it was so good, y'all

January 16, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that feels like it's still recovering from the madness of Instant Band Night last week 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI haven't lost hope that I'll recover enough energy to kick the side of the podcast machinery and get it rumbling to life in early 2023. 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 19: SOLARIf you couldn't make it to Instant Band Night 18, I'm sorry to report that you missed a fucking spectacular time. The crowd was fantastic, the bands were amazing — what more could you ask for?? A special and heartfelt shoutout to everyone who came: the night was magic because YOU were magic. It's the logical property of transitivity and it's mathematically immutable!!!!(Actually, if you were there and you took photos or video, drop me a line, because I'm hoping to put together a big album that everyone can see)If you already can't wait for the next one, all the info you need is below, including links to event pages with a description and FAQ if for some reason you're just now finding out about Instant Band Night and want to know what it is!March 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  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Elizabeth Holmes and her fictional billion was certainly the biggest latter-day example of the Hot Girl Grift/er, but I think we can all agree that Charlie Javice's $175M was also a respectable bag. We discussed this back in episode 153 of the podcast, but I still think there's room in the world for a matchmaking service that can pair teams looking to pull off a similar grift with conventionally attractive, canny, unscrupulous women looking to flex their acting and improv skills in the service of duping a boardroom full of sexist old men to the tune of millions upon millions of dollars (which would then presumably be equitably distributed amongst teammembers):"Carrie would be a good match for a team hustling a nebulous ecommerce revolution""LaTanya is happy to be the face of the next bullshit blockchain business to grace the Forbes Top 30 Under 30""Alison has a degree in marine biology and can fake her way through any questions your ocean cleanup scam might raise from a roomful of VCs unknowingly gunning for a Dunning-Kruger award in oceanography and/or biology"The first order of business for such a matchmaking service would necessarily be the construction and establishment of foolproof fake identities for these women. Honestly, it may already exist — "Charlie Javice" sounds like something an AI would output. We'll know whether it's real if headlines and intros to business pieces like this come out in the next year or so:"Tarbi Garvase is poised to lead ecommerce into the future, says TIME Magazine""Sweeping into the boardroom in head-to-toe Gucci, Cadelda Cichot is both poised and powerful""Top leadership tips from Jandine Masse of OceanSwarm"If it turns out the service I've posited has existed this whole time, sorry for blowing your cover, but you should've cut me in on the profits a lot sooner!!!!! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.The door/doorjamb combo to Quentin and Felix's room has a paint-on-paint contact patch somewhere, which means that literally every time the door is opened, it makes a loud and unmistakable SNAP. This is bad if one of us needs to go in their room after bedtime, because it increases the risk of waking either one of them by what feels like a million percent.The sound is good, however, in that it alerts us instantly if for some reason Quentin opens the door. Which he does almost every night, but usually only once a few minutes after bedtime to let us know he needs something, or to tell us important information that can't wait until tomorrow. By now, my awareness of the sound is so fully ingrained into my reflexes that if it occurs in the morning, my body levers itself out of bed almost before consciousness has reinstalled in my brain.Quentin has taken to emerging from the room somewhat earlier in the morning than he should (which he knows because his bedtime light hasn't changed from red to green), but at least I can catch it when it happens. I don't know how other parents do this. Proximity alarms? Motion detectors? It's probably motion detectors, isn't it. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Yes, there's Gas Stove Discourse now, but it's for a reason. (Vox) 

  • Microsoft has created an AI tool capable of simulating anyone's voice given a 3sec sample. That's it, then: the time has come to make all computers sound like Majel Barrett now, no more excuses!! (Ars Technica) 

  • CO2 is turning the ocean acidic, but The Scientists have demonstrated that it's possible to reverse the process. (Science) 

  • "You Were Never Going to Go to Noma Anyway" (Eater) 

  • Fellow parents, tell me this comic doesn't resonate. (SMBC) 

  • The ozone layer is healing, y'all. (AP) 

  • Disinformation isn't as powerful as many of us fear, but that doesn't mean true information is any more powerful, either. (Nieman Lab) 

  • The Scientists are wondering why there hasn't been as much "disruptive" science done lately. (Nature) 

  • A survey of 1600 people revealed that a lot of the resistance to climate policy among Republicans comes from what the surveyors call "negative partisanship," or a desire to stick it to us liberal snowflake types, which ......... isn't great. (Anthropocene) 

  • It would appear that the +7y dad age gap has been a thing since the emergence of the human race. (Nature) 

  • Some Engineers have successfully demonstrated screenprintable wearable electronics. (Washington State) 

  • Being in kind of a bad mood might make you a better proofreader. (U of Arizona) (Paper) 

  • Why do so many solar systems we've seen have a bunch of super-Earths that are roughly the same size? The Scientists have hit upon a whole new theory of planetary formation. (Caltech) 

  • "I Was Almost Elon Musk’s Twitter Voice" (Defector) 

  • Well, shit: planting drought-tolerant trees in cities that are bracing for drought sounds like a good idea, but they lose their drought tolerance if you water them with any kind of regularity. (UC Riverside) 

  • Did you know resealable aluminum cans are a thing now? (Packaging Digest) 

  • How do you keep morale up when you're trying to conserve a critically endangered species? (Nature) 

  • Long-acting injectable drugs are a great way to treat chronic diseases but a huge pain in the ass to design, so The Scientists have built a machine learning model that can help speed the process up a lot. (U of Toronto) 

  • You love to see it: a couple of fascist morons lit themselves on fire trying to arsonize an immigration services center in Bakersfield. Yes, there's video. (Vice) 

  • The Scientists have demonstrated a spray-on coating that can turn any container into a Faraday cage with the addition of a tiny bit of current. (Drexel U) 

  • Videogames are amazing. (PC Gamer) 

  • If you're feeling depressed, performing acts of kindness for others may be literally therapeutic. (Ohio State) If you're feeling guilty, how about a placebo pill? It'll work either way, apparently!! (U of Basel) (Paper) 

  • "Our Tote Bags, Ourselves: How a humble bag became a humble brag" (The Walrus) 

  • We've known about this for a bit, but it's still wild to me that The Scientists have experimental proof that the compounds necessary for life can be essentially spontaneously generated in space. (NASA) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumN.A.M.E.T.A.G., A Very Large Dog is Coming For You(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.