new wakeup procedures

October 02, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants to know who authorized the awful hot weather on the forecast for the rest of this week 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI know I say this every week, but the possibility that we may return to podcasting cannot be mathematically excluded! In the meantime, you can find the show's 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 23: YOUThe last Instant Band Night of the year is in just about a month and you should be there! We'll create bands on the spot from people who've just met and they will astonish you — come play or just come watch! Every band needs an audience, and this one is maybe the best in the entire Bay. I don't know how it happened; it just did, and I'm not about to mess with it. Come see for yourself!Nov 9 2023 (click to add to your Gcal)6p$10East Bay Community Space507 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 YOUI've decided to experiment a little with the pricing in the shop, so if you haven't stopped by, or if you know someone with excellent taste who needs something that literally can't be bought anywhere else, maybe take a look right now and consider some clever ceramics! Brilliant little statues for your garden or home! A place to put your fruit! A little buddy to hold your garlic! I'm working (slowly) on even more delightful little weirdos and I hope to show you soon. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.HEATED opened comments on their issue last week about local climate action and it's well worth checking out. (HEATED) I say this especially in the face of a paper cited in this week's issue about ecological overshoot — basically, we're using up more than the planet is capable of providing and shitting out more than it can process. (PDF of paper) The paper focuses more on human behavioral changes that need to be brought about immediately, but until someone figures that out, there's climate activist orgs we can join! I'm checking out 350.org and Climate Changemakers thanks to those comments, but if you know of something else, let me know. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix is a morning person. I think the evidence is starting to speak for itself: he wakes up of his own volition anywhere between 515a-6a, and here I'll remind the reading audience that the light in the boys' room that turns red when it's bedtime doesn't turn green again to signal the start of the day until 630a. If he wakes up in a reasonably relaxed mood, he's happy to simply sit or lay in his crib babbling or singing to himself for a while, but there's almost always an inevitable moment where he remembers that there are better things to do, so he starts shouting for one of us (usually it's me, probably because I'm the one who responds to most nighttime requests out of a fierce desire to protect Mavis's sleep). Once the shouting has occurred, we've learned, there is no recourse but to lift him out of his crib and put him on the floor with some toys in front of him. This morning I also opened the door to the closet where the balloons are kept (the balloons that went in one inexplicable day from an object of fear to a must-have plaything, several of which are very slowly deflating and will probably require replacing all at once). We're going to have to do that thing his crib does where you can essentially remove one of its walls, so he can get himself in and out of it, though this will mean he's probably going to start pounding on the door to the room if he decides he's been put to bed too early, which happens every other night. We'll see, I guess?? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • The Gulf Stream is weakening. The Scientists can't definitively say it's climate change, but how could it be anything else. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst) (Paper) 

  • It still needs to be ratified by the membership, but WGA's leaders have signed off on the agreement they hammered out, and it's great. All we need is for the AMPTP to capitulate to SAG-AFTRA next, and presumably work can begin on Strange New Worlds season 3, which holy shit do we need. (Polygon) 

  • Lego tried to make bricks out of recycled plastic bottles, but it took extra steps and consumed more energy, meaning there was actually no carbon benefit, so nevermind. It's a valid reason to abandon the program! At least they were transparent it! (BBC) 

  • "What Does Venture Capital Have Against Femtech?" [heavy sigh] You can ........... you can probably guess the reasons. (proto.life) 

  • It's energy-intensive but it works: The Scientists have demonstrated blasting PFAS "forever chemicals" with ultrasound helps degrade the littler ones, which are harder to destroy. (Ohio State) 

  • I love that "just toss the materials in a drum with some balls in it and roll it around like fuck" is a valid strategy for creating important technology, which in this case is better batteries. (U of Birmingham) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists have finally observed that gravity affects antimatter normally, which is a big step forward in figuring out why the universe has so little of it compared to regular matter. (NSF) (Paper) 

  • Well, I guess we have to worry about what's going to happen a quarter billion years from now for no reason: models predict the formation of another supercontinent whose interior will be mostly desert, making it rough indeed for most of whatever mammal life is still around by then, which I repeat is 250 MILLION years from now. Watch out!!! OH NO (U of Bristol) (Paper) 

  • I've got the best new word of the week for you, and it's necrobiome. Shout out to all my fellow Locked Tomb readers 💀💀💀 (The Conversation) 

  • Looks like we finally know what trilobites ate! Or at least one trilobite in particular. (Ars Technica) 

  • Sea glass is pretty, but it's starting to get harder to find because of all the plastic we're using these days. (The Conversation) 

  • The Scientists have used The Machine to speed the potential discovery of beneficial drugs by running a "does this molecule fit here" test with 1.56 billion compounds in a matter of days. (U of Eastern Finland) (Paper) 

  • Is LinkedIn getting weird now? Am I going to have to start posting there, too? (Business Insider) 

  • We keep looking for alien megastructures, but why would a species with that much power go to that much trouble when it could just move other planets into the star's habitable zone? (Universe Today) (Paper) 

  • "How Souvenirs Became Irresistible to Travelers: From key chains to chess sets, seeking out travel mementos is a shared human experience." (Thrillist) 

  • The Scientists have observed orcas in the PNW harassing and killing porpoises without eating them for years and wondered why; now they've got what seem like a few plausible explanations. (UC Davis) (Paper) 

  • Are American regional accents vanishing? The Scientists think the Georgia version of the Southern accent, for instance, is flattening out over time. (Big Think) (Paper) 

  • We keep using more and more of the radio spectrum, which is making it harder for SETI to do its thing. (Supercluster) 

  • Dropout is (deservedly IMO) having a moment; here's a good interview with Sam Reich. (Vulture) 

  • Try and guess how many times sensitive military information has been posted to the forums of the game War Thunder just to win an argument, and I all but guarantee you'll be undershooting it. (Task & Purpose) 

  • GQ offers 59 current fashion tips that I don't know if I'm going to follow. Tuck my t-shirts? Really? (GQ) 

  • If you've got a task that needs a partner, why not consider a third robot arm? Some Engineers have demonstrated that an hour's training is all it takes. (Queen Mary U of London) (Paper) 

  • My friend Rachel built a much better way to look at Amtrak routes. (amtrak explorer) 

  • TIME FOR CRAB: The Scientists are breeding an army of (native) king crabs to deal with algae choking out reef grounds in the Florida Keys. (Vox) 

  • The lonelier you are, the more blurred the line gets between your real friends and fictional characters you enjoy, at least according to some recent scans. (Ohio State) 

  • Medieval Oxford seems to have been one hell of a dangerous college town. (Science Alert) 

  • "Playful whales can use seaweed as a hat – or exfoliant. This “kelping” behaviour is more common than we realised" (The Conversation) 

  • If we assume that there's nothing special about our solar system and it's kinda the average of what you'd expect from a galactic standpoint, one version of the math says there should be aliens within about 60 light years of us. (Universe Today) (Paper) 

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 Will Rust 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 Alex Shuper on UnsplashThis one also went uninterpreted by the readership at large, but I like to imagine it was a minimalist EDM effort from a trio of synth enthusiasts doing their best. 

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.