Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter whose prediabetic ass needs to really watch itself around this loaf of cinnamon raisin bread the in-laws dropped off

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 26: SPRING FLING

Instead of beating the drum for how goddamn fantastic Instant Band Night 25 was, I should instead focus on making sure you know Instant Band Night 26 is on May 9 and you should mark your calendar immediately. Come have some fun making or watching the most joyful and surprising act of musical improv in the entire SF Bay!!

May 9 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

If you have someone in your life who can tell you the names of the entire Enterprise-D bridge crew or just appreciates an almost rebelliously whimsical ceramic object, well buddy have I got a store for you. Nerdy little totems for your garden or shelf! Ediacaran biota! Tardigrades with outrageous paint jobs! A fruit holder that you really have to see to believe! Get in there

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.

Either cetirizine just decreases in efficacy the longer you take it* or there's some kind of weapons-grade pollen getting floated out there right now, because my allergies are going fucking crazy. The worst part isn't the sneezing or the nose-blowing: it's the itching in the roof of my mouth. You get this too? It's goddamn hideous. There's nasal sprays up and down the allergy aisle at CVS; when are they going to invent a spray for that.

This isn't even what I wanted to talk about! I actually wanted to declare April the Month of Questions; I saw this set on Tumblr** a little while ago:

what are 3 things you’d say shaped you into who you are?
show us a picture of your handwriting?
3 films you could watch for the rest of your life and not get bored of?
what’s an inside joke you have with your family or friends?
what made you start your blog?
what’s the best and worst part of being online/a creator?
what scares you the most and why?
any reacquiring dreams?
tell a story about your childhood
would you say you’re an emotional person?
what do you consider to be romance?
what’s some good advice you want to share?
what are you doing right now?
what’s something you’ve always wanted to do but maybe been to scared to do?
what do you think of when you hear the word “home”?
if you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
name 3 things that make you happy
do you believe in ghosts and/or aliens?
favourite thing about the day?
favourite things about the night?
are you a spiritual person?
say 3 things about someone you love
say 3 things about someone you hate
what’s one thing you’re proud of yourself for?
fave season and why?
fave colour and why?
any nicknames?
do you collect anything?
what do you do when you’re sad?
what’s one thing that never fails to make you happy/happier?
are you messy or organised?
how many tabs do you have open right now?
any hobbies?
any pet peeves?
do you trust easily?
are you an open book or do you have walls up?
share a secret
fave song at the moment?
youtuber you’ve been obsessed with and why?
any bad habits?

If you see one you like, put it in a reply and I'll answer it in a future issue. It's Question Month!!

* In my case it's been at least a few years, more or less daily

** Been there for over a decade, never leaving, still arguably the best internet thing to come out of that era

#dadthoughts

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

So we dismantled Felix's crib a few weeks ago and gave him a bed just like his big brother's. This has been mostly a success? Mostly. The trouble is that we can't get him to stay in bed for the initial 20-40m after bedtime. Right now I'd say he averages between 2-5 emergences before settling down. There used to be more!

A lot more.

Previous reasons for leaving bed and opening the door to the room included:

I want another huggy (admittedly adorable)
I'm hungry
I need to pee (only true about 33% of the time)
I want milk
Put the jammies back on my little stuffed bunny*

We've managed to cut down on some of these by outlawing milk after toothbrushing, which was not as much of a struggle as we were anticipating, and putting a snack in a bowl on his bed in a spill-resistant spot before we say night-night. You would not believe the amount of graham crackers we go through in this house.

Something else that's been more of a recent development is his discovery of the usefulness of a booklight. Quentin's had one for a while, which he mostly uses for its intended purpose of looking at a book when all the lights in the room are out, but a few days ago Felix realized he could clip it to his book, too, namely the Harold's Purple Crayon four-in-one big story treasury. To avoid territorial strife, we got Felix a booklight too, and now the current version of the bedtime routine includes a step at the end where we clip the lights to the boys' books and bid them goodnight; they don't even look up. It's adorable, except that it seems they also know how to unclip the lights and wave them around at each other and play, which I don't need to tell you is the opposite of what needs to happen at bedtime. Mavis is confident this behavior will even itself out eventually, and I see the wisdom of this position, but it's a phase that means more emergences than average at the moment.

Then there's the issue of Felix waking up ready to party at like 530a, a full hour before actual wakeup time. We have no explanation for this other than he must just be a morning person. Since Quentin was Felix's age, there's been a color-changing light in the room that glows red during the night and then changes to green when it's wakeup time; it's a good solution that (to my recollection) more or less solved Quentin's nighttime emergences. Felix, however, doesn't give a shit what color that light is. He's awake and he wants to tell us he needs a banana.

I will say that since the deployment of the booklights, Felix's wakeup time has shifted slightly to more like 6a, which at least is vaguely reasonable. I think this is mostly because it takes longer for the boys to fall asleep, but you know what, I'll gladly accept this state of affairs if it means Felix stays in his room in the morning a little better. Right??

