Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that maybe got a little out of hand with the zero sugar sodas at the grocery store, but that's what a "buy two get two free" deal does to the mind

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)

You don't have to take my word for it anymore! The Oaklandside did a writeup on Instant Band Night and you can read it right here!!

Whether you choose to play in one of the bands or just watch it all unfold, it's a joyful celebration of spontaneous creativity that we could all probably use more of in our lives; also, there'll be 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.

Something I don't see a lot of in the news coverage surrounding all of Trump's plainly disastrous legal defeats is the extent to which they affect him personally. Is he having a bad time? Or is his delusional shielding still operating at 100% efficiency? I kind of suspect it's the latter, honestly, and why wouldn't it be — he's almost too goddamn stupid to live.*

But something else that I still believe in the core of my very being is that somewhere out there right now walking the earth is a famous person who has in their hands the power to completely ruin Donald Trump's day. Do you remember when he was in office the reports about how mad and sulky he got that he couldn't get good celebrities to appear at any of his White House functions? Kid Rock was like the best he could do and that seemed to really get under his skin. This means he cares what celebrities think of him. Which means there's a celebrity out there somewhere who's his favorite.

What if his favorite celebrity is someone who fucking loathes him, but hasn't said anything about it in public? The possibility absolutely cannot be mathematically excluded: lots of famous people exist, and lots of them decline to "get political" so as not to alienate their fanbase and whatnot. But what if.

Let's say for the sake of argument it's uhhhhhh Julia Roberts: Julia Roberts is Donald Trump's favorite celebrity, and (again for the sake of this thought experiment) she's never actually said anything on the record about what she thinks of him. And then tomorrow we all wake up to the news that she's posted a 3-minute rant on TikTok and YouTube that's nothing but pure white-hot hatred for him as a person, everything he stands for, everything he's done (and still doing) to the country, you get the idea, all in a clean 180sec. And then when she inevitably starts making the media circuit, the morning shows, radio, late night, giving interviews left and right about what a piece of shit Donald Trump is? I honestly think this would fuck him up pretty badly. His favorite celebrity! The shining star of his personal pantheon! Beautiful and beloved by millions! And she hates him!! If Patrick Stewart went on national TV tomorrow to say "Fuck Jon Sung specifically, I hate that guy so much," I wouldn't get out of bed for a week. Maybe two.

I'm not saying that such an event would destroy Donald Trump or anything so dramatically #resistance, but I really do believe that it would deal enough psychic damage that it would be plainly visible to all around him, something that I'm unconvinced any of his recent court losses have managed to achieve. Yes, the legal defeats are more important, but I want him to suffer in the core of whatever passes for his soul, even if only for a day or so. Somewhere out there is a person who can make this happen, and we will never know who it is. I just find that possibility fascinating.

* This is separate from the financial damage it appears he sustained on Friday, mostly because I'm still not sure if he really truly has to start coughing up the cash now or else. Also, sure, it's close to half a bil, but does that kind of payout penetrate his psyche or what?

#dadthoughts

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

Who else out there gets a case of Grownup Brain Disease when they're watching kids' cartoons??

Case in point: on Spidey And His Amazing Friends, the heroes' headquarters (sigh: Webquarters) is hidden underground, but occasionally pops up to disgorge their extremely toyetic flying vehicle. When that happens, not only does the entirety of Aunt May's backyard fold back like a hangar door, but so do the neighbors' backyards to either side. And they've never said anything about it? Does this mean the houses to either side of Aunt May are vacant? Were they perhaps bought by a shell corporation started by allies of Team Spidey to keep their cover from being blown?

Stupid. This is a stupid thing to think about. I might as well start a CinemaSins-style YouTube channel (yuck) (pfaugh) for children's media or something equally dumb. "When Spidey and his amazing friends web-swing out of the middle of the park where there are clearly no tall buildings in sight, what are the webs adhering to? Huh? Well? Bet you didn't think of" [sound of single gunshot]

And yet I can't stop my brain from doing it. There's an episode where Spidey and his buddies are supposed to play a concert for their fans in the park, but it turns out Doc Ock has formed a band of her own featuring the other villains and they're going to stop Team Spidey from appearing so they can take their place and put on a show of their own. They even get away with it for about half a song, and everybody in the villain band has a special outfit and wild makeup. I couldn't help but feel a moment of pathos imagining Doc Ock three hours prior in her lair, gleefully applying her elaborate face paint in the bathroom mirror, thinking "This is going to ROCK" — and then getting her shit wrecked before she could even finish her first song.

This is just what my brain has to do while watching this show; it's like a defense mechanism or something. I know I have at least one parent friend who also can't help doing it, and therefore I now extrapolate that we all do it constantly. Who wants to share their extremely stupid grownup headcanon moments?

