Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that doesn't quite believe this rain forecast but will happily take it if it comes

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 35: THE 35TH ONE

We're about a month+change away from the best possible way to spend your Thursday night if you enjoy hearing or making music and/or really like surprises. Mark your calendars for March 12 and prepare for another series of onstage explosions of creativity and joy with the best audience in a 50mi radius!!!!!

✨🪩✨
March 12 2026
6p
$13
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

I'm cooking up some new weird little guys for the shop already, but did you know there are now enough purchases for the reviews down at the bottom to constitute some lovely little reads? It's nice beyond description to know that these things I'm making have found homes with the right people. Go have a look; eagle-eyed viewers may notice a new bunny has snuck in there.

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after four+ 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.

Nothing for this section this week, folks, but there's still plenty of links down below!

#dadthoughts

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

Summer camp registration is this very day, in fact just a few hours from when you're reading this, if you opened it upon receipt. This year we're also going to try a transitional camp for Felix when his time at preschool is up, so he can get used to the notion of making new pals in new spaces. Please cross your fingers mentally and hope it all goes according to plan!!

Recipe Nook

Quentin liked the chicken piccata pasta!! Felix, somewhat predictably, refused to try any, but perhaps on a future day he'll get curious and decide to see what he's been missing; stranger things have happened.

Fascination Corner

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

• "How to Organize a Real General Strike in the US" (Jacobin)

• The Pleistocene might've been a lot more crowded than we thought: The Scientists found a Paranthropus fossil way outside of their usual territory, which brings up all sorts of questions. Were these ancient hominins — who walked the Earth at the same time as our own distant ancestors — as specialized as we thought? What happened to them? (GW Hatchet)

• Moderation doesn't fucking work anymore and someone needs to tell the Dem leadership or else what's the fucking point of them? Read "How Not to Defeat Authoritarianism" for a much more salient and well-explicated version. (Boston Review)

• 3D-printing batteries directly inside things instead of trying to attach a big brick to them sounds like a great way to save space and increase energy density, but I wonder what you're supposed to do when your integrated battery eventually needs replacing. (IEEE Spectrum)

• It is truly wild to me that while conspiracy theory nutjobs were spouting all kinds of stupid nonsense about shadowy cabals of pedophiles running the deep state or whatever the fuck that was, an actual cabal run by the world's most notorious pedophile was actually making moves that led to the state of the world today and they missed it. Jesus. (Garbage Day)

• This read from October on the Crazification Factor missed me at the time, but it's still good. (She Blogged By Night)

• One of those "energy storage via hot bricks" companies has started its first commercial-scale test run! (Canary Media)

• Check out these attempts to invent new musical instruments! Poke around for the past winners if you want to fall down a relatively narrow but satisfyingly deep internet rabbit hole. (Georgia Tech)

• The Scientists have discovered the most common kind of kidney stones are chockablock with bacteria, which makes them wonder whether they might be causing the kidney stones in the first place. (UCLA Health) (Paper)

• "Can Fascists Still Be Shamed?" (How Things Work)

• Maybe slag fields are just another emerging ecosystem. No, really! (UChicago Mag)

• There's something oddly comforting about the fact that the Germans have way too many potatoes this year. (Guardian)

• Also giving some modicum of comfort: apparently not even MAGA world likes the thought of building concentration camps in its backyard?? (The New Republic)

• The Scientists have been analyzing 10,000 years' worth of fossils from one spot in Colorado and concluded that baby sauropods were the main menu item of the day for meat eaters. (University College London) (Paper)

• Extremely adorable-sounding experiments seem to show 2-day-old babies have an inbuilt sense of rhythm, but not melody (at least not yet). (PhysOrg) (Paper)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.

A band and their album

(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:

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think is a band that has one regular drummer and one drummer who built their entire kit out of materials foraged from a scrapyard; there's also an electric bass and someone with a full-on double bass that's played with a bow. At least one song contains no words, just howls. That's how it is, folks.

I still could use some more submissions to build out a notional Reader Submission Month for band/album/artwork combos! Feel free to send something in; just tell me how you want to be credited!

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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at this page right here (which also has the archive)!