Sword and Shield? I have no fucking idea what's going on, I can't decide if this is better or worse than all the X-Men lines that I only barely know about)

Now that Quentin is 8 and Felix is 4, we caved and finally allowed Pokemon cartoons into the house in the form of whatever's on Netflix, but because we could offer precious little guidance, they started out on Pokemon Horizons, which seems to be the newest show and is ....... pretty good?? I'm not paying attention 100% of the time, but I've noticed nothing overtly objectionable — a very slight contrast to Pokemon Journeys, which they started once they burned through all the available Horizons episodes (yes I know a bunch just went up today). Pokemon Journeys has a nonzero amount of what I'm going to call Insufferable Boy Energy that kinda makes me 😬 just a little bit, but overall it's much goofier, which my kids crack up a lot at. Also Team Rocket is there, and they just love watching those dinguses fuck around and get walloped into the sky.

There is one thing I want to point out about Pokemon Horizons, though; stay with me.

Every character in this universe has a Pokemon to be their best pal and wander around with, and their Pokemon is always an animal of some sort. You've heard of Ash and Pikachu? Little yellow mouse that shoots lightning, right? Horizons is no exception: the main character's a girl named Liko, and her Pokemon is a Sprigatito. Sprigatito's a little green kittycat who conjures and fires magic glowing leaves at things.

And that's fine! It's fine. One other thing about Pokemon, though, is that once they get enough life experience or battle points or something (can you tell I never played the games or watched the cartoon), they level up and evolve into a new and more badass form. This happens in Horizons, and that's where the problem, such as it is, lies: Sprigatito eventually evolves, too, into a new form called Floragato. Except Floragato looks like this:

That's not a little green kittycat anymore. That's just a guy. That's a whole-ass little man in a cat suit! Liko, c'mon. Liko, you gotta let this guy go.

This is no longer ethical, Liko. You have to let him go. He's got a life now. This little man has to get back to his studio apartment and his job at the coffeeshop. Floragato owns a PS5. He's saving up for a car. Liko, please. You have to let him go!!!!

Liko's travel buddy Roy, incidentally, does not have this problem: his Pokemon buddy evolves into Crocalor, which is a weird little alligator with a kind of fire sombrero on its head. Crocalor is not a second-year grad student with a lease and aspirations to one day own a used two-door Honda Civic. I'm just sayin'.

#dadthoughts

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

Winter Break will officially be over tomorrow when Quentin and Felix (whose preschool restarts today instead of Monday) go back to their routines, praise be to all the entities above and below who have made this possible. Everybody had a nice time; we might've even made some core memories?? Who knows! I'm just happy we're here. You can kinda tell I've been mildly concussed by the past two weeks, huh.

Recipe Nook

Winter Break has meant not a huge amount of time to go looking for recipes to try with the kids, so there's nothing here for now — if you've got something you enjoy, though, please don't hesitate to pass it on over!

Fascination Corner

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

• "We Are the Bad Guys: The swaggering threat to global stability is us." (How Things Work)

• Fucking hell: Bottom of the Hill is closing at the end of 2026. Tell me your first Bottom of the Hill show and I’ll tell you mine next week! (Coyote Media)

• Ed Zitron's got a long one for us that we should probably all read this time. (Where's Your Ed At)

• The lady who did that bad but hilarious "Monkey Christ" restoration has died; it turns out that whole thing worked out pretty good for everyone, which is nice. (Guardian)

• Jesus creeping Christ in the cornfield: Grok can't apologize for the CSAM it created because Grok isn't a goddamn sentient being, you clowns, and I guess this is how I find out Parker Molloy has a newsletter? (The Present Age)

• "What to do if you fail at your new year resolution" (The Conversation)

• Some Engineers used The Machine (Analytical Flavor) to discover, simulate, and test out a new 3D-printable aluminum alloy that's 5x stronger. (MIT) (Paper)

• Here, have an excellent short story where a notional Isaac Chotiner interviews the guy who runs the lottery in Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" — you might have to click the "I agree to etc" buttons before you can read it, which is fine; AO3 just wants to make sure you're a grownup who's read fiction before. (AO3)

• This won't come as a surprise to lots of you, but here's an in-depth interview with a former NYT staffer on the anti-trans bias there and the harm it's done. (TNN)

• Not all heroes wear capes: some wear a pink Power Ranger costume while they delete white supremacist dating sites live onstage during a conference and core out their users' profile + photo data — you can see it all at okstupid.lol (actual url), which is just [chef_kiss.gif]. (TechCrunch)

• Just because he's been accused doesn't mean he did it, but on balance, Drake using an online gambling platform to inflate his own play counts certainly seems like a Drake thing to do at this point, huh? (NBC News)

• Star Wars fans, it's vibroblade time, I guess???? What I want to know is can I cut through an entire-ass giant Costco block of cheddar with this thing or what. (Mashable)

• The Jimmy Dubs has spotted what can only be described as a lemon-shaped planet orbiting a pulsar. (U of Chicago) (Paper)

• We already have most of the materials we need to make stuff here in the US, it's just that lots of it tends to get discarded as byproducts while we mine for other things, which seems ........... counterproductive, doesn't it? (AAAS via Science Daily)

• "The Year That Was and Wasn’t: We asked some of our favorite journalists, writers, and thinkers: What were the most important events of 2025, and what were the least?" (The Morning News)

• Some Chemical Engineers have figured out a way to make plastic that's still strong but essentially degrades on command, which could really change the game for disposable items once they figure out whether the degradation outputs are safe. (Rutgers U via Science Daily)

• Everyone likes to talk about how the blue people movies have such comparatively little cultural impact relative to their enormous box office, but what does the data say? The data, as it turns out, says something we should've realized a long time ago! (The Ankler)

• This list of "Thirty-Two Bird Names I Would Contribute If I Were An Ornithologist" is valid to me, but I'm not a birder. (McSweeney's)

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 submissions came in for this one, which I think is an unassuming duo of a singer-songwriter on guitar and vocals alongside a drummer with a very minimal kit, but the songs are devastatingly beautiful for all their sparseness and this is the only album they ever made.

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 this page right here (which also has the archive)!