Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that seriously cannot believe Soul Coughing got back together and will be attending both of their San Francisco shows THIS FUCKING WEEKEND

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 28:

Ordinarily this is the spot where I'd tell you about the upcoming Instant Band Night in September, but we're skipping it and headed straight for the November one instead. So mark your calendar for the 14th of November and get ready for an explosion of musical joy the likes of which you've never seen in your life (unless you've been to Instant Band Night before, in which case you probably have, but the sheer genius of Instant Band Night (if I do say so myself) is that it's different every time with every band by design)!!! Ticket link (including handy FAQ) is right here (as well as below) for convenient forwarding to your top-tier friends.

Nov 14 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

Update! Excellent new tardigrades! Chaos mushrooms! Plus the rest of the almost aggressively whimsical, playfully intelligent catalog you may or may not have come to know already, perfect for yourself or a highly discerning friend in your life: there has never been a better time than now.

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.

I had a dream that makes me really wonder what our brains are up to at night:

• I'm watching a documentary about Charles Schulz

• It's discussing a series of Charlie Brown specials made in the 60s that were ....... different

• The gang would have their usual problem to solve

• However: they never solved it on their own

• At some point a truncated cone of dripping golden light that emitted intense heat would simply manifest in their midst with a blown-out dubstep BWAAAAAAA sound

• This cone looked like 1990s-era CG and not something you could easily make or animate in the 60s

• The cone would drop the solution to their issue onto the ground (often it was Snoopy) and then vanish without a trace

• Interviews with producers from the era indicate that this was direction from Schulz himself, who being a religious man wanted there to be more direct divine intervention in the plots of the specials

I woke up with this in my head. What is happening in there.

#dadthoughts

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

It's interesting what sticks and what doesn't: for a while now, Felix has been extremely assiduous about asking us all how our day was when we're at the table for dinner. He might not listen to the entire answer before he starts talking (or before Quentin interrupts), but he always asks. And we in turn are delighted to ask him and receive as much of his free-associative, contextless 3-year-old's ramble as we can. I don't know how this custom lodged itself in his brain so prominently, but I'll take as much of it as possible; it's really great.

Fascination Corner

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

• Saline nasal drops can reduce the duration of little kids' colds by two days!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (European Respiratory Society)
  

• The Scientists think they might've found a universal covid antibody that can protect against all variants, everywhere. (Texas Biomedical Research Inst) (Paper)
  

• Sure looks like the Russians spent $10M to get Tim Pool's brand of egregiously brain-damaged right-wing slop circulating in the Republican noosphere and it was probably both cheap and hilarious for them, considering the ROI they got out of it. (TPM)
  

• Planetwide warming might literally be fucking with our brains and bodies and we need to think about it. (Aeon)
  

• "Most climate policies flop, but a handful of winners could actually close the emissions gap: A new analysis leverages a fantastically comprehensive database of 1,500 climate policies that have been tried worldwide" (Anthropocene)
  

• The last dam on the Klamath River went down, and now it's time to restore the land that's suddenly breathing air again. (BBC)
  

• Some Engineers built a primitive but still impressive cyborg mushroom as a first step toward versatile organic sensors for robots. (Cornell)
  

• You must read this article about a group of chemist hackers who are laying the tools and reaction pathways needed to essentially print your own medicines on the table for anyone who wants to pick them up. (404 Media)
  

• Susceptibility to financial scams may be an early warning sign of Alzheimer's. (USC Dornsife)
  

• The Scientists are zeroing in on the physical basis of consciousness in the brain. (Wellesley) (Paper)
  

• Here, have some kitchen organization tips. "Fridgescaping"?? Stop it! Stop it now! Also maybe think about using more paper towels in there. (Vox)
  

• The Scientists have figured out a better, cheaper way to extract lithium from water, which is going to be very important for anyone who wants batteries for anything. (Anthropocene)
  

• If you have the fortitude to read it, here's the most pathetic story about the saddest Cybertruck fan you or I or anyone else is ever going to see. (Futurism)
  

• Big study over in the UK says Doing Stuff Outside really does help people feel happier. (U of Exeter)
  

• The Scientists have demonstrated a filter made of natural materials that can remove a surprising amount of PFAS forever chemicals from water. (MIT)
  

• I will never be a home automation guy, but the thought of having one of these control panels for the house is admittedly appealing; I don't know why they didn't put the photo in the goddamn article, though, so I'm also linking to the Github page where you can see it. (IEEE Spectrum) (Github)
  

• The way our storm drains have been designed actually makes flooding worse these days. (U of Michigan)
  

• You want a really good sci fi "novelette" about a cooperative near future? Yeah you fuckin' do. No, really, read it!!! (Uncanny)
  

• The Scientists have stumbled on a way to make mouse skin transparent with nothing but Yellow #5 (Yellow Number Five Five Five), giving them a chance to look inside an alive organism and see what's going on in there while it just hangs out; human skin is 10x thicker than mouse skin, but the possibility it might work on people can't be ruled out. (UT Dallas)
  

• NASA's solar sail test vehicle has successfully deployed its sail and will begin regaining attitude control once they've got a handle on its (expected) slow tumble up there. (NASA)
  

• There's an argument to be made that an increasing belief in visitors from space is causing some damage to the underpinnings of society. I personally think alien life seems like a mathematical inevitability but I'm not so sure they've been visiting, either. (The Conversation)
  

• Now there's a take: having a work nemesis is actually kind of good for you because it models the type of asshole you definitely don't want to be. (Slate)
  

• Keeping your kid from being friends with the bad kid at school only makes things worse. (Florida Atlantic U)
  

• If you'd like an interesting historical longread on why America hasn't had a meaningful shipbuilding industry for the past century, I've got one for you. (Construction Physics)
  

• Let's read about some elephant seals making guest appearances at a remote observatory half a mile down in the ocean. (Defector) (Paper)
  

• "Water ain't doing it anymore: The skyrocketing demand for electrolyte drinks: New players in the functional beverage game hope “sipping electrolytes” becomes a daily routine." (Sherwood)
  

• A Machine-based model of global plastic pollution says fully 2/3 of it comes from uncollected trash, and half of it is just being burned without any environmental controls whatsoever, which is a Problem. (U of Leeds) (Paper)
  

• Cats fetch more than we thought. (PhysOrg) (Paper)
  

• After WWII ended, we dumped a shitload of unexploded bombs into the sea, which — surprise! — are now started to leak toxins into the water, so somebody has to go clean them up. Or maybe some robots should do it. (Hakai)

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:

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think is a beguilingly simple piano-and-vocals effort from someone who plays drums for a Soundgarden cover band as his main gig and hasn't yet told his bandmates about his solo ambitions.

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Sorry there wasn’t a third Soul Coughing lyric to complete the comedic rule of threes, but if you were looking, know that I deeply appreciate you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict upon someone you don't.