oh, we're not going anywhere

June 27, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wonders what we could accomplish with an engine solely powered by rage 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayThe thing about having a 4yo and a baby who doesn't yet sleep through the night is that you can't put them in the same room together overnight, and it's also not possible to put yourself in the room with him without causing even more sleep complications. Long story short, we're sleeping in the office (the house's third and possibly actual master bedroom, considering it has the attached half bath) on the pull-out couch, which is also where my computer is, so the edit on the last episode we recorded (which admittedly was last year) still isn't quite complete. But it'll get there someday!As of the time of this writing, there are still not only 43 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings, but someone managed to slip past the perimeter and enter another lovely review, which I only just saw now! Whoever you are, you have not only our thanks but our favor should we ascend to the throne. The rest of you: a new standard has been set!!Instant Band Night 15: TIME WARPTwo and a half weeks and you could be onstage with a band you've only met about five minutes prior. You could also be in the crowd vibing to whatever's going on; it'll be something new in about five minutes!💉 Vax!➕ Boost!😷 Mask!Otherwise your ass isn't getting in the door, and after a two-year hiatus, I cannot imagine what kind of amazing shit you're going to see, so make it happen! (Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  S E E   Y O U   S O O N  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I was going to use this space to tell y'all about an extraordinarily vivid dream I had about living in a successful Mars colony, but Jesus creeping Christ in the cornfield, fuck the Supreme Court. We're setting up a monthly donation to the National Network of Abortion Funds. It's what we can do right now. All of the ranting you would normally see in this space I'm ceding to the latest edition of Dan Hon's newsletter, because he's right about the Democrats and their stupid website. (Things That Caught My Attention) 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin does this thing toward the end of dinner sometimes that we can't figure out how to short-circuit where he'll tell us his tummy hurts and he needs to go rest on the couch. Spoiler: his tummy almost certainly doesn't hurt; he just wants to go sit on the couch (we infer this mostly from the fact that he evinces no signs of pain and bounces around the house without a care in the world after about 5 seconds on the couch). Despite having told him numerous times that he can just say he wants to sit on the couch and he doesn't have to tell us his tummy hurts, he does it anyway, which has resulted in some Skepticism now whenever he tells me about a tummy ache.Except, of course, when he says his stomach hurts and actually acts like it, followed by juuuuust enough alarming appendicitis-like cues to result in a call to the advice nurse. This was us a few nights ago; she told us to take him to the ER if he woke up and his pain was worse, which happened as if on cue about 40m later at like 930p. So! I bundled him into the car and we drove to the ER, whereupon after the initial intake wait and the exam room wait, his alarming abdominal pain seemed to have subsided by like 90%. The doctor we saw confirmed no clinical signs of appendicitis; probably just a side symptom of the mild cold he seemed to have picked up (he'd been sniffling all day). And that was it! Aside from his stuffy nose, he had nothing else going on for the rest of the weekend and spent the entire time romping around as usual. The end! No moral! Except I think I may have taught him how to blow his nose slightly better? I'm just waiting to see if either of us ends up getting whatever this bullshit is; he somehow managed to pass it to a grandparent, but thus far we're unsniffled. Praise be to the health demons. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Sorry I missed this back in May, but when fucking Margaret Atwood herself says "I Invented Gilead. The Supreme Court Is Making It Real: I thought I was writing fiction in The Handmaid’s Tale", well, fuck. FUCK (~$Atlantic) 

  • Maybe don't read this one right after, either, but "America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good: The great “convergence” of the mid-20th century may have been an anomaly." It's a fucking doozy but at the same time contains basically zero surprises. Don't know what that says about us, folks. (~$Atlantic) 

  • Where to get abortion pills and how to use them. (MIT Technology Review) 

  • Yet again, once more, The Scientists have created ANOTHER spray-on coating for food that's safe, biodegradable, scalable, and eliminates the need for plastic containers. (Rutgers) 

  • Finally, a QAnon crypto scam. This writeup is about all the info you need, though the linked article goes into much more detail if you want it. (Web3 Is Going Just Great) 

  • Actually, here's another writeup from Web3 Is Etc, about a crypto-themed burger joint that's stopped accepting payments in crypto. Personally, I think it's a shame, solely for what I imagine to have been the humor value of watching the prices spiral upward during the crash. (Web3 Is Going Just Great) 

  • "What Will It Take to Decolonize Artificial Intelligence?" (NEO.LIFE) 

  • Unsurprisingly, a preliminary study has discovered that actually spending your workday in VR is fucking awful. (Kotaku) 

  • Some Engineers have created a small robot whose "muscles" glow when exerted, which results in a robot that lights up when it flies. Could not only be useful, but actually cool-looking! (MIT) 

  • Just like how Starfleet has three division colors (Command, Engineering/Security, Science), the Kellogg's corporation is splitting into three businesses: Snacks, Cereals, Plant-Based Foods. Which one gets which shirt color is still TBD, I guess, but I would personally advocate red for Snacks, gold for Cereals, and blue for Plant-Based Foods. (Quartz) 

  • I talked about an Australian investigation into this back in February, but a Nigerian farm study provides evidence that we should really look into using our own urine to make fertilizer. (Science Alert) 

  • The Scientists have created a hydrogel suit for nematodes that could potentially be a great cancer treatment: sheath the worms in anti-cancer drugs and let 'em loose (they like tumor cells better for some reason), although the writeup doesn't say what you'd do with the worms once they fulfilled their purpose. (Osaka U) 

  • "Why We Should Pay Attention to the Slow Decay of America’s Forgotten Cities" (LitHub) 

  • Some Engineers from my alma mater have developed an "optical microphone" system that uses cameras and a laser to watch objects vibrate and translate what they see into sound, which is a great way to get clean separate audio from simultaneous sources, like two guitars playing at once. (CMU) 

  • What if you could detect organic material — up to and including trace residues from fossils millions of years old —  just by shining a special light on it? The Scientists appear to have built one. (U of Hawaiʻi Manoa) 

  • While just giving people money seems to be a better option in disaster recovery situations, studies seem to indicate that whole "teach someone to fish" approach might actually work better long-term for getting people out of poverty. (Vox) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some bandsWhiskeyfingerPHR3SHTYPESpermcat(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think one or all of these bands sound like, because now I'm curious) 

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.