* At some point we put his newborn onesie on his little stuffed bunny, dubbing this new outfit Little Bunny's PJs; no matter how much he likes these jammies on Little Bunny, he invariably takes them off within 5-60sec of having them put on, and it's a coin flip as to whether he'll want them reinstated.

Fascination Corner

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

• The 25 biggest oil and gas companies talk a big game about bringing down emissions, but if you look at what they're actually doing, not a single one of them is even close to telling the truth. Shocker!! (Guardian)
  

• Some Engineers are figuring out how to imbue robots with common sense; turns out that's something The Machine can help with. (MIT)
  

• According to the number oracles, The Economy is "doing better," but then why does everyone still think it's dogshit out there? Uhhhhh maybe because nobody gives a fuck what the unemployment rate is when literally everything we're trying to buy is more expensive and also shitty???? Maybe that???? (Brookings Inst)
  

• There are some juicy little tidbits in this article about "the future of Star Trek" — did we already know the Starfleet Academy show was set in 32C? Now I'm psyched. (Variety)
  

• Shit, this retrospective makes me want to dig up my copy of the soundtrack to The Crow, which I definitely owned way back in the day. I even had a copy of the comic, which is excruciating. (Mashable)
  

• Different neural networks appear to think more or less the same way, which means there are probably shortcuts we can take in their training and use. (U Penn)
  

• Say what: The Scientists injected human cells with tardigrade proteins and they entered a tardigrade-like reversible state of biostasis. That seems like simultaneously a wild fucking idea and also an obvious thing to at least try once. (U of Wyoming) (Paper)
  

• Most of the people who leave their religion say it's because they simply stopped believing, but the #2 cause right behind it is negative teachings about LGBTQ folks. The actual report is fascinating! (NPR) (Report)
  

• Some Engineers have developed a design for artificial reefs (as opposed to just tossing a jumble of stuff onto a particular spot) that dissipates the most wave energy with the least material and still provides a decent home for marine life. (MIT) (Paper)
  

• Depending on how they're raised, kids can start to exhibit empathy around a year and a half old. (LMU) (Paper)
  

• What would a city that's actually nice to live in prioritize? (Johns Hopkins) (Paper)
  

• Moderna is moving to phase 3 trials for a norovirus vaccine, which holy hallelujah hell yeah (Quartz)
  

• The Scientists think they've discovered a very specific chemical imbalance that leads to anxiety in young women. (U of Surrey) (Paper)
  

• Different animal species reacted differently to the lockdown anthropause of 2020; it mostly seems to be down to habitat, which makes sense. (Anthropocene) (Paper)
  

• Is the carbon footprint of your home garden more complicated than you thought? When was the last time anything was simple, honestly. (BBC)
  

• The first transplant of a gene-edited pig kidney into a living human seems to have gone well. Yeah, you read that right. (Nature)
  

• "'What Can I Do To Help The Labor Movement?' You can do these things." (How Things Work)
  

• Fuck Elon and his stupid fucking lawsuits; at least this judge agrees. (Guardian)
  

• While we're at it: "The Descent of Elon Musk" (Where's Your Ed At)
  

• Toni Morrison was an incredible writer of rejection letters, too, it turns out. (LA Review of Books)
  

• Okay: The Scientists have invented a nanomaterial surface that can shred viruses on contact, which sounds great, but what's it like to touch? Does the act of touching it ruin it? What's going on here, folks. (RMIT Australia) (Paper)
  

• Climate change means we're going to see a whole different set of animals in cities a century from now. (PLOS via Science Daily) (Paper)
  

• Kate Middleton's not alone: lots more younger people are getting cancer lately, and The Scientists are trying hard to figure out why. (Vox)
  

• Some Engineers are working on making a robot that can react to your facial expressions with its own within something approaching the correct timeframe; yes there are pictures. (Columbia Engineering) (Paper)
  

• "Office resorts," huh. (SF Standard)
  

• I would've sworn to you that sperm whales have a different "ultimate weapon" they could use against orca attacks — aren't their sonar pulses supposed to be strong enough to incapacitate giant squid? — anyway, don't read this one while you're eating, maybe. (Science Alert)
  

• While we're on the topic of orcas, there miiiiight actually be three species of them instead of just the one. (Hakai)
  

• We can and should decarbonize software. (IEEE Spectrum)
  

• "Making the future too bright: how wishful thinking can point us in the wrong direction" (U of Amsterdam)

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 CJ Botha on Unsplash

🎸 Reader and alternate universe music critic Steve says "Weedlaw sounds like it might be a stoner band, but the album cover says something different to me. I reckon this is an introspective and quite beautiful album by Roy Weedlaw, who was a celebrated guitarist and singer in a couple of popular bands before the drugs got too much for him, and is now clean and making a quiet comeback."

💡 Thoughts from reader Eden: "Weedlaw's 'The Bees In Your Bones' never really escaped the nature ambiance of a big city but still captures the warmth of a rainy day. Droned synth pop really does reflect the effect of Weedlaw and it certainly puts bees in my bones. I remember hearing this album cover was captured in the middle of the EP recording which explains side B so well."

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.