Fascination Corner

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

• Can you spot the scam? (WaPo GIFT LINK)
  

• Reminder that plastics recycling is still bullshit and The Corporations knew this almost literally from jump. (NPR)
  

• A private spacecraft has successfully landed on the moon!! Sideways, but still, that counts!! (TechCrunch)
  

• If you happen to be caught outside in a lightning storm, is it better to be wet or dry when lightning strikes you? The Scientists have the answer. (Science Alert) (Paper)
  

• "The surreal life of a professional bridesmaid". Chuckle at first, but reading the article made me realize what a lot of genuine work it is. (The Hustle)
  

• An actual anthropologist went to CPAC; here are his takeaways. (The Conversation)
  

• The French are getting serious about agrivoltaics! (Nature)
  

• Hamilton Nolan has an instructive little read for anyone mystified by political analysts' inability to suss out Trump's whole deal in this, the year 2024. (How Things Work)
  

• One of the biggest ADHD medication factories in the country has been shut down by the DEA, if you're wondering why the shortage persists even now. (NYMag Intelligencer)
  

• The Scientists think they've got a handle (anatomically speaking) on how whales sing, which up to now has been a big "???" (AP)
  

• Brain-computer interfaces are overturning some long-held assumptions about how that lump of fatty tissue in our skull actually works. (Nature)
  

• I guess everybody's talking about polyamory now? (Vox)
  

• The Scientists are thinking hard about the crops we should probably be focusing on as the climate warms, but economic forces are going to be a problem. (AP)
  

• Accurately advertised as "disturbing but important" in one of the newsletters I read, this is an investigation of the moms of preteen girl influencers who sell pictures of said preteen girls to pedophiles. It's fucking harrowing from not one but several different angles! (NYT gift link)
  

• Some Engineers have worked out a way to improve traffic signal timing using just the GPS data from one company, which represents only about 6-10% of the cars on the road. (U of Michigan) (Paper)
  

• "You’re probably underestimating the willingness of your fellow citizens to act on climate" (Anthropocene) (Paper)
  

• At least it was hilarious: ChatGPT experienced a Problem on Tuesday and lots of people saw it happen. (Ars Technica)
  

• Imageomics. Okay!! (Ohio State)
  

• The Scientists say they've solved one of the big problems with fusion power with the help of The Machine. (Motherboard) (Paper)
  

• Huh: here's a writing exercise designed to help deepen self-knowledge and well-being. (Psychology Today)
  

• Good fucking lord: two icy dwarf planets way, way out in the damn Kuiper belt may be hosting subsurface oceans. (SwRI)
  

• The Scientists ran a study that indicates hearing relaxing words while sleeping can slow your heart rate, which means our brains still react to external stimuli even while asleep. (U of Liège)
  

• Yes I'm glad that my old neighborhood is seeing some activity, but did it have to be crypto people? (SF Standard)
  

• Space junk removal operations are as unsurprisingly complicated as they are necessary. (Ars Technica)
  

• "'Project 2025' Promises Revenge, Oppression, and Autocratic Rule: The Right’s plans for a return to power are driven by a radicalizing siege mentality and a desperate desire to restore dominance" (Democracy Americana)
  

• The world's first chemical tanker ship employing wind-assisted propulsion has begun transatlantic operations. (gCaptain)
  

• Nick Cave has strong words for advice seekers whose muse has fled and are having trouble squaring making art in a world with so much suffering. (The Red Hand Files)
  

• Some Engineers have hit upon a way to enable a digital camera to essentially see around corners by using faint shadows to reconstruct what's going on out of view. (U of South Florida) (Paper)
  

• Disney Adults are like that for a reason (the reason is Disney). (~$New Statesman)
  

• At least one of The Scientists has done some back-of-the-envelope math and concluded that if the ingredients necessary for life can be spread around the galaxy by drifting space dust, then life should be all over the goddamn place. (Science Alert) (PDF of paper)
  

• Paul McCartney's bass has been returned to him after half a literal century. (BBC)
  

• If the Cavendish banana we all know and love falls victim to fungal apocalypse, Australia's got a GM version ready to go. (ABC News)
  

• Did anyone have "vending machine panopticon" on their dystopian bingo card? (Ars Technica)
  

• Some Engineers have built a wearable technology that enables The Machine to identify the wearer's emotions based on what their face muscles are doing. (UNIST) (Paper)
  

• Will Riker statue. Will Riker statue. WILL RIKER STATUE (Let's hope the Valdez city council knows what's good for 'em) (Alaska Public Media)
  

• You have until April to apply to be a pretend Mars astronaut in NASA's simulated Mars habitat. (Science Alert) Take it seriously, though, because the potential psychological stresses are a big deal. (The Conversation)
  

• I don't live in San Francisco and I'm not on TikTok, so this is the first I'm hearing about the Floral House. (SF Standard)

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 Mohamed Hamdi 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 Eberhard Grossgasteiger on Unsplash

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think is (unsurprisingly) an album of highly experimental rap that goes without beats of any kind for uncomfortably long intervals.

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.