linguistic mystery abounding

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants to make sure everyone knows it has always, always hated "Crash Into Me." 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway105 - Postcard Battle Club"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Yoz (@yoz) discover worthy ideas for a content moderation motivational scheme, an epistolary art project, and a great sitcom among others."It's our general mission to bring Yoz back every fifty-ish episodes or so, and you'll understand why when you listen to this one. Also, we bring up where to find an archive of the weird little postcards I used to make, which you are invited to peruse. I actually did make the tagging system for this one vaguely useful.If you haven't yet, subscribe by searching "Idea Factory Giveaway" in your podcatcher of choice (and let me know if it doesn't pop up). If you're already there, feel free to leave a 5-star rating and a nice review (it helps; algorithms, etc, you know the deal).Instant Band Night 10THERE IS NOW LESS THAN ONE MONTH REMAININGIf you haven't already, consider inviting just about everyone you know, either by forwarding them this email or doing it on Facebook. Instant Band Night improves dramatically the more people are present for it, and you absolutely do not have to be a musician to attend -- just come watch! In any case, your help spreading the word is much appreciated. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I've become mildly addicted to a podcast called Punch Up The Jam, in which two comedic pals dissect/tear down a song (sometimes with a guest) and then make a quote-unquote "better" -- AKA punched-up -- version. I've been going through their back catalogue somewhat haphazardly, sticking mostly to songs with which I'm familiar, but I honestly shouldn't; even the ones I don't know are hilarious. It's entirely down to the excellent conversational chemistry of the co-hosts: I was mostly familiar with Demi Adejuyigbe from his memetic September 21 tweets and the amazing fake talk he gave on jazz at XOXO, which is guaranteed repeat-watchable; I had no idea who Miel Bredouw is going into it, but that also doesn't matter, because she's smart and funny. Look, I don't know how much selling I have to do on this thing -- maybe you already listen to it??? -- but if you haven't, and you're looking for something new to enjoy, give this a shot.This all assumes, of course, that ⚔💀⚔💀 you already listen to mine ⚔💀⚔💀  

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin's picking up new words all over the place and it's great. One of his favorite books right now is The Gruffalo, and every time the owl shows up, he points and shouts "Owl! Owl!" He's also taken to picking up a stuffed toy, snuggling it, saying "Hug," walking over to one of us, proferring the animal, and saying "Hug" again; we hug the animal and return it, and he hugs it again. It's ridiculously adorable.So we can usually understand what he's trying to get at, but there's one exception that's been puzzling us. Whenever he sees something that spins, he says something that sounds like "pince." We have no idea what this means. It only seems to apply to spinning things, not rolling things -- he doesn't say it when he's chasing one of his toy balls across the floor, for instance. He says it when he spins the wheel of his stroller, which sits in a corner of the living room, and he says it when he points at the wheel of the backhoe in one of his other current favorite books. A librarian who heard him say it when he pointed at the spinning ceiling fan in the Berkeley South Branch the other day offered a theory we've heard once or twice, that it might be a phonetic swap of "spin," but that seems like an overly unique and kind of sophisticated deformation that we haven't really seen him do anywhere else. Anybody have other guesses? "Pince" or "pinntz" or "peents" is as close as I can come to rendering it. There's your mystery for the week!Actually, not true: we have two Missing Objects of the Week this time: the + sign from his fridge magnet set, and a wheeled yellow wooden railcar with about the same footprint as an iPhone. I'm going to make a guess that we find neither of these before the next issue of the newsletter! 

Fascination Corner

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

• The Chemical Brothers have a new album out. Even if you don't like their music, just watch this video on mute. (YouTube) 

• Iä, iä, and all the rest. (U of Oxford via EurekAlert) 

• Y'all remember reading a few years ago about how IBM Watson was going to change everything? Here's why we're still waiting. (IEEE Spectrum) 

• TRANSPARENT WOOD. (American Chemical Society) 

• Dogs can detect cancer in human blood samples with almost 97% accuracy, unless they're a slacker beagle named Snuggles. No offense, Snuggles. You're still a good dog. (Experimental Biology 2019 conference via EurekAlert) 

• Oh thank fuck: there's definitely people out there working on recycling plastics. (Fast Company) 

• Bret Easton Ellis, who is a huge jackass, got interviewed for the New Yorker in same way a particularly delicious minnow might be interviewed by a hungry shark, and it's incredibly satisfying to read. 

• Hot people can be literally panic-inducing. (Atlantic) 

• These algae tiles for water filtration are a great idea, but I shouldn't there be an office or think tank or working group out there tracking every use case for bioremediation, making sure we aren't missing anything, keeping up with efforts to scale the various solutions, sharing information and technology, etc? Just wondering. (Fast Company) 

• Jesus: for-profit colleges are a fucking shitshow, especially in their death throes. (The Chronicle of Higher Education) Online learning isn't any better. (HuffPo) 

• You might laugh at first, but think for a second about The case for grown-up slumber parties. (The Lily) 

• Where are we on #MeToo comebacks? (Quartz) 

• YouTube livestream of a Congressional hearing on online hate had to be taken down because the comments were full of hateful racists. (AP News) 

• Time for some real talk about urban farming: what it's capable of, what its costs are, and where its products are actually going. (Anthropocene) 

• Do you really need to move back to your dying Midwest hometown? (Vox) 

• [pounds fist on table] Someone out there is actually studying disagreement, thank fuck! (Atlantic) 

• Who doesn't want to read A brief history of the ball pit? (Vox) 

• Does having everything you need available at the touch of a smartphone delay adulthood? What even is adulthood? This longread asks some interesting questions. (The Cut) 

• Finland's basic income experiment is reporting some results, and they're fascinating. (Vox) 

• This might be useful down the line, or honestly right the fuck now, given how bad my memory sometimes seems to be: Zapping the brain with electricity seems to improve memory in older people. (The Download) 

• We have to take the long view when we consider theoretical catastrophes, because the consequences are dire. (BBC) 

• You know what, let's just let the headline do the talking here: The International Space Station Is a Cesspool of Bacteria and Fungi, Study Finds. (Gizmodo) 

• To my knowledge, these are the only two pieces by Rosa Lyster I've read, but they are highly instructive and entertaining and I wish her well:

  • Who Are Nerds (Popula)

  • Listen up bitches, it’s time to learn incorrect things about someone you’ve never heard of (The Outline)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumSpoonbrawl, In Pursuit of the Master 

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.