just burn all the bushes you can see

September 18, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's going to make breakfast for dinner sometime pretty soon 

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: YOUInstant Band Night 22 was last week, and while the crowd was smaller than usual,* it was chock full of incredibly fun and talented people who truly got the assignment. We had a fucking blast and if you missed it, I feel genuinely sorry for you.But don't worry: the last Instant Band Night of the year is just two months out; 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!* A look at data from past years tells me that there's some kind of September Slump at work whose root cause I can't quite figure out. Any ideas?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.If you follow my personal Tumblr or saw this in its original form on Twitter like a year ago, apologies, but it's still something I think aboutI'm about to ask a question that I know none of you individually can answer entirely, it's more like I'm hoping the knowledge can be condensed out of the ether by everyone collectively: why can't I just go to startrek.com and buy a Starfleet uniform from the era of my choice? Isn't this the one piece of clothing most Trek fans want to have? Why have we been essentially left to our own devices on this for decades?There used to be a company called Rubie's that made pretty reasonable costume uniforms from TNG and DS9/VOY but they went out of business or stopped making them or something; I haven't seen one in geological eons. Anovos made insanely great-looking product but it cost a million dollars and shipped 🤷‍♂️???when???🤷‍♂️They're out of business too, btw.Sure, you can go to Amazon and find a reasonable-looking costume uniform for cheap from a place with a weird name you've never heard of in your life, but ……… odds are near 100% it comes from some kind of appalling exploitation factory of some sort, right? The irony of buying a Starfleet uniform made by what amounts to slave labor: no thank you.Something like 10-15 years ago ThinkGeek sold a line of two-piece PJs that were surprisingly excellent versions of a TNG s03+ uniform, like someone over there was PAYING ATTENTION and doing really solid work. Truly!Anyway, ThinkGeek is also out of business.But like: how the fuck? Is this not a solved problem? For the Star Trek Industrial Complex? Do they think the market for it doesn't exist? People have been showing up to conventions in droves for literal decades in homemade uniforms. Have you seen what is on the official store at startrek.com? Do they think they would sell more shirts that say STAR TREK DAY on them than a reasonable-looking copy of a TNG or DS9/VOY-era command uniform?? I get that supply chains are complicated and all that, but if you can pump out kinda janky one-off merch like the Star Trek Day stuff, how hard is it to source a manufacturer for a Starfleet uniform replica that looks decent and doesn't cost a literal thousand dollars?That's what I want: to be able to just get a uniform that looks okay (I don't need 100% SCREEN ACCURATE PERFECTION TO THE MICRODETAIL) and won't cost a down payment; is that not ……….. possible? Is there something about vending Starfleet uniforms that's economically impractical or somehow legally infeasible or something else that we just aren't aware of??* Who do I talk to about this??? John Van Citters, turn on your location, I just want to ask you a couple questions.* Like: did they do the math and discover that the majority of Trek fans inexplicably want those Santa suits from the Wrath of Khan era which are probably impossible to manufacture at scale for a decent price and just decide "fuck this" 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.I have friends up in Seattle who are giving their kids a fucking incredible childhood; I told them this after bearing witness to some pics of the Zelda-themed birthday party thrown at their eldest's request. I also wondered: Fuck, how do I get there? I like videogames! I want to share this love with my own kids! But I'm also deeply leery of the way modern games (and here I'm mostly thinking about mobile and tablet-based ones) seem to have been cheaply engineered to evoke the shortest, most profitability-inducing dopamine loops, and that ............. doesn't seem like a hot idea for a kid whose brain is still developing. So what to do, then?Fortunately, my friends are smarter than me, and suggested trying some couch-based team play: pick a game and play it "with" Quentin, in that I control the character onscreen but Quentin tells me what to do and where to go. We've been playing through the original Legend of Zelda on the Switch this way, and he's having a fucking blast. We're now at the point, though, where you kinda have to have a walkthrough or something. Can you imagine trying to find all the shit in this game on your own, organically? The 8th palace? The magic sword? All the fucking heart containers?? How would you fucking do it aside from burning every bush in the game or bombing every flat outdoor surface? Back in the days of the NES, I definitely found a map somewhere, like in an issue of Nintendo Power or something. A couple days ago I just printed out a map I found online, marking every zone that had some kind of secret with a simple red question mark so we'd know there was something "interesting" somewhere in there. I highly endorse this system if you ever decide to try this!I've already purchased Untitled Goose Game for our next outing, after we beat Zelda. What else should I think about? We're, uh, a few years away from XCOM: Enemy Within.Solo Dad Time thus far has actually been pretty smooth sailing; aside from my personal campaign of total acceptance of things not going quite to plan or as fast as I'm used to, I also got a helpful suggestion to do some fun stuff that might not normally occur when both parents are around: Special Dad Time, in other words. Which is why we ended up at the Sunvalley Mall out in Concord: it's about a half hour away, long enough for a car nap if needed, but not so long that it becomes an untenable drive, and it's a decent size but not utterly overwhelming. Felix was content to be wheeled around in the stroller, and Quentin witnessed many marvels including the interior of a Sweet Factory and the process of a stuffy being filled at the Build-a-Bear kiosk. We did make a selection from a toy store selling mostly cheap knockoff battery-powered nonsense that nevertheless made his day: a little RC excavator that can go forward/backward but struggles to turn, and doesn't have a powered arm. It is, needless to say, either Quentin's coolest or second-coolest toy according to him. Success!!! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Get your new COVID booster. Get it! (Nature) 

