Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that did so many errands today you would not believe it unless you'd seen it with your own eyes

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 26: SPRING FLING

Instant Band Night 26 is in less than a month. You have just about three weeks to tell everyone you know!! And why wouldn't you, honestly: it's the best time you can have on a Thursday night. If you've been, you know. If you haven't, it's time to change that, friend!!

May 9 2024
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

If you know somebody with aggressively whimsical taste, or are yourself a person with an appreciation for intelligent but playful ceramic objects, then I know a very exclusive online store you should visit. Nerdy little totems for your garden or shelf! Ediacaran biota! Tardigrades with outrageous paint jobs! A fruit holder that you really have to see to believe! Get in there

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after two+ 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.

It's still Answer Week around here, and this time I've got a trifecta to address:*

what’s some good advice you want to share?
fave song
YouTuber you’re obsessed with and why?

🤓 The only advice that comes to mind right now is "You can just do things if you want to," which may not sound as profound as I think it might be. I just mean nobody can stop you from doing something if you have the inclination and ability. I started a podcast and nobody called the cops. I decided to take up ceramics and I remain a free man to this day. Hell, this newsletter began as a way to inform people about new podcast episodes and now look at it. Just do that thing you've been thinking about. Take up the guitar. Write that fanfic. Try painting. State police will not be mobilized; the FBI will remain unbriefed.

🎸 The song that comes to mind right now is "Animal Life" by Shearwater. It's got evocative lyrics, a good melody, and a nice build. It's also tricksy in a way that I was not in any way musically skilled enough to nail down until my friend Molly gave it a listen and informed me it switches in certain parts from 4/4 to 6/4 because Shearwater are apparently madmen.

🍿 First-time-watching movie react videos are a subgenre of YouTube to which I have only a little exposure — to be honest I think it's the kind of thing where you only need one channel of its type to watch. The one I stumbled onto is Popcorn In Bed, entirely because someone out there on The Socials linked to her Wrath of Khan reaction. Turns out she got hooked on the Star Trek movies and decided to just keep going (tbh 2-4 constitute a complete story, at which point you kind of have to be all in); she's working her way through fan-determined key episodes of TNG now, and I haven't gotten around to watching her season 2 picks yet — there must be some real heads in her audience, because they chose two absolutely essential episodes and I'm curious to see what she made of them.

* The remaining questions from the original set are here, and you should absolutely feel free to reply and ask me any of these!

what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?
show us a picture of your handwriting?
3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?
what’s an inside joke you have with your family or friends?
what made you start your blog?
what’s the best and worst part of being online/a creator?
what scares you the most and why?
any recurring dreams?
tell a story about your childhood
would you say you’re an emotional person?
what do you consider to be romance?
what are you doing right now?
what’s something you’ve always wanted to do but maybe been to scared to do?what do you think of when you hear the word “home”?
if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
name 3 things that make you happy
do you believe in ghosts and/or aliens?
favourite thing about the day?
favourite things about the night?
are you a spiritual person?
say 3 things about someone you love
say 3 things about someone you hate
what’s one thing you’re proud of yourself for?
fave season and why?
fave colour and why?
any nicknames?
do you collect anything?
what do you do when you’re sad?
what’s one thing that never fails to make you happy/happier?
are you messy or organised?
how many tabs do you have open right now?
any hobbies?
do you trust easily?
are you an open book or do you have walls up?
share a secret
any bad habits?

#dadthoughts

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

I think it's really going to help me mentally going forward if I just redefine "bedtime" for Felix specifically as "a process that starts when we put him to bed that then lasts anywhere from 15-90 minutes." Because he just keeps coming out.

I want a huggy
I don't want a huggy
I need a bandaid*
I want more snack
I need a different book
(unspecified giggling)
Fix my robot's legs
Little Bunny needs PJs

Tonight he was really on one for no reason I could discern; I think we just missed the window and shot into overtiredness? People, we start bedtime at about 645p. They get home at like 515p and have dinner more or less immediately. We cannot start the ritual any sooner. Sometimes it's not that bad! And then we have nights like tonight, where it took him a full hour and a half to settle down. Something's cooking in that big round head of his; we've both noticed what seems like a leap in his use of words and construction of sentences. Maybe he's just mid-leap and he'll settle down once he gets to the other side. Let's hope. Let's all hope

* I'm trying as hard as possible not to let this become a baked-in part of the ritual — there was success tonight at least — but this one involves getting what I'm sure is a purely decorative bandaid put on some part of his body. If it's a fingertip, the bandaid will be removed approximately 15 seconds (not an exaggeration) after its application, once he's made the trip from the bathroom back to his bed; this is not, as you can imagine, a good use for bandaids

Fascination Corner

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

• With three major global crises occurring simultaneously — biodiversity loss, climate change, and infectious diseases busting out of their usual zones — The Scientists say there aren't enough studies examining the connections between them. (UBC) (Paper)
  

• "New report ‘braids’ Indigenous and Western knowledge for forest adaptation strategies against climate change" — pretty much what it says. Can't wait to read it! (U of Washington) (Report website)
  

• If you would either like to have your soul mildly harrowed or receive proof that a right-wing grift of just about any skill level stands to make a killing provided you can find the correct segment to exploit (or both), go ahead and read this article about the brain-poisoned dumbshits who invested in Truth Social and are still buying shares despite the stock cratering. (WaPo gift link)
  

• This interview talks about how Nestle has a program that'll accept ideas from employees at any level, which is interesting, but doesn't at all address whether they're paid, which seems to me like the most important detail!!! (Food Dive)
  

