my foray into the Wachowskiverse

November 28, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's finally starting to feel human again 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayAs we slide into the 2022 holiday season I still hope to recover enough energy to restart some hobbies, and this podcast remains on that list. In the meantime, you can find its 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 podcastInstant Band Night 18: RECHARGEIt's in January! It's gonna be great! You should come join us, and bring a friend or two. You can add it to your calendar (venue address and all) by clicking here!If you've forgotten what Instant Band Night is: imagine a great party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot. If you play music, you can be one of 'em, and if you don't, you can chill and watch. It is, and I'm not exaggerating here, a goddamn inspiration every time.🎼 MUSIC! 🎼🚀 COURAGE! 🚀✨ CREATIVITY! ✨January 12 20236p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  S E E   Y O U   T H E R E  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.This weekend will see my next birthday dawn. I should do something — I should do a lot of things! My Dave Matthews Band Year (41) and my Nerd Number Year (42) were swallowed up by the pandemic, so by rights I should be able to still celebrate them, shouldn't I?It's funny, though: if I picture a big birthday party in my mind, the more people I see myself inviting, the less time I get to actually interact with each of them. This feels suboptimal to me, so I may try to organize some smaller-scale birthday gatherings over the course of the month. I did this once in the pre-pandemic era and it worked really well; the key is to just have the time and energy available, which I admit will be more of a lift than it used to be. Wish me luck and hopefully I'll see you soon! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.So Quentin never finished the rest of Thanksgiving Camp, because he manifested some version of whatever cold had me in its grip until about two days ago.* Thankfully his haunting didn't last anywhere near as long, but yes: for those keeping track, we got one (1) day of Kid-Free House over Thanksgiving break, and that doesn't even count because Mavis had to spend it taking care of my sickness-riddled ass.But it's fine now: both kids went to their respective daytime activities today and my body continues to slowly recover from whatever the fuck it was that hit it. I think I've more or less got my energy back, it's just that my throat is healing more slowly, so I mostly talk like Eddie Redmayne playing Balem Abrasax in Jupiter Ascending. Which I'm fine with; I love that movie unironically and hope every year for a sequel. Anyway, my delicate healing throat: I think a key part of it is that I need to keep my mouth shut while I sleep so I don't aridify my esophageal tissues and halt whatever repairs are going on down there. This unfortunately means that I make a snore-adjacent noise with my nose, so I've been sleeping on the couch, which is no great hardship — for some reason I sleep great on the couch — I just wish this part would happen quicker.At the lineup today for Quentin's TK class I talked to the parent of a kid who'd been missing for a couple days prior to the start of Thanksgiving break: turns out they all caught covid! (They're fine now) So, you know, it could always be worse!!!!!* I still think it's the grownup version of whatever gave Felix his diarrhea two weeks ago. No, I never got any of that, but you know how the same virus causes chicken pox in kids and shingles in adults? I 'unno. The only shred of evidence I have for this admittedly slim theory is that Felix never caught whatever this is, and also where else could I possibly have picked something up? What do you mean there are still bullshit colds circulating out there? Who approved this transaction 

Fascination Corner

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

  • I don't know if you want to read this if you'd like to have a calm morning; it's about how there's still — still!!! — vaccine hesitancy and what that might mean down the line in some future pandemic. (Vox) For example: what in the Christing fuck is going on with measles antivaxxers right now? If you know one of these people, punch them in the face and tell 'em there's more coming from me whenever I've got the chance to get over there. (Axios) 

  • In case you're wondering, here's how infectious disease experts are doing their covid protocol these days. (STAT) 

  • Here's what we got out of COP27. (Vox) 

  • Elon's made a teetering, hollow shambles of the incoming ad revenue at Twitter and doesn't seem to care or understand why that's a bad thing. (Media Matters) If you're wondering why there's anybody at all left there anymore, part of the reason is that ~300 of them are here on H-1B visas and can't quit, or else they'd get deported. (Motherboard) 

  • The Iranian protests are still happening!! (Vox) 

  • Did .......... has anyone other than The Scientists thought about how the melting glaciers are also going to release hundreds of thousands of tons of ancient bacteria back into the world? Anyone? (Science Alert) 

  • A British woodworker has released a design for a plywood ebike that looks: pretty damn cool. (Mailchimp) 

  • The Scientists have invented a silicone sponge that can capture bacteria hanging out in the environment that have been impossible to cultivate up until now, which they've been calling "microbial dark matter." (KIT) 

  • Some Engineers have worked out a way to convert waste paper into battery parts. You heard me!!! (Nanyang Tech) 

  • Maybe put down that water glass: that whole "everybody needs 8c of water a day" thing might be bullshit. Turns out everybody probably has different water needs??? (U of Wisconsin-Madison) 

  • More of those weird giant magnetic filaments have been discovered poking out of other galaxies. What are they doing there? Where'd they come from?? (Science Alert) 

  • There's evidence that big phytoplankton blooms are happening under the Antarctic ice, which nobody thought was even a possibility. (Motherboard) (Paper) 

  • Whooooooo wants some fat-free whipped cream made from bacteria? (Ars Technica) 

  • No, really: The Young People fucking saved our ass at the polls this month. (Brooking Institute) 

  • It looks like the act of changing your feelings about something can stimulate creative thinking. (Washington State) 

  • What do witchcraft beliefs look like around the world? (PLOS One via Science Daily) (Paper) 

  • There's a big college population crash coming in the next four years. (Vox) 

  • An exoplanet just 200ly distant turns out to be a super-Earth 1.8x our size, although it's not anywhere close to its home star's habitable zone. (Science Alert) 

  • The Scientists needed to agree on some new numerical prefixes for extremely large (and small) numbers. (Nature) 

  • "How to test if we’re living in a computer simulation" (The Conversation) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumHot Bread Enemy, Guess Who Forgot to Say Goodbye(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because now I'm curious) 

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.