it's more of a milkshake turducken at this point

February 22, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that doesn't need a new t-shirt, but keeps thinking about a new t-shirt 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayYou know what, I don't want to jinx our new recording date again; I'm starting to wonder if maybe I'm somehow what's at fault here instead of weather, migraines, and reckless drivers.It's probably fair that we haven't received any new ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings in Apple Podcasts since we haven't put up any new episodes since December, but listen: why not just do it anyway? Let's tip the scales away from unfairness and into ....... superfairness???Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberNow that proven vaccines exist, let's wait til November and hopefully -- hopefully! -- we'll see you all at the next Instant Band Night.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook* * s t a y   h o m e   / /   s t a y   h e a l t h y * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.One of the most bizarre storylines to come out of 2021 thus far has been the recursive milkshake ducking of the Reply All series on the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen (~$Vulture). As of this writing, it seems unclear whether the rest of the episodes of "Test Kitchen" will air, which I am of two minds about. Two things are true for me simultaneously, which are that I sympathize with Eric Eddings, but I also desperately want to know what the fuck happened during and after the blowup of the BATK YouTube channel, which I think was going to be part 3 of "Test Kitchen." What happened??? The further removed from it I get in time, the more unbelievable it is. Conde Nast had one of the most popular and universally beloved channels on that entire platform and when it came out that things were wrong behind the scenes, they just ............. didn't fix it. Let everybody peace out. Pissed the entire thing away. How?????? Why??????? Also, how are things now that they've swapped out so much of the upper management at BA? POC viewpoints and cuisines are getting some respect in the print magazine, but what about the people doing the work in the office and on the YouTube? I have this feeling that a notional part 4 of "Test Kitchen" was maybe going to address this, but I could be wrong. I'm writing this on the 17th, so if Reply All does release the remaining "Test Kitchen" episode(s) (or at least make clear what its plan is) maybe I'll finally get to lay this all to rest in my mind. I know I keep talking about it, but it feels like a solvable mystery, doesn't it?? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin keeps getting bigger, which means we're gonna need to transition him to a Big Kid Bed soonish. The toddler video class we've subscribed to has some tips for us on this, so I may not need any advice; I just wanted to note the wheels are turning. Specifically the wheels that will take me to Ikea, where I'll buy the bedframe and mattress and sheets and stow 'em in the garage where Quentin doesn't like to look. Further updates on this matter as events warrant. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • NASA released footage of the Perseverance landing taken by the probe itself, and it's ....... it's something. (@NASAPersevere on Twitter) Odds are essentially zero that I'll ever get over the fact that "lowering a car-sized robot onto a planet's surface from a hovering, rocket-powered sky crane with no real-time control input from humans" is basically a proven technology at this point. (The Verge) 

  • NPR built a tool that should help you figure out where to get the vaccine in your state. (NPR) 

  • Point/counterpoint: Rush Limbaugh. (Defector) 

  • In all likelihood, the rona's here to stay. (Nature) 

  • As bad as it got in Texas, it could've been much worse. (Texas Tribune) 

  • The Trump casino in Atlantic City was demolished, but it would've been 1000x better if the plan to auction off the right to be the person who pushed the button had gone through. Fuck Carl Icahn. (NPR) 

  • Clubhouse basically sounds to me like an endless, audio-only Zoom call, which: why. Why would you do that. Turns out it's also fucked from a privacy standpoint. (Recode) 

  • Because of the pandemic, New Orleans had Yardi Gras this year, which looks like it was a lot of fun. (nola) 

  • Crabs can help restore coral habitats, as long as we've got the time and space to raise them. (Anthropocene) 

  • The thing that killed the dinosaurs might've been a comet from the Oort cloud that got nudged our way by Jupiter. (Harvard) 

  • Here, have a soft robot powered by compressed air. (UCSD) 

  • An independent investigation reveals what we already knew, which is that Elijah McClain's killers did it for no reason other than racism, and the higher-ups didn't even do a good job pretending to mime responsibility for it. Now: consequences??? (CNN) 

  • This seems like an obvious no-brainer, but there's still something undeniably sweet about doing a study on whether or not kids who work alongside therapy dogs to learn new skills actually enjoy it. Turns out: yeah! (U British Columbia Okanagan) 

  • I can't really sum this up better than the article's opening sentence does, so: "By capitalizing on a convergence of chemical, biological and artificial intelligence advances, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists have developed an unusually fast and efficient method for discovering tiny antibody fragments with big potential for development into therapeutics against deadly diseases." (UPMC) 

  • Whoooooooooo wants a 3D bioprinter that can create structures free of distortion by printing into a block of supportive gel? (AIP) 

  • "The Founders Were Wrong About Democracy: The authors of the Constitution feared mass participation would unsettle government, but it’s the privileged minority that has proved destabilizing." (~$Atlantic) 

  • Million-year-old mammoth DNA has been successfully sequenced. (Nature) 

  • So-lar win-dows! [clap! clap! clapclapclap!] So-lar win-dows! [clap! clap! clapclapclap!] (Rice U) 

  • Are dingoes more dog or wolf or what? (Penn State) 

  • There are over 140,000 different species of virus in the human gut microbiome, at least half of which are heretofore unknown to science. (Sanger Institute) 

  • "Chemistry can help make plastics sustainable — but it isn’t the whole solution" (Nature) 

  • Huh: researchers are working out a mathematical model for predicting evolution. (Institute of Science & Tech Austria) 

  • Some very clever scientists have figured out a way to make tiny objects swim upstream using ultrasound, a trick that could come in handy for precision medical procedures. (ETH Zurich) 

  • If the planet's magnetic poles swap places, is it a big deal for us? Almost certainly! (U of New South Wales Sydney) 

  • Dogs have the ability to recognize their own bodies as an obstacle, which doesn't switch on in humans until they're about a year and a half old and some animals just never master at all. (Science Alert) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumDance Orb, All Hearts Shall Be Chained 

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.