  • [smacks news media with a newspaper] America is not becoming "more polarized"!! Stop it! No! The actual trouble is that authoritarian fuckbags are taking over the Republican party and the sitting Republicans are letting it happen. (Thomas Zimmer on Substack) 

  • Those giant cracks appearing in the Southwest are there for a reason, and it's ................ not a good one. (Business Insider) 

  • Hats off to Rose Abramoff; may she become a household name quickly. (HEATED) 

  • Data shows that neo-Nazis are getting increasingly bold about showing up in public, which means we absolutely, unequivocally need to start ganging up and seriously beating some Nazi ass when we see it. We all own baseball bats and heavy hand tools, right? What the hell else are they for? (Vice News) 

  • The Scientists have taken the first step in genetically engineering a saltwater bacterium that can break down plastic. (NC State) (Paper) 

  • The Union Solidarity Coalition's auction ends soon; get on this. Imagine having Adam Scott walk your dog!! (eBay) 

  • MDMA is getting closer to FDA approval for treating PTSD. (Nature) 

  • Speaking of the FDA, they've officially announced what many of us have long suspected: phenylephrine just doesn't fuckin' work. It's not dangerous, it's just useless. Get that pseudoephedrine wherever possible. (CNN) 

  • David Roth, with his usual aplomb, says "Linda Yaccarino Is The Last Funny Twitter Bit Left" (Defector) 

  • The Scientists have yet again built another device capable of pulling water out of thin air. (UT Austin) 

  • Black holes are up to something weird and we don't have a good explanation for it. (Science Alert) (Yvette Cendes on Reddit) 

  • Uhh: The Scientists report they've worked out a method for turning plastic waste into hydrogen and graphene???? (Rice U) 

  • In response to the many scandals they've experienced, The Corporations have made their codes of ethics longer and done not much else. Adding more "talk" to the walk:talk ratio doesn't seem like a great idea to me, but what do I know. (Notre Dame) 

  • Some Engineers (Swiss students, specifically) have built an electric car that can go from 0-62mph in just under a damn second. (ETH Zurich) 

  • Remember when The Scientists made bacteria that could generate electricity? They're still at it, and the results are getting better. (EPFL) 

  • People are staying hot longer into their lifespans; what does that mean? (proto.life) 

  • "New York City Is About to Screw Up Congestion Pricing: The new toll to drive into Manhattan has been billed as a transformative policy that will reshape the city. But it won’t change much of anything by itself." (Motherboard) 

  • The Scientists have created an instance of The Machine that can predict with about 80% accuracy which ICU patients will survive a serious brain injury just by looking at MRI results, which is better than what we've got now. (Western U) 

  • We might be wrong about that near-universal assumption that experiencing scarcity forces you to make bad decisions. (APA) (Paper) 

  • NASA's report on UAP may not be exciting, but it sounds ........ sensible. I'm gonna read it. Why don't we all read it? (Motherboard) (PDF of report) 

  • Some Engineers have demonstrated a proof of concept for self-disinfecting gloves that heat themselves to boiling on the outside, but stay cool on the inside, so you don't even have to take them off while you scorch your enemies uhhh I mean burn the viruses off. What are they doing over at Rice?? (Rice U) 

  • The Scientists have invented a damn near frictionless toilet that nothing sticks to, even after attacking it with sandpaper; anyone else who read The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven must be sitting up right about now. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

  • Electrons streaming from the Earth's magnetosphere might be forming water on the Moon. Probably not, like, a huge amount of it, but any amount coming from a source so wild-sounding is still fascinating! (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) 

  • This thinkpiece on the increasingly overwhelming sadness of popular music contains some interesting speculations. (The Honest Broker on Substack) 

  • The James Webb Space Telescope (which I'm struggling not to nickname the ol' Jimmy Dubs) has spotted what might be another one of those "hycean" planets with a highly tantalizing potential signal of life; more observations are needed, of course. (NASA) 

  • So what's the Harry Potter fandom been up to while its creator has been busy torching her own legacy? (Polygon) 

  • A study across 25 hospitals concludes that there definitely seem to be some cases where unconscious people whose hearts have stopped have some kind of lucid near-death experience. (Elsevier) (Paper) 

  • Literal 3D printing with literal coffee grounds (plus some additives) is possible. Okay! (U of Colorado Boulder) (Paper) 

  • Softbots in space are a super good idea if we're going to keep messing around with asteroids. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • A lot of space in this issue for some reason, huh? The Scientists estimate that out of the total amount of matter and energy in the universe, 31% of it is matter, with "the remainder consisting of dark energy." The remainder of what? The other 69%? Or whatever isn't matter and energy? If that's a thing? You know what would've really cleared this up is a fucking pie chart, my guys. (Chiba U) (Paper) 

  • Some Engineers have built a tiny robot that moves by directing tiny explosions in its feet, a model sort of similar to the original Orion stardrive concept. (Nature) 

  • The Scientists have discovered a common, naturally-occurring compound that can inhibit the growth of Candida, which is great news because that shit's going to be a bigger and bigger problem down the line. (Emory U) (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 Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 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 Neom on UnsplashReader Benjamin says this album is "a disconcertingly aggressive combination of tubular bells and steel guitar with minimalist vocal tracks, perhaps only excerpts of repurposed narration from vaguely Indo-British self-help books and children's fables." 

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.