Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's going to try really hard not to say anything that might get it put on a List somewhere

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 13 Going On 30

You have got to get in on this one, friends. At this point I think it may be safe to say we have a couple of regular attendees who bring their brass (trumpet and sax, to be precise) and their presence truly elevates both the proceedings in general and the variety of acts. Do not miss this if you value joy and creativity in your life!! There's no pressure to perform — you can simply join the almost ferociously friendly crowd in their appreciation for each wild new band that appears! Also, word to the wise: we're going for an 80s theme for this one, so dig out your brightest neon clothes. Trust me on this one!!

✨🪩✨
March 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

Excellent new tardigrades! Chaos mushrooms! Plus the rest of the almost aggressively whimsical, playfully intelligent catalog you may or may not have come to know already, perfect for yourself or a highly discerning friend in your life: there has never been a better time than now.

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.

This is going to sound egotistical but I promise it's not trying to be: should I try to figure out how to get a vaguely decently-bound print version of the entire run of this newsletter thus far, so I can see if there's a library or historical archive or something that might want it? I feel like I've read a few posts here and there about how historians years or even centuries from now would probably really like to have hard copies of some of the shit we put on the internet, because given the way the internet is rotting even now, it's sure as shit not going to be around for years, much less decades (or beyond). Having this newsletter in print form might(?) be a historically interesting snapshot for future scholars of the ground-level perspective of Early 21C Events from one guy living through 'em. Right? I guess?? Obviously none of the links in the Fascination Corner would work, but the commentary might be interesting to preserve?? Maybe?? I have no idea; I should probably talk to a historian. Does anyone know a historian? Wait, I know at least one archivist!

#dadthoughts

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

Short one this week: I want to note for the record that Quentin's current personal sartorial goal is to be All One Color as often as he possibly can, which works out to precisely twice: we have pants and tops in red and yellow that match pretty well, but that's about it. Hot tip: clothes from Primary work great on kids up until about kindergarten/first grade, at which point the pants become an issue because the knees cease to be reinforced for some reason around size 6. Quentin tears through the knees on his pants regularly, even when we patch them, so at some point he's going to have to make the jump to harder pants permanently, and I don't think he's going to go entirely willingly. Why would he! His current pants are very comfy! But nothing gold can stay, alas.

Fascination Corner

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

• "Uninsurable Futures: Adapting to a constrained American dream." (How Things Work)

• Let's pair that one with this big list of ways to help people immediately. (Culture Study)

• Creating and switching to carbon-storing construction materials — which are technically possible — would slash an eye-popping amount of CO2 out of the atmosphere. (Anthropocene) (Paper)

• Some Engineers have built a Machine-powered precursor to a universal translator that can do direct speech-to-speech interpretation (instead of having to render text) for a bunch of languages, but hilariously, they had to do some tweaking to prevent gender bias and something they called "added toxicity." (Nature)

• Fuck are we supposed to do with trash fake feminist men like Neil Gaiman and Justin Baldoni? Can we do anything? This writeup doesn't really have the answers, but at least it asks the questions. (Vox)

• Robot lawnmowers are doing real damage to hedgehogs, so Some Engineers have had to make wild crash test dummies to figure out how to get them to stop. (Leibniz Inst for Zoo & Wildlife Research)

• NPR did a long-term tabulation of grocery prices at Walmart that makes me want to ask an economist what exactly they mean when they say The Economy is getting better; for who exactly? [jpeg of goose chasing a person] For who, motherfucker?? (NPR)

• The Scientists have discovered a truly mysterious pulsar out there with a rotation measured in hours rather than, you know, fractions of a second? (The Conversation)

• Historical accounts already talk about this, but now there's DNA evidence that suggests women ran the show in Iron Age Britain. (Trinity College Dublin) (Paper)

• "Five graphic trends to keep in your sights in 2025" identifies something they call "toadcore" that I think includes the Mushroom Aesthetic that I've been contemplating after all my craft fair forays this year. (It's Nice That)

• The Scientists used The Machine to design protein neutralizers for a couple components in snake venom, and they worked amazingly well. (Nature) (Paper)

• Speaking of venom, there's a lot of scientific action around mining the venom of snakes, scorpions, and spiders for medically useful compounds, but we've been overlooking some other little guys who I assume would at least be easier to catch: venomous caterpillars. Yes they exist!! (Knowable)

• The Cybertruck is selling so badly that Tesla's already attempting to flog a discount model. (Jalopnik)

• It turns out the approximate cost of "an arm and a leg" is fairly consistent across eras and cultures. (The Conversation)

• The New York Times is attempting to correct their obituaries being overwhelmingly white and male with a series they call "Overlooked" — here's one about Karen Wynn Fonstad, cartographer supreme of fantasy worlds. ($NYT)

• I was never on TikTok so you won't be catching me on Xiaohongshu but I find this charming nonetheless. (Wired)

• We could generate a truly shocking amount of power for the country by putting solar panels just on federally-controlled reservoirs. (Natl Renewable Energy Lab) (Paper)

• If you didn't already, you should still get that latest covid booster! (Undark)

• Octopus arms have segmented nervous systems that give them control down to the level of individual suckers! (U of Chicago) (Paper)

• "I knew one day I’d have to watch powerful men burn the world down – I just didn’t expect them to be such losers" (Guardian)

• The Museum of the Earth in Ithaca is having a funding problem; consider picking up a Paleozoic plushie? I got Quentin a cuddly Dunkleosteus (his favorite ancient fishy) that will reside in storage until his birthday or Xmas once it arrives (it hasn’t shipped yet). (Ithaca Voice) (Shop)

• All right, fine, Ring cameras have one good use: capturing footage of a meteorite hitting the Earth, with audio and everything, in a world first. (NPR)

• The Scientists took another crack at it and they think the critical Atlantic conveyor belt current might not have weakened over the past 60 years like they thought, which is sort of a relief, but that doesn't say anything about whether it might get fucked up later. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst) (Paper)

• We need a (surprisingly simple) Fourth Law of Robotics, folks. (IEEE Spectrum)

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 an improbable-sounding 50/50 blend of Interpol and the Crystal Method. Sorry, I can't explain it any better than that.

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)!