• Seems like maybe the folks at Humane should've waited until their product was actually finished before releasing it, but what do I know. (Gear Patrol)
  

• If you remind people that future generations will come after them, they think differently about climate policies that'll cost them more in the here and now. Or I should say most people — men apparently don't give a shit, which unfortunately tracks. (Anthropocene) (Paper)
  

• The Scientists say there's literally billions of dollars' worth of stuff growing in forests that could be (sustainably??) harvested and help lift marginalized peoples out of poverty, but I don't ........... know that that's such a hot-sounding idea. (U of Copenhagen)
  

• "Why do some people always get lost? Research suggests that experience may matter more than innate ability when it comes to a sense of direction" (Knowable)
  

• Some Engineers have invented a new method for 3D printing that allows for multiple materials and tunable porousness, which is great for making lightweight parts with less energy. (U of Florida) (Paper)
  

• Touch helps physical and mental health, but what kind is best? How long? Who from? Interestingly, this meta-analysis suggests none of this matters as much as we think it does, but how frequently is a big factor. (Netherlands Inst for Neuroscience) (Paper)
  

• See for yourself: The Scientists watched the free throws in 60 NCAA women's basketball games and counted every time teammates gave the shooter a reassuring pat. Turns out it helps, specifically after a failed first shot! (U of Basel) (Paper)
  

• The Scientists have built an instance of The Machine that's pretty good at spotting weirdnesses in medical imaging and offering a variety of guesses at what's going on. (MIT)
  

• Building seawalls is ........ fine, but combining them with more natural coastal defenses like mangrove replantings works better and costs less in the long run. (U Tokyo) (Paper)
  

• Some Engineers report smashing success using an engineered bacterium to make a key ingredient for highly biodegradable plant-derived plastic. (Kobe U) (Paper)
  

• The Scientists have created a new material that gets tougher when you hit it, stretching instead of breaking apart on impact. I am literally begging you people to talk to NASA about space junk cleanup, for the love of all that you hold holy (ACS)
  

• A new study seems to show that people make more impulsive decisions if they think about how long something will take first, but flip to making more long-term beneficial decisions if they're told about the rewards first. (UCLA) (Paper)
  

• The Scientists have invented a promising-looking new antibiotic that seems to work great in mice thus far. (Wiley)
  

• Goddamn: Nautilus got a fuckin' murderers' row of scifi authors to discuss whether science fiction shapes the future (and if it should). (Nautilus)
  

• The Scientists think they've spotted the two neural mechanisms whose breakdown can cause psychosis. (Stanford Medicine)
  

• Some Engineers built a better radiation detector using shapes inspired by Tetris. (MIT) (Paper)
  

• Two guys built apartments for themselves in train stations that weren't being used, and I'm not mad about it. (~$The Real Deal)
  

• Speaking of housing, let's turn (strip) malls into housing already!!!!! (Vox)
  

• "Let’s All Remember The Late-’90s Swing Revival" — I was there for this and can confirm. I still know some of the moves! It sounds like absolute madness now, but I promise it was a lot of fun. (Stereogum)
  

• Sorry but the pun is unavoidable: geothermal energy is heating up out there. (Knowable)
  

• The Scientists are real optimistic about producing food from bacterial stacks; good luck to the chefs out there, I say. (KAIST)
  

• Floppy disks are still a part of the SFMTA's IT infrastructure and will stay that way until probably 2030. (Ars Technica)
  

• The next time you get angry, write down your feelings about whatever's going on — really pour it all out on the page — and then throw it away. Odds are good you'll feel a lot better! (Nagoya U) (Paper)
  

• Some Engineers have made a 1.0 version of the Enterprise-D holodeck in VR using The Machine, in the sense that you can just tell it "Computer, make an apartment an artist might live in" and it'll produce something reasonably close. (Penn Engineering) (PDF of paper)
  

• I'm linking to the How Things Work on crappy newspaper columnists, but I really mostly want you to read the second-to-last paragraph, which I'll just quote here below because [chef_kiss.gif]. (How Things Work)
  

  “Is there anything meaningful to be said about Pamela Paul, and the other columnists of her ilk who fill the most scrutinized pages of the American press with flop-sweat-soaked works of unimaginable paltriness? At least one thing, I think: The existence of these uninspired and uninspiring people occupying the very best jobs in their industry is evidence of the limits of the ideals that liberal society purports to value. Sure, the institutions of journalism name truth and enlightenment and justice and equality as their goals, but the unspoken qualification, “within the pool of people who went to, at least, Brown,” is every bit as important as the more noble part that is spoken louder. There is no reason for there to be even one shitty New York Times columnist. They can hire anybody they want. Anybody. The existence of shitty New York Times columnists, therefore, is an unimportant thing that reveals some important things about the myths of meritocracy. The most self-assured liberal institutions are in some ways more profoundly corrupt than some of the more raffish institutions that they look down on. I mean, the NFL is one of sickest symbols of America’s barely subdued imperial impulses, but you don’t see a guy playing nose tackle on the New York Giants because he was the owner’s kid’s college roommate at Yale. Can the New York Times say the same?”

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 James Dimas 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 Chris Zhang on Unsplash

Reader Avery got a vibe off this one:

“I don’t have any good ideas for sound but think of David Chang's attempt to trademark "chili crunch" and albums like Hope for Haiti and imagine a swath of musicians doing covers or original songs (bashing Chang’s brand) to help raise money for the attack on the patent and trademark legal battle so that the mom & pop’s who also sell something that one dude who lives in NYC did not create in a vacuum can win.”

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.