it's tech grievance tuesday

October 16, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that cannot believe it's supposed to get fucking hot again mid-week goddammit 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI know I say this every week, but the possibility that we may return to podcasting cannot be mathematically excluded! In the meantime, you can find the show's 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 23: YOUThe last Instant Band Night of the year is in just about a month and you should be there! We'll create bands on the spot from people who've just met and they will astonish you — come play or just come watch! Every band needs an audience, and this one is maybe the best in the entire Bay. I don't know how it happened; it just did, and I'm not about to mess with it. Come see for yourself!Nov 9 2023 (click to add to your Gcal)6p$10East Bay Community Space507 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 YOUI've decided to experiment a little with the pricing in the shop, so if you haven't stopped by, or if you know someone with excellent taste who needs something that literally can't be bought anywhere else, maybe take a look right now and consider some clever ceramics! Brilliant little statues for your garden or home! A place to put your fruit! A little buddy to hold your garlic! I'm working (slowly) on even more delightful little weirdos and I hope to show you soon. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Something is happening with the USB-C charging jack on my phone where it really only works if you plug the cable in one way; plug it in the other way and it will receive a bare trickle of electrons. This is irritating because — as you no doubt already know — USB-C is supposed to be orientation-agnostic (right??), so it plugs in both ways equally fine. Except it's NOT fine. Anyway, I've solved this on just about all the relevant cables in my house by putting a little square of masking tape on the correct side. I'm annoyed about this, and now I've successfully transmitted this annoyance to you. Do you have an equally small but disproportionately irritating tech/hardware thing bugging you today? Feel free to tell me about it and unburden yourself!! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Something Felix likes to do occasionally is wait until my back is turned, then toddle up to me and grab my legs or back from behind. "I gotchu Daddy Daddy!" he announces gleefully. If I make dismayed noises, his glee increases. I don't know when he's going to stop doing this, but I hope that day is far off, because it's very good.This weekend was the elementary school carnival: volunteer-run booths with surprisingly good carnival games, snacks, a pumpkin patch, a giant bubble guy, a main stage with some musical acts and a kids' magician, etc. They hadn't put it on since the pandemic, so turnout was shockingly good (it also didn't hurt that it was a beautiful day). Quentin declined to play any of the games except a duck-fishing one, which he unfortunately didn't win anything from. I think he understood the general idea: you play the games, you (hopefully) win some prize tickets, which can be exchanged for prizes at the prize booth. He expressed some regret at the end of the day that he hadn't taken home any prizes, at which I felt prompted to remind him that he hadn't played any of the games that would've given him prize tickets. He told me that the problem was that he didn't know any of the people running the booths! Well-observed but unfortunate; I think the same hangup prevents him from participating in the piñatas at the birthday parties we attend — too many strange kids. He's 5, so this is probably not too unexpected; I was probably this shy when I was 5, right? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • The amount of disinfo being blasted into the ether from Gaza is staggering; here's how to navigate the news. (Vox) 

  • What are the actual heat limits for the human body? (Nature) 

  • We've made no progress on emissions reduction, folks. (The Messenger) 

  • As if that weren't enough, The Scientists are ringing the alarm bell on Amazon deforestation, for real this time. (Vox) (Paper) 

  • There are 12 technologies that would get us to net-negative emissions by 2050 if we adopted all of them; granted, some are, uh, a bigger lift than others, conceptually. (Cornell) (Paper) 

  • Btw, the oceans getting warmer also means they're gonna get noisier for the animals that live in 'em. (Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research) (Paper) 

  • A truly walkable neighborhood opened in Tempe, AZ, and thus far it looks pretty great. (Guardian) 

  • "What happens if you force companies to reveal how much they contribute to climate change? California wants to find out." (Vox) 

  • The Scientists have published an incredibly detailed cellular atlas of the human brain. (Nature) 

  • It's been said before, but the assassination of Shinzo Abe was maybe the most politically effective one of all time, given that the motive stated by the guy who shot him turned out to be correct and the Japanese government is doing what he wanted. (Nikkei Asia) 

  • Some Engineers have proposed a truly bonkers-sounding system of quasi-living, self-replicating microelectronic modules that would constitute essentially everything we use from now on, in the name of sustainability. It makes sense, but wow. (Chemnitz U of Tech) (Paper) 

  • Having always been charmed by the bit in Watership Down that explains rabbits can count up to four and any number past that is "a thousand," this discovery about the neurons we use when counting objects up to four is pretty good. (Nature) 

  • I know there's a historical reason for it, but I still think it's funny that The Scientists have announced the detection of something called "Pines' demon" in metals. (Quanta) 

  • We've thought for a long time that the 1918 flu pandemic disproportionately affected young, healthy adults; turns out maybe not?? (McMaster U) 

  • The Scientists have used The Machine to recreate speech from brain recordings, a huge step towards giving voices back to people who can't talk. (NYU) (Paper) 

  • An Australian student has designed a relatively cheap way to retrofit existing cars into hybrids; now he just needs to build the prototype. (Dezeen) 

  • Comedy Wildlife Photography finalists are out! (~$Forbes) 

  • The first 1.5g of sample material from the asteroid Bennu have been characterized, and there's a shocking amount of carbon in there. (Nature) 

  • What are the most "food-forward" cities in America (and what does that even mean)? (Datassential) 

  • Some Engineers have fixed the problem where medical imaging fucks up on people with dark skin. (Johns Hopkins) (Paper) 

  • Bill Watterson's got new material out??? (Polygon) 

  • A 21-year-old student has worked out a way to use The Machine to read text inside barbecued scrolls from the Pompeii eruption. (Nature) 

  • The most intense solar storm in history happened about 14,300 years ago, according to some ancient tree rings The Scientists dug up in the French Alps. (U of Leeds) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists think they've identified a sixth taste, which responds to ammonium chloride. Mmmmm! (USC Dornsife) (Paper) 

  • Well over 200 spacecraft have been deliberately crashed into Point Nemo, the most remote part of the entire ocean; what will some lucky future archaeologists make of it? (BBC Future) 

  • Uhhh: The Scientists think it's possible that informational entropy decreases over time, which sure looks like something you'd implement in a simulation. (Science Alert) 

  • If you go by "how many runestones mention this person" as a metric for their fame in Ancient Viking Times, the most famous Viking leader of them all might've been a woman. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

  • Some Engineers ran some tests, and it turns out a bunch of ping-pong balls with little holes drilled into them can be a surprisingly effective sound absorption surface. (AIP) (Paper) 

  • Right-to-repair is now a thing in California, which means it's probably going to be a thing everywhere else in the US, unless The Corporations want to waste time and money on "CA-Only" assembly lines and packaging. (The Verge) 

  • The Scientists have run a small study that seems to show plant-derived nutrients can not only alter your gut microbiome, they can tinker with the food-reward mechanisms in your brain. (U of Leipzig) (Paper) 

  • Lunar dust is going to be a problem for machinery driving around on the Moon, but Some Engineers have worked out a way to melt the surface into tiles using a lens about 5x5ft square, at least in theory, so future Moon trucks won't have to offroad it. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their album

Photo by Vincent Van Zalinge on Unsplash(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:

Photo by Rebootanika on Unsplash🤖 Reader Steve suggests this one is "a jerky somewhat electronic 80s band, a bit like Stan Ridgway."🛠️ Reader Lauren H says "Do I want Explosion of Eyeballs to be a Dawn of Midi-inspired revolving improvisational album? Yes. Is it actually a bunch of hipster dudes striking found objects against each other in a way I can't decide is brilliant or reductive? Also yes." 

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.