Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that just had an idea for a whole other live event and needs to brainstorm with someone about it

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 33: BANDSGIVING

If you miss Instant Band Night already, and it's understandable if you do, don't worry: it will return in November, and you can secure your ticket and put it on your calendar right now; feel the warm glow of security fill the space in your heart where music and creativity and surprise live. And if you've never been before, this will be the perfect opportunity to see what all the fuss is about!! Come play or just watch; as always, it'll be like nothing else you've experienced.

✨🪩✨
Nov 13 2025
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

🎃🌴SUMMER SALE/NEW LITTLE WEIRDOS🌴🎃

That’s right, there’s new little guys in there!!! I've been experimenting with new glazing techniques and I have to say I think I've hit upon a winner! Also I have too many things on my "finished work" shelves and it's time to move some inventory, so I've put everything on incredibly deep discount. Decorate your garden or anyplace else that needs a splash of color or whimsy; they also make thoughtful and unique gifts for that special discerning someone in your life.

Idea Factory Giveaway

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

Mavis was actually able to take the kids on their camping trip, which went amazingly well (they're on their way home as I type this) and provided me the excuse to go maybe half goblin mode in my dining habits while they were gone. Did I get fast food at least once? Yes. Have I eaten a donut or two? Also yes. But did I go for a walk immediately after both times? Also yes!

All of this is a sort of last hurrah for the admittedly somewhat loosey-goosey way I've been running things metabolically speaking;* I got some bloodwork done and my A1C is a hair away from where it was when I was originally diagnosed prediabetic. So! Having read some articles about its effect on A1C over the years thanks to my newsletter-reading habit, I'm returning to the intermittent fasting diet I tried for a while before the kids were born. It's not terrifically extreme: on weekdays I only eat from noon-8p, and then on the weekends I can do whatever. I think this is the way I did it last time and it wasn't too hard. We'll see what my A1C is up to six months from now and go from there, how 'bout.

* I haven't returned to soda and candy and whatnot, but let's just say I've probably been eating sugary desserts more often than is probably wise.

#dadthoughts

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

Quentin was allowed to bring two (2) books with him on the camping trip, and one of his selections was the D&D Young Adventurer's Guide to Wizards and Spells I got him just last week. The notion of actually playing some D&D has seized hold of his mind, I think, and so another Young Adventurer's Guide should be on its way here soon — it's the one about warriors and weapons (he seems to really want to be a sorceror but just in case he feels like swinging a sword around, y'know?) and unfortunately seems to be on backorder but hopefully will ship in a week or two.

I have, in the meantime, acquired the necessary tomes (Player's Guide, DM's Guide, Monster Manual) with the help of several Barnes & Noble gift cards that we remembered we've been accumulating and unobtrusively placed them on the downstairs office shelves for my perusal. Family D&D campaign????? At the very least there'll be one or two short adventures and we'll see what everyone thinks; I just have to come up with some good ones. All of the one-shots I've made up myself are a little complicated and/or scary, I think — there's a good chance Felix will want to participate in some way, so I need to ponder this for a while.

I suppose I could see if anyone else out there has thought about this; it's at least possible!! While I google, if you have thoughts on how to do this with a 7 and 4-yr-old, smash that Reply and let's hear it!

Fascination Corner

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

• The extent to which RFK Jr [spit] has gutted the CDC is far far worse than you imagined. Jamelle Bouie had a great idea: "someone should put together a "kennedy death count" for everyone who dies of a preventable disease and just plaster it everywhere" (STAT)

• Well, shit: a new long-term study suggests repeated exposure to heatwaves will age you as much as smoking or drinking. (Nature)

• There are far worse uses for alleyways than turning them into bee buffets. (Guardian)

• Speaking of bees, The Scientists have figured out the missing nutrient bees need, which when supplied boosts colony reproduction rates by up to 15x. So: pretty important!! (U of Oxford via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Are nuclear batteries about to make a comeback?? (IEEE Spectrum)

• OnlyFans chat is being outsourced to the Philippines, but even the workers there can see the Machine (Generative Flavor) writing on the wall. (Rest of World)

• The Scientists think Ceres, the biggest rock in the asteroid belt, apparently had both a liquid subsurface ocean and a plausible energy source to potentially fuel life a couple billion years ago. (NASA) (Paper)

• Uhh: new proposed CA law says Uber and Lyft drivers can unionize, but in exchange, the companies don't have to give them health insurance? I think? That ............. doesn't sound good, does it? (TechCrunch)

• Some Biomedical Engineers report success in getting paralyzed rats to walk again after implanting organic 3D-printed scaffolds laden with neural stem cells, which: holy shit. (U of Minnesota via Science Daily) (Paper)

• What do you do when you live in a place where poison comes howling out of the ground into your face 24/7? Apparently you evolve to capture and transform the poison into something less poisonous so your body can exist there, and as a bonus makes you an amazing bright yellow. Also you're a deep sea worm, I forgot to say that part. (Nature)

• The Scientists are figuring out the details around plastic-eating waxworms: how much they can eat, what their bodies do with it, etc, and it's looking promising. (Soc for Experimental Biology via Science Daily)

• All the data from the famous "Wow!" signal has been re-analyzed, and it was actually stronger than we thought back in the day. (Universe Today) (Paper)

• Huh: all the assumptions we've been making about how time works are in some sense intrinsically tied to our biology, which is something machines don't have, so we should probably think about how a machine intelligence (whenever it happens) will perceive time differently from us. (IEEE Spectrum)

• The Scientists have run the numbers and most of the species on Earth are the result of relatively sudden explosions of evolutionary diversity, which is pretty interesting actually! (Frontiers via Science Daily) (Paper)

• We keep sending signals into space to talk to the stuff we've flung out into it; could aliens ......... detect those? Should we think about trying to spot signals from alien NASAs trying to talk to their own probes maybe?? (Penn State) (Paper)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.

A band and their album

(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:

Reader Gary has this to say:

"Nervous Dog does 1960s British blues-influenced rock a la Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac.

"Anything Can Be A Mirror is inspired by mid-80s electropop a la Yaz.

"Surprisingly, the bassist and keyboardist are the same in both groups, leading to an album cover that is a Venn diagram because the whole 'Name x Name' notation is played out.

"Even more surprisingly, the album itself is slightly jokey garage rock inspired directly by The Dead Milkmen: each song is three chords and three minutes of enthusiasm, with highly skilled musicians doing a damn good impression of people who are only moderately skilled, but occasionally letting slip that they are intentionally having a goof on all of us."

Reader Steve, by contrast, says Nervous Dog "was a breathy, introspective, weedy singer songwriter with insufferable fans who thought his lyrics were amazing (they were not). 'Anything can be a mirror' was a particularly egregious example of navel gazing."

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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!