just get back in bed

May 10, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that will be fully immunized as of this Wednesday and thus warns you all to prepare for the HUGPOCALYPSE 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway154 - A Measure of Absolute Flakiness"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Will (@will_sargent) discover a dizzying array of concepts guaranteed to advance dating, not to mention society at large, in brilliant and unexpected ways."A truly astonishing set of circumstances prevented us from recording these episodes with Will, but because we believed in ourselves, we persevered: behold the fruits of our delayed but no less invigorated labor!!!!!You know how it is: algorithms and whatnot. If you have a second, just stop on by our Apple Podcasts page and give us that ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ so the algorithm will reward us, and by extension: YOUInstant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberHalf of America's adult population has been vaccinated. Pencil 11/11/2021 into your schedule and if we're all very good and lucky, 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+ + g e t   y o u r   s h o t   / /   l e t ' s   d o   t h i s + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.God help me but I absolutely cannot bring myself to give even one tenth of a shit about a Game of Thrones prequel. They burnt up all their goodwill with me after that last season. In fact, how about a moratorium on prequels of any kind from now until the rest of time? When was the last instance of a prequel to anything being as good as or better than the original? If you say Prometheus I will write to your local municipality and have you banned from entering public buildings. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We're definitely in a phase now where Quentin likes to come out of his room after we've put him to bed so we can tuck him in again. We deliberately try to make these subsequent ones as uninteresting as possible so as not to reward this behavior, but as it's still in the early stages, he hasn't quite caught on yet. Thus far my favorite of his extremely mundane reasons to open his bedroom door and call to us has been: "I sneezed!" Okay, buddy, good, get back in bed. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • What do we do with the people who don't want the vaccine? (~$Atlantic) 

  • Oh, the Basecamp thing! The sheer spectacle of watching two men dig themselves and their business a tunnel to hell with their mouths alone is an incredible thing to witness. (The Verge) 

  • Data seems to suggest adults are more likely to donate to charity when there are kids around. (U of Bath) 

  • Birth rates have gone way down lately. Gee, I wonder why. (Science Alert) 

  • Say what you want about this, but it's hard to argue with: "Free beer offer results in more vaccinations than all Erie County first-dose clinics last week" (Buffalo News) 

  • Two words: silk leather. (Tufts) 

  • Sonya Dreizler has an interesting and convenient way to manage "can I pick your brain" requests that I feel like everyone should adopt, if for no other reason than to have interesting conversations. My weekly office hour would just be WHO WANTS TO TALK ABOUT SOME BULLSHIT with no other content guidelines, and we'd just see what happens week to week. (Sonya Dreizler) 

  • Why would I want clothes made of algae, though? Is just one question I have. (U of R) 

  • A newly-described negative personality trait dubbed "Tendency toward Interpersonal Victimhood" goes a shockingly long way toward explaining [waves toward Fox News]. (~$Nautilus) 

  • Here's a paper for you: "If I fits I sits: A citizen science investigation into illusory contour susceptibility in domestic cats (Felis silvestris catus)" (Paper) 

  • The stark difference between how rich countries are doing with vaccinations vs poor countries doesn't exactly bode well for future efforts to fight climate change. ($NYT) 

  • Are trees even real?????? (Eukaryote Writes Blog) 

  • Millions upon millions of the comments submitted in favor of dismantling net neutrality were (Romulan voice) A FAAAAAAAKE! Also one heroic college student put together a bot that submitted 7.7M comments supporting net neutrality, so I salute you, whoever you were. (Mashable) 

  • This week's New Yorker loooongread is about the current state of UFO investigations. (~$New Yorker) 

  • Scientists are starting to look into cloning endangered wild animals and possibly even gene-editing them to be resistant to the diseases that are wiping them out. (NEO.LIFE) 

  • What if: Dunbar's number is some bullshit? (Science Alert) (Paper) 

  • Okay, so ....... here's a trilogy of papers that appear to propose a theoretical technological basis for an interstellar communications network? They are dense as hell but I understand just enough to know they're very interesting. (PDF 1) (PDF 2) (PDF 3) 

  • Squishy furniture's back. ($NYT) 

  • Scientists in the Netherlands have trained bees to detect the rona by smell. (Wageningen U) 

  • How cities will fossilize. (BBC Future) 

  • "The weird science of the placebo effect keeps getting more interesting" (Vox) 

  • This just made me chuckle. A reward if you've read to the end of this section! (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumRaccoonabula, All Dots, No Lines 

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.