Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that hopes the Sunrise Magic apple sticks around for a while, though nothing will challenge the supremacy of the Envy

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 25: PI DAY 2 (PIE HARDER)

IT'S THIS WEEK

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to either release, create, or harness some energy after the 2024 I've been having. That means it's time for INSTANT BAND NIGHT: come play or just watch; either way, it's going to be an absolute detonation of creative joy and you'll be glad you came. Also I'm going to bring a pie. Come have pie.

March 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

New year, new space! Why settle for a boring garden, potted plant, or domicile when you could have a little statue of a crazy-colored tardigrade, a delightful friend to hold your last fruit, a Star Trek buddy in a party hat, or an Ediacaran life form right now. Take a look and consider some clever ceramics for yourself, for family, or for a dear friend far away.

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.

It turns out DUNC II was great, but now I'm left wondering if I need to re-read DUNE MESSIAH. And having done that, am I going to feel the tug to read CHILDREN OF DUNE, and then the next three? Am I going to do that to myself again? I've read the first one three or four times, the rest of them maybe twice in my life. I remember GOD EMPEROR being wild as hell, and I can't tell you a single sentence of information about the last two aside from "there's a guy who becomes The Flash for about five minutes."

I have never read those Kevin J. Anderson books.

Odds of DUNE MESSIAH getting picked up at some point are high, I have to tell you; didn't I read somewhere that Villeneuve wants to do DUNC III? I'd let him. He clearly knows what the fuck he's doing.

#dadthoughts

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

I'm going to make a long story short here and just say that we're reasonably certain Quentin has a walnut allergy. It's not life-threatening, but it is ........ messy. We've been in touch with his doctor and we're supposed to hear from The Allergists at some point this week to arrange an appointment. I feel a little like we're waiting for word from a cabal of powerful, mysterious wizards who move according to a mystical calendar to which mere mortals have no access. Quentin was mildly psyched to hear about it, actually; he has a best buddy who's allergic to a wide assortment of nuts, so I think he was just excited to have something else in common with him.

The main sentence of this week is that we've replaced Felix's crib with a bed of the exact same make/model as Quentin's. I feel like I'm gonna jinx it if I talk about it too much, but it's going pretty well; I've returned to my own bed, anyway! I may have more to say about it next week. In fact I can probably guarantee it!

Fascination Corner

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

• Your banging-a-pot-with-a-hammer-and-yelling-in-the-streets read for this week is "The Much Vaunted Guardrails Are Failing" (Democracy Americana)
  

• The Scientists have set a new record in solar cell efficiency at 27.1% conversion. (Natl U of Singapore)
  

• Heh: exoplanets in science fiction got weirder after 1995 when the first real one was confirmed. (PhysOrg) (Paper)
  

• Is Trump in more financial trouble than we think? The Atlantic certainly seems to think (?hope?) so. (Atlantic gift link)
  

• The original covid lockdowns killed off an entire strain of the flu. (CNN)
  

• "Exposure to different kinds of music influences how the brain interprets rhythm: A study of people in 15 countries reveals that while everyone favors rhythms with simple integer ratios, biases can vary quite a bit across societies." (MIT) (Paper)
  

• Patient-derived organoids would be a real game changer for pancreatic cancer treatment (RIP Iain M Banks), and The Scientists are making progress figuring out how best to grow them. (Salk Inst) (Paper)
  

• Turns out chubby Labs are probably like that because of a genetic mutation. (U of Cambridge) (Paper)
  

• What in the what: a study that swears it controlled for other variables uncovers a connection between eating a high-carb breakfast and subsequently appearing less attractive. I don't know either, folks. (PLOS via Science Daily) (Paper)

• "Are We Watching The Internet Die?" (Where's Your Ed At)
  

• The Scientists have worked out a way to extract gold from e-waste using sponges made from cheesemaking byproducts. (ETH Zurich) (Paper)
  

• Stratospheric aerosol injection might cool the planet, but it won't help the ocean, which works on a different timescale on account of being made of water. (AGU) (Paper)
  

• This is a good one: "The Money Is In All The Wrong Places" (Defector)
  

• Some Engineers have designed a nanodevice that can harvest energy from evaporating water. (EPFL)
  

• The Scientists have succeeded in creating fully-recycled viscose from old cotton sheets. (Lund U) (Paper)
  

• A T C G X Y???? The Scientists have built artificial nucleotides, which .............. huh. (U of Cologne)
  

• The Australian contingent of Gen Z, at least, is extremely concerned about climate change and it's affecting their mental health, and I'm going to bet a tall dollar that they're not alone by a long goddamn shot. (Curtin U) (Paper)
  

• It may not look exactly the same, but a damaged coral reef can be restored to full health post-human intervention after just four years. (Cell Press via Science Daily) (Paper)
  

• Older folks want to be able to use emojis, they just don't know how and nobody's providing any training. (U of Ottawa) (Paper)
  

• Drawing how we solve math problems shows how we represent them in our minds, which can help identify better strategies. (U of Geneva)
  

• The first plan to stop the Thwaites glacier from melting sounded stupid, but this one makes a lot more sense. (Science Alert)
  

• I don't know why this guy insists that the Mission-style burrito is somehow dry, but he's right that the California burrito is superior. Learn!!! (Slate)
  

• The Scientists trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth have achieved their first milestone, but I still think it's a stupid idea to bring back a fucking Ice Age animal when the climate is doing the exact fucking opposite. (NPR)
  

• An early experiment in growing flowers on top of polluted waterways to clean them up has gone shockingly well. (Anthropocene)
  

• Opposite charges attract while like charges repel. This is known. Right? Right? Except it turns out sometimes, in just the right circumstances, like charges attract. My whole life is a lie!!!!!!!! (Oxford) (Paper)
  

• Spring frost can fuck up your apple orchard. Some Engineers say: why not put a space heater on top of a robot and let it drive around to the trees that need heat the most? Works great, apparently! (Penn State)
  

• The microbes that arrive to break your corpse down can help provide more accurate time-of-death estimates no matter where your body is found. (Arizona State) (Paper)
  

• Motherfuck: I can't believe this never occurred to me! Sure, alien life could theoretically arise on a place like Titan, but in order to have technology, you need fire, which means your planet absolutely has to have oxygen. (Supercluster) (Paper)
  

• Wireless chips up to now have been flat, which is starting to become a bottleneck, but Some Engineers have created a 3D version that works better with less available space. (U of Florida)
  

• If you've noticed a wild swing in the hotness of the jalapenos you're buying, feel free to blame Texas A&M. (D Magazine)

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 Pawel Czerwinski 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 Andrea De Santis on Unsplash

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think basically sounds like Interpol, but worse.

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.