let's learn about letters

April 26, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants to tell you all about this great show Ted Lasso, ever heard of it? 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayAll right lads, this is the week for editing together the next episode, so there's ....... really nothing else to say on that front; may the time find me!!We're still at 36 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings in Apple Podcasts, which means you or 4 other people out there are all poised to become heroes of the realm -- just head on over and do the thing. I believe in you. We ALL believe in you!!!Instant 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.Ever since a friend mentioned having purchased the movie Contagion back in April of last year, the notion of watching it rattled around the back of my mind for months (I'd never seen it) up until a few nights ago when I fired it up, and folks: it's fucking wild. The fictional virus in this movie did not come to play, which turns out to be way more of a heart-clencher than I thought it'd be. Also, watching Kate Winslet's epidemiologist character explain R0 and fomites to a conference room's worth of skeptical officials in this, the 7000th month of the real-life pandemic, is a truly surreal experience. In fact, watching what looks like something approaching an actual competent government response is sort of the real horror of this thing, given [gestures at the Trump administration]. Society-level shit gets much grimmer in the movie than ours got, at least, which I admit is a strange thing to take comfort in. However, points are deducted for the fact that nobody beats Jude Law's character to death in the streets with a tire iron at the end. Soderbergh should make a 15m-long sequel where that's the only thing that happens. Someone make a phone call. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.I got an email from a friend the other day whose kid is starting to explore books; it went like this: 

SUBJ: Hey, you ever read that children's book based on "Every Little Thing" by Bob Marley?BODY: It sucks shit.

I have never encountered this book but I am prepared to back this claim based on my extensive knowledge of this particular friend's taste alone. Here are other books that drive me mildly insane for reasons of varying validity:Other board books do some editing -- for instance, the board book version of Harold and the Purple Crayon has been slightly reworked and trimmed to account for the difference in format from the version with (more numerous) paper pages. However, The Best Mouse Cookie somehow, for some unknown reason, has TWO TITLE SPREADS. The title of the book appears on the cover. Then you open the book and there's a title spread. Turn the page and another title spread greets you. Why. Why is this. Someone. Anyone. WHYDo not under any circumstances accept a copy of A is for Activist into your home. The message is fine -- good even, laudable, noble, all of that -- but it is fucking chaos in there. ABC books seem like they should provide as smooth a path as possible into teaching both letters and the concepts associated with them, and one good way to do that is by using a consistent rhyme scheme and/or meter from letter to letter. Guess what A is for Activist doesn't have. Guess!!!!!!! This will provide you with a reading experience that can best be described as "infuriating torture" if you have to read it repeatedly, which thank god we didn't do because I hid this book in a box fairly early on in Quentin's life, whereupon he promptly forgot about its existence.Counting on Community, which is a sort of sequel to A is for Activist that tries to teach numbers, is bearable if you don't read any words of it out loud at all, and simply pretend the entire thing is a series of ten "find the duck" and "find the number" visual puzzles.I both do and don't understand how the text of ABC Oakland got past editors: the art is vibrant and the rhymes are generally good and it's nice to learn about the city of Oakland. All of these are good, fine things, which I'm sure is why it was published in the first place. But this is a fucking children's book, which means it's going to be read out loud. Why would you make the entry for Y be "Y is for you"? Did not one single person in the entire edit chain read this the fuck out loud and think maybe it might confuse a child to say "Y is for U" when you just tried to teach them about the letter U a couple pages ago? U is a different letter from Y. I know this and you know this, but guess who might never figure that out if this is the only ABC book in the house?What are yours. I know you have them. Tell me. We must pass this knowledge on to other parents, that their suffering may be lessened. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Christ: an internal Facebook report details its failure to kill the "Stop The Steal" movement and how it contributed to the whole insurrection mess. I want to read the fucking thing for myself, but honestly, the article about it is fairly comprehensive. (BuzzFeed News) Well, it turns out all I had to do was wait for Facebook to stop its own employees from reading the fucking thing because now the text of it is up; what would we do without BuzzFeed News, honestly. My first question is "What the fuck is CORGI modeling?" (BuzzFeed News) 

  • A 17-year-old girl has designed a device capable of delivering early earthquake warnings that can be built for under a hundo. (Seismological Society of America) 

  • Where have people actually moved during the pandemic? ($NYT) 

  • NASA's Ingenuity helicopter made its first flight on the surface of Mars. (NASA) Also, another instrument onboard the Perseverance rover generated oxygen from atmospheric Martian CO2. (JPL) 

  • Nextdoor knows it has a racism problem. (Vice) 

  • "From Civil Rights to Black Lives Matter: Protest expert Aldon Morris explains how social justice movements succeed" (~$Scientific American) 

  • Shocker: the First Amendment wasn't designed with social media (and all the other technology that enables us to make our dumb opinions heard) in mind. (Vox) 

  • The "whitest white paint" thing is important because more reflectivity means spending less on energy. (Gizmodo) 

  • This one made me have to sit quietly and stare out the window for a while: "The Dark Side of the Houseplant Boom: American culture is becoming more and more preoccupied with nature. What if all the celebrations of the wild world are actually manifestations of grief?" (~$Atlantic) 

  • Clubhouse downloads fell 72% in March, surprising anyone who actually enjoys calling into meetings? I guess? What's wrong with you people? ($The Wrap, but the paywall doesn't matter because the pertinent info is in the opening paragraph) 

  • How to prepare for a "megadisaster." (Columbia) 

  • The FTC seems to be making noises indicating that companies making use of racist algorithms could land them on the wrong side of the law. (Gizmodo) 

  • "The Best Way to ‘Lure’ People to Public Transit Is to Make It Work" (Vice) 

  • Neural networks are being created that can solve extremely complicated, fiddly math much faster than anything that's ever been built before, which is great for simulations. (Quanta) 

  • The MyPillow guy's stupid right-wing social media platform didn't have a great launch, surprising nobody. (Salon) 

  • There's a botany experiment about seeds that's been going for over a century. ($NYT) 

  • "What are the world’s 35 biggest meat and dairy companies doing to mitigate climate change?" Guess. (Anthropocene) 

  • That big Foxconn factory Trump was so excited to brag about has turned into [fart noise]. (CNBC) 

  • The energy produced by underwater volcanoes is equivalent to the power usage of the entire US. (U of Leeds) 

  • Why aren't there any horse-sized rabbits? (Science Alert) (Paper) 

  • Engineers are working on exoskeletons for your ankles that can help you walk faster (and, weirdly, use less energy). (Stanford) 

  • "Blah Blah Blah: The Lack of Small Talk Is Breaking Our Brains" (The Walrus) 

  • Here, have a long but also disheartening analysis of the text of over 200 statements from people who were #metoo'd -- does it seem like they learned anything? (Texas Law Review) 

  • Truly compostable plastic that doesn't break down into pesky microplastics is here! At least in the lab! (Lawrence Berkeley Lab) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumCatbiter, There's That Noise Again 

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.