Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that needs to set aside some time to do a deep dive into building the ultimate nostalgia playlist

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 33: BANDSGIVING

If you miss Instant Band Night already, and it's understandable if you do, don't worry: it will return in November, and you can secure your ticket and put it on your calendar right now; feel the warm glow of security fill the space in your heart where music and creativity and surprise live. And if you've never been before, this will be the perfect opportunity to see what all the fuss is about!! Come play or just watch; as always, it'll be like nothing else you've experienced.

✨🪩✨
Nov 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

💸🐰 All-new little guys and absolutely insane discounts 🐰💸

Oh you think this is a game? You think this is a fuckin' GAME?? [clears everything off your desk in one sweeping gesture] You don't think I'll put these guys on even DEEPER discount?!?! I RUN THIS TOWN

The amount of weird little guys I'm accumulating mounts by the week and it's time to send them to new homes. Your homes!! Or the homes of friends of yours with excellent taste. There are some completely new additions to my oeuvre (if you want to call it that) in there, so you should go see what's what immediately and maybe take care of your holiday shopping three whole months in advance!

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.

"Little Guys or: Recovering From Making Important Things" by Shing Yin Kor is probably the definitive look inside whatever passes for process when it comes to my ceramics. (Stone Soup) I find it immensely satisfying, to be honest with you. The only trouble is that my little guys really truly are taking up a fair amount of my workspace's storage, and I would like to move them to new owners. I was serious about the depth of this discount; you would be well advised to take a look, especially since I've started making a whole new different kind of little guy (and will likely make more), and there are new variations on already-established little guys. Even if there isn't a little guy who calls to you specifically, there might be one in there for a friend of yours. I'm just sayin'. (Forecast Fossil)

#dadthoughts

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

The Harding Carnival is coming in about a month's time and since I'm on the planning committee, I needed to be present for the first work party, where we open up the big storage shed containing all manner of PTA odds & ends and pull out the Carnival games to see what's broken and what needs a new coat of paint and whatnot. This is just to say that I wasn't present for Felix's return to preschool swim class, where I'm reliably told he did, in fact, enter the water of his own volition up to his waist and walk around with a smile on his face!! Progress!!

Fascination Corner

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

• Ezra Klein? More like Ezra Clown, holy Christ will you shut the FUCK UP — fortunately somebody out there wrote a more measured rebuttal than mine to his NYT litany of idiocy: "No, Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way" (Mother Jones) (404 did one too but theirs is paywalled, sadly)

• Shit is going off in Nepal right now, folks. (CNN)

• We can link heatwaves to specific corporations, which I feel the need to remind everyone are controlled by people whose names are public knowledge. (Nature) (Paper)

• Hey, possible biosignature in Mars rocks?????? (Stony Brook U) (Paper)

• The Scientists are worried that a cyanobacterium in the ocean that accounts for 5% of the world's photosynthesis isn't going to handle the warming ocean very well, which uhhh seems like a concern. (U of Washington) (Paper)

• We've been wrong this whole time about the reason why ice is slippery!!! (Saarland U via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Thomas Zimmer doesn't sugarcoat it: "The Right Wants a Reichstag Fire" (Democracy Americana)

• [puff puff] But, like, how do I know the color blue I see is the same as the color you see? Y'know? [puff puff] Neuroscience; that's how. And I guess trust in The Machine (Analytical Flavor). Honestly that's good enough for me. (Nature)

• The Jimmy Dubs has spotted enough of those weird red dots in the early universe that The Scientists now think they might be black hole stars instead of ancient impossible galaxies. (Penn State) (Paper)

• Someone (not necessarily us) is going to look back at this point in history and note Talia Lavin as one of its standout writers; I'm just sayin'. Witness "The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting" and dare to disagree with me!! (The Sword and the Sandwich)

• It looks like there might actually be a massive freshwater aquifer under the ocean floor off the East Coast, but surely there has to be a better way to obtain it?? (AP)

• The time has come where we really need to tell Democratic leadership we can all see them being fucking gormless cowards about getting behind Zohran Mamdani. (Mother Jones)

• Uh. Is, uh. What if ....... what if heart attacks are actually an infectious disease?(????) (Tampere U) (Paper)

• The humble sweet potato has six sets of chromosomes, which has made the untangling of its genetic makeup next to impossible; even now, The Scientists are only just beginning to work it out. (Boyce Thompson Inst via Science Daily)

• If I'm reading this right, The Scientists are still pretty sure Enceladus has a subsurface ocean, but they're not entirely sure the organic molecules in its plumes are coming from there — they could be generated on the surface by radiation from Saturn itself. D'oh! (Europlanet)

• The Scientists have demonstrated that high-intensity blue LED light can blast yellow stains (sweat, food, oils) from delicate fabrics all on its own. (ACS via Science Daily)

• Some Biomedical Engineers have created a helmet that can deliver ultrasound pulses to highly precise regions deep inside neural tissue, obviating the need for invasive electrodes, which has huge potential for treating a whole range of Brain Problems. (Guardian)

• The ocean is home to some extremely weird little larvae whose adult form is a total mystery; The Scientists' best guess is maybe some sort of parasitic barnacle, which are incredibly fucking weird themselves. (UConn via Science Daily)

• Looking at the data, it sure does seem like our musical taste narrows as we age, which does explain some of my puzzlement at parts of my music collection. (U of Gothenburg)

• Do people really want humanoid robots in their homes? (IEEE Spectrum)

• The Scientists have created a time crystal that's actually human-observable this time. (U of Colorado Boulder) (Paper)

• Sometimes all it takes to restore a kelp forest is a bunch of extremely determined humans with scuba gear wielding hammers. (Guardian)

• Ruby Tandoh from Bake Off series 4 has been busy this whole time, but she's just published a new book that sounds interesting; here's a good interview. (Culture Study)

• A man who was implanted with a genetically modified pig kidney is still alive six months later: wild! (Nature)

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 a solidly middle-of-the-road four-piece rock outfit doing their best to break out of southern California and not succeeding even a little bit.

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)!