it's microbial pokemon is what it is

October 17, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that really needs to make some progress this week on a homemade Halloween costume for a certain little guy who loves construction cranes 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Ignite SF #15It happened last week and I think it went great. I'll get back to you on whether there's video!Idea Factory GiveawayIn the back half of 2022 I hope to recover enough energy to restart some hobbies, and this podcast is on that list. In the meantime, you can find its 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 podcastInstant Band Night 17: GO TIMEI don't say this lightly: you have to come to the next Instant Band Night. It's the November one (add it to your calendar now!), which means it's the one where we get a cake and sing happy birthday to Quentin. No, he won't be there, but we'll take a video!!If you don't already know what Instant Band Night is, imagine a great party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot. If you play music, you can be one of 'em, and if you don't, you can just watch. It is, and I'm not exaggerating here, fucking incredible.🎶🎸 IT WILL SOON BE TIME TO PARTY 🎸🎶🎶🎸 IN WHATEVER WAY YOU LIKE BEST 🎸🎶Nov 106p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  S E E   Y O U   T H E R E  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I have absolutely nothing in the tank for you this week; see #dadthoughts for why. It's fine now, but [heavy sigh]! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We got one (1) full day of school last week before Quentin had to come home early due to a persistent (non-covid) cough that became the bane of his existence for the next 48h (so maybe I did jinx myself last week). The nice lady at the school office told me her own kid had it last week — it's the new rhinovirus that every kid's just gotta have, apparently, and it's wildly contagious.* Apparently it's just like this for all the transitional kindergarten kids. Everybody's gotta swap germs like trading cards until every kid has a full set, which could take ............. a while. On the plus side, she noted, it does get easier once he hits kindergarten.So that's nice.Quentin lolled on the couch for a full three days while we fretted over his meagre appetite and at-times-questionable hydration. His true recovery began on Sunday, and by Monday afternoon all systems were more or less roaring back to life, so he's going back to school today, by the grace of all the gods above and below!!!Quentin caught his share of bugs at daycare and preschool, but it was nothing like this. I seriously don't know if we've had a full week of school go by uninterrupted more than once or twice. His TK class has 22 kids in it, which is easily twice the size of any other group he's been a part of, so there's that, I guess. I just want you to watch out for this if you're a first-time parent like me: prepare yourself.* No notes thus far on whether the rest of us in the house caught it. We put Felix in our room for several nights (mostly because Quentin's (wholly justified) nighttime coughing complaints were keeping him awake) and he's been nothing but round-faced good cheer this whole time, which I have to tell you has been a comfort. I've had my face solidly coughed in by Quentin several times, so I guess we're gonna see how on-the-ball my immune system is. The boys are rooming together again now that Quentin has recovered, and incredibly, we all still seem to be fine, so either this thing has a ridiculous incubation period or we got ✨amazingly lucky.✨ 

Fascination Corner

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

  • The jury in the Connecticutt damages trial for ol' Alex Jones has decided to (metaphorically) core him out down to the last attogram of (financial) marrow and leave his empty (allegorical) husk flapping in the breeze, and now I know what it's like to feel true joy for just a brief and blinding second. I note his lawyers have vowed to "fight" it, but given their absolute clownshow of a performance thus far, I somehow doubt the battle will be prolonged. (Reuters) 

  • Here's why food's been getting more expensive. (Vox) 

  • We haven't noticed it because it's one of those things that's hard to see unless you possess a literally generation-spanning lifespan, but we have fucked up when it comes to managing the wildlife population of this planet, to the tune of something like 69% of 'em going down. It's not quite as disastrous as it sounds, but it's still not great. (Vox) (Living Planet Report) 

  • Hey, the NASA DART mission worked, though! (NASA) 

  • You're gonna want to see this excellent list of DALL-E2-generated Halloween candy by state origin. What's your fave? I can't decide between NIGHT PART and BUTT MINT currently, although I'm genuinely curious to know what California's GYROSGES GOONBES would taste like. (AI Weirdness) 

  • This whiffs a little bullshitty, but it's at least interesting: do your hands give away your emotional state? (Big Think) 

  • "For better or worse, asking for things is easier than you think" (NPR) 

  • The latest meta-analysis concludes that women are in fact somewhat better than men at finding and remembering words. (U of Bergen) 

  • It's not a question of "should we eat jellyfish," but more "how do we make them tasty" or "is it even possible in the first place." (Hakai) 

  • The Scientists have come up with an accurate way to measure how plastic biodegrades in soil, which up to now has been kind of hit-or-miss. (ETH Zurich) 

  • Some Engineers have demonstrated a model of self-regulating EV battery that can charge in just 10 minutes. (Penn State) 

  • "How mental health became a social media minefield: Social media is now basically WebMD for mental health." (Vox) 

  • The Scientists have wired a clump of brain cells in a dish to a game of Pong and taught it to play. (Nature) 

  • Speaking of brain cells, if we can get human neurons to grow in rat brains, then [ship_of_theseus_joke.txt] (Quanta) 

  • The fuck is TikTok doing building fulfillment centers? (Axios) 

  • The Scientists have looked into it and concluded that it's possible to engineer changes in social norms to help fight climate change, but it's an unstable method that needs to be done super carefully every time, which: yeah. (Assoc for Psychological Science) 

  • Here, have five tips from an expert on how to thrive. (The Conversation) 

  • Some Engineers have built a machine that can turn a sheet of paper into a useful metamaterial that can absorb radar or repolarize EM radiation just by drawing on it with a special pen or pencil. (Optica) 

  • It would seem that tardigrades, AKA Nature's perfect unkillable little weirdos, can literally pause the actual process of aging whenever they enter cold hibernation. (Science Alert) 

  • The Scientists did a study on how effective the Seabin passive ocean cleanup device actually is, and it turns out: not very, especially once you include the animals it traps and kills accidentally. (U of Plymouth) 

  • No matter what language you speak, odds are good you talk to babies just about the same. (U of York) 

  • "What if We Believed Anything Was Possible?" (Yes!) 

  • Fucking hell: everywhere it usually rains in the US, it's raining harder. How do we get some of that biz over here in goddamn California? I propose an easy-to-build system of interlinked ditches; no further questions. (Northwestern) 

  • The Scientists have worked out that you can gauge the health of a coral reef by the size of the sand apron that surrounds it, and yes: we really have done some damage over the last 50 years. (U of Sydney) 

  • What do we really know about losing control and/or our fear of it? (Concordia U) (Paper) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumThe Homosexual Agenda, A World Without Tools or Fire(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because now I'm curious) 

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.