Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that needs a zero sugar ginger ale right about now

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 33: BANDSGIVING

THREE THURSDAYS UNTIL INSTANT BAND NIGHT

Get your ticket and spread the word!! Now more than ever we need something to do that brings genuine joy and delight, and there's a good chance there'll be cake!!! 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) (Partiful) (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

I sold several weird little guys in person this past Saturday but have yet to post the new ones to the store because of the cold (see below), but rest assured I will do so as soon as I have the energy. If we've learned anything from this it's that I can't stop making strange little guys!! You can scoop up one of the others that are already in there; get these out of my house and into your house!! Or garden!! Or the houses or gardens of friends of yours with excellent taste. Go see what's what!

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.

This is where I would put the link to my new Insta with just ceramics work, but I've gotten my first cold in quite some time (see below), so I need to not make a new Insta or take pictures of sculptures; instead I'm'a just focus on just laying around and watching TV (Dropout) (I'm just gonna catch up on Dropout).

#dadthoughts

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

I guess you could call this the first cold of the season; the chain of events started a couple weeks ago and went thusly:

• Felix: snot, nothing else, literally nothing else, he never popped a fever or seemed even vaguely discomfited in any way

• Quentin: snot, so much snot, an entire tissue box gone in a day, a fever that kept him out of school for two days (one for real, one for recovery) and saw him returned home after a morning back, but otherwise no other symptoms

• Mavis: a vaguely sore throat at the start, snot, general fatigue, nothing else

• Me: a vague tickle in my throat and some hoarseness but no actual sore throat, snot, general fatigue (we're on day one here)

Covid tests were negative; we need to get the kids and me the covid/flu shots, but I guess I need to wait until I'm done with whatever this is!! Let's hope it passes as quickly from me as it did with everyone else in the house.

Recipe Nook

I would say the Ziti chickpeas with sausage and kale were liked okay by Quentin (Felix, predictably, opted for something else) but weren't, like, a hit the way last month's new addition was, so we'll keep looking, although I may make it again in smaller quantity for lunch purposes!

Fascination Corner

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

• The Turing Test was a fun idea but it's hopelessly out of date; what now? (Nature)

• A short one from Hamilton Nolan: "The Time That Martin Luther King, Jr. Was Almost Assassinated in St. Augustine, Florida: A little known incident that could have changed history." (How Things Work)

• The Scientists have done a deep dive on commonly-agreed-upon remedies for chronic constipation and it turns out the things that actually work are ........... different. Expect a run on kiwifruit in the near future? (King's College London via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Japan is running out of people to run its late-night convenience stores, so they're turning to robots that are being teleoperated from Manila. Breathe deep and get that cyberpunk dystopia into every corner of your alveoli! (Rest of World)

• If you're wondering where the hell all the KPop Demon Hunters toys are this Xmas, remember that the concept-to-production pipeline is 12-18mo long if you're lucky, and back when it would've made sense to start, nobody knew how huge a hit it was going to be. Brace yourself for next year though!! (Hollywood Reporter)

• The 2025 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards finalists are here. (Finalists Gallery)

• Ocean-based physical energy storage sounds crazy to me, but at least if this shit breaks it's not going to be super destructive? Let's see what their pilot project does next year, I guess. (TechCrunch)

• The Scientists want to remind everyone that scattering magic powder into the atmosphere to dim incoming sun to slow global warming always sounds like a good idea in the simulations, but the real world is the real world and nobody fucking knows what it would actually do, also please look up the actual prices for your magic powder before you open your mouths, thank you so much!! (Columbia Climate School via Science Daily) (Paper)

• A lovely-looking photo book about indigenous technologies and practices that would be useful as the sea level rises just got published. (Colossal)

• This deep dive on how people get sucked into the manosphere is one of those visual-experience-type things you have to page through manually, but it's interesting. (Guardian)

• Here are five observations on communal living from someone who's just getting started investigating the concept; a useful perspective, honestly! (Supernuclear)

• The Scientists made the right call: exposing kids to peanuts early really does help avoid a peanut allergy. (AP)

• I suppose if you're going to have a lightly Machine-powered robot pet, the Casio Moflin is probably one of the less-bad ways to do it. (TechCrunch)

• Tests seem to show that if you train The Machine on shitty tweets, it produces shitty output, which does seem pretty intuitive but is good to know for sure. (Ars Technica) (Paper)

• North Atlantic right whales aren't out of the woods by a longshot, but their population has increased slightly this year, which is a good sign?? (New England Aquarium)

• Here, have an entertaining read in the form of a 2018 scientific paper on the physics of the Wile E. Coyote cartoons! (Paper)

• What is the actual limit of human endurance? The Scientists have run some tests and they have an answer: about 2.4x your basal metabolic rate. (Nature) (Paper)

• Some Biomedical Engineers have created a retinal implant (paired with smart glasses) that can meaningfully restore sight to people with advanced macular degeneration. (Stanford Medicine via Science Daily)

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 Chris wants everyone to know "The High Fixed Costs were an Avant-Garde Third-Wave Ska band made up of eight guys convinced that speed skimming articles on modern economics, social issues, and furniture reselling they found on a Samurai Pizza Cats fan wikia gone strange was enough to make them an all-white Rage Against the Machine with a horn section. ‘Suddenly Everyone's Standing’ was a live album the group released, perhaps prematurely, after two EPs and a cover album of anti-Hoover songs from the Great Depression. The captured concert was notable for two main reasons - First, the crowd, the biggest recorded attendance for an HFC show at around two dozen, consisted almost entirely of family members, present and former roommates, and put-upon romantic partners of the band; and second, after three songs, the band left the stage for over an hour, only to return dressed as (in their own words) ‘old money oligarchs of pure and noble breeding’ who announced that they had purchased all the audiences' chairs, which they proceeded to gather up and remove. The rest of the live album records the mumbled chatter of the audience before they gradually filter out of the space over the course of an hour and a half. The chairs, unlike the members of High Fixed Costs, were never seen again."

DON'T FORGET: I'm thinking of doing a 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 the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!