Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's prepared to recommend Slow Gods by Claire North even without having finished it
You'll Like This
Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.
Instant Band Night Returns In May
I've had to come to the conclusion lately that there's just too much on my plate to continue managing Instant Band Night, but the good news for you the reader is that a new team of bright and capable people (led by an Instant Band Night volunteer who should be familiar to anyone who's been to one the last few years) is already working on putting the May installment together! I'm hoping for updates soon!!
Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOU
I'm not going to lie: spare time has been difficult to come by as of late. But we all need releases, and believe me when I say ceramics are high on the list for me even if I haven't been able to get my hands on the clay in a bit. Thus: the store still remains, and know that I haven't stopped thinking about new weirdos and perhaps even some dishware?? Watch this space, is all I'm gonna say, but take a peek at the shop in the meantime — maybe that garden you've been planting (or thinking about planting) needs a little buddy in there to surprise passersby?
Idea Factory Giveaway
I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after four+ 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.
You've probably heard of the ........ game? funny thought experiment? meme? thing where you pick a movie and then replace its entire cast with Muppets except for one person who remains human and imagine how funny that would be. And it is! Except somebody out there eventually realized the inverse is, if anything, even funnier, and proposed it to the hosts of War Rocket Ajax, a podcast I've been listening to since its inception and will soon be old enough to get a learner's permit. I don't know if I want to spoil their answer, which was truly incredible, but I would like to tell you some of the ones I came up with after listening:
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan but replace Ricardo Montalban with Gonzo
Aliens but replace Bill Paxton with Beaker
Sleepless in Seattle but replace Tom Hanks with Sweetums
It even works with comparatively bit parts: Star Wars but replace Grand Moff Tarkin with Sam the Eagle
This concept offers near-endless entertainment and thus I present it to you in any time of need; use it in good health. And also please send me any/all of the ones you come up with; thank you in advance.
#dadthoughts
Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.
I'm cautiously letting Quentin and Felix in on the notion that there are other videogame systems besides the SNES package and the Switch, in that I've clued them in as to the nature of the large black box that's been sitting by the TV since time immemorial: my Xbox One. No we are not playing Halo: by now they know it as The Machine That Plays Geometry Wars and Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, the latter of which is probably enough to keep them occupied for the next hundred years or so.
Quentin talked a lot at breakfast this weekend about the various combinations of little guys he wanted to pit against each other. At one point I suggested to him that perhaps he should write them down, the better to remember them when the time came, but he vetoed this notion on the basis that all the combos live in his head quite vividly. I'm not convinced this actually proved true when the time came, but on the other hand it didn't matter: literally anything he throws into the sim has rock-solid entertainment value for both kids. The battles are goofy, bloodless mayhem at just the right level of silliness, for which I thank the devs heartily. Just throwing this out there for any parents who are wondering about videogames for their children!!
Fascination Corner
I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.
"If America's So Rich, How'd It Get So Sad? Or: How the 2020s broke our brains" (Derek Thompson)
DNA evidence suggests humans arose not from one single ancestral group in Africa, but a bunch of them who intermingled over millennia. (UC Davis via Science Daily)
I'm just a sucker for anytime anyone wants to write about mass timber construction, sorry not sorry (Grist)
Earth is unfortunately getting brighter year over year, but not all at the same time — in fact, some areas are getting darker, though that's not exactly for super happy reasons. (Guardian)
"THE PEOPLE DO NOT YEARN FOR AUTOMATION: Software brain is changing the world, but most people still aren’t buying." (The Verge)
Some Engineers have built proof-of-concept "neurobots" that use self-organizing clumps of living cells to receive and respond to inputs. What?!?!??! (IEEE Spectrum) (Paper)
The Scientists are hoping robots might be the key to saving coral reefs in a warming ocean. (bioGraphic)
I think Worse On Purpose might be a must-subscribe, folks: the latest one is about the company gobbling up clothing brands and making them, well, worse on purpose. I like that they include some brands that've managed to escape this trend at the end. (Worse On Purpose)
The Onion inches ever closer to owning Infowars. I beg of the universe: please let at least one funny thing happen this year. (CNN)
"What Happened When We Set Up a Robotics Lab in a Mall: A thousand people got to drive Spot. Lessons were learned" (IEEE Spectrum)
New fossil analysis suggests the existence of giant octopuses in the late Cretaceous that might have been at the top of the food chain. (Science Alert) (Paper)
If you haven't heard the term "balcony solar" before, now's a good time to learn about it! (Canary Media)
We have actual economic data on how abortion bans affect states, and (surprise surprise) it's not a good picture. (Culture Study)
The Scientists have been looking at maps and running numbers and it sure looks like we could cut down on synthetic fertilizers by a shit ton (heh) if we could coordinate and use animal and human waste effectively. (Cornell)
Yes, we need to plant a lot of trees to help the planet, but just planting trees willy-nilly won't work; plant forests instead. Forests!!!! (The Conversation)
"'People Just Don’t Care': ‘Leaving Neverland’ Director on Why Michael Jackson Won the Court of Public Opinion" (Hollywood Reporter)
Cemeteries might be great places for fostering biodiversity. (Grist)
The Scientists fed 13,000 simulations of renewable energy adoption to The Machine (Analytical Flavor) and its projections for the future look ........ hopeful?? (Anthropocene) (Paper)
Here, have an incredible writeup on one particular asshole cop and his stupid truck. (Streetsblog NYC)
I hope it's not egotistical to say this feels like something I would've done: "i tricked 3 million people into believing in an evil fake polycule" (raw & feral)
The Scientists have created a plastic surface that tears viruses apart; they say it's cheap to make and can be produced at scale, even! (RMIT via Science Daily) (Paper)
And that's not all! Apparently our favorite carbon supermaterial and old friend graphene can apparently target and destroy bacterial cells without harming human ones; the tech has already been integrated into some Korean Olympic sportswear, even. (KAIST via Science Daily)
You want a looooooooongread for your week, here's Baffler Symposium #83 on writing, The Profession That Does Not Exist. (~$Baffler)
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 Nicola Perantoni 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 Jon Tyson on Unsplash
Reader Mike says he's not sure about this one: "the cover is very obviously giving White Stripes but I don’t know if their sound is as purely imitative."
Reader Neal says "Trap of Traps single, Stir to Combine, is an amiable hip-swaying whisper-rock with a sprinkling portent against sober realization. Raunchy lyrics softly hint at our societal breakdown as the rhythmic guitar reeks with the smell of chlorine from that one friend who had a pool growing up.
The single is an unwavering look at our, well... wavering. A willful disillusionment of reality is super easy when we can nod our head to a pleasant beat and have a vodka lemonade in the sun.
Everything is fine, just stir to combine."
I still could use some more submissions to build out a notional Reader Submission Month for band/album/artwork combos! Feel free to send something in; just tell me how you want to be credited!
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 this page right here (which also has the archive)!
