on barfing and bravery

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that would really like some uninterrupted sleep and to not get the stomach bug that has afflicted one of us; see below for more on that! 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayStill no new episode, but the back catalog is deep and inviting; splash around a little, it doesn't matter where! There's no continuity to speak of; isn't that handy?We're so close -- so tantalizingly close -- to 40 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings on our Apple Podcasts page! Will YOU be the one to tip us over?? Why wait to find out! SEIZE YOUR DESTINY WITH BOTH HANDS AND SHOVEInstant Band Night 15: Name TBDI need to think of a new name for this one because we're definitely pushing until at least January, but I haven't had time to so much as pick an apple up off a table for reasons outlined below, so the event pages will update eventually!! (Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  r e t u r n i n g   i n   2 0 2 2  + ++ +  h a n g   i n   t h e r e  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.We finally got some rain! Like a lot of it! It was amazing! Except for this morning I went downstairs and found a small but intrepid column of ants starting to investigate a shelf of houseplants. I think I managed to locate their point of entry and laid down a lot of liquid Terro on cardstock in key spots. Places where ants were clustered heavily got subsidiary Terro placed extremely close by. Come and get it, fellas! New locations are ready to serve our growing customer base! As of this evening, all of my trap spots* are now more or less devoid of ants save for one or two stragglers; my hope is that either they've taken as much of their new bounty home with them as they could carry and it's doing its work as we speak, or now that the rain is gone, they've returned to their outdoor foraging and the truce between our species can be reestablished. A month or so ago, they tried to mount an expedition into our bathroom, of all places, and after a similarly liberal gift of Terro they were gone within a day, so a pattern seems to be emerging. Stick to the out-of-doors, ants, and peace can be yours.So that's how the fall has greeted me thus far; what about you?* If you're worried about Felix encountering the cards of yummy-looking ant poison and cramming them into his mouth or something, don't: he's not even mobile yet. Quentin isn't interested, either; for whatever reason, we won a genetic lottery there, too -- he's never been a "put random thing in my mouth!" kind of kid. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin came home on Thursday with his first stomach bug, which came online at about 4a Friday morning. The barfing phase lasted almost exactly 24h, during which we were able to get some Pedialyte and applesauce into him, but there were a few times where we got a little ambitious and paid for our hubris. For the following night there was no such thing as bedtime; we were able to kind of bundle him into bed and then one of us would be dragooned into laying next to him so he could make piteous noises and tell us his throat hurt every 20 minutes or so; eventually there was sleep. Eventually!The next night around midnight (technically Sunday morning for those keeping track), after more uncountable intervals of not-sleep, it was suggested that we bring Quentin to the ER so he could have his fluids checked and rule out strep or whatnot. The caution was understandable, given his ongoing kidney thing, so we bundled him up and went out into the surprisingly heavy rain. Despite his initial great reluctance to leave and the lateness of the hour, he chirped out his customary cheerful "Bye! See you when we get back!" and waved to his mama (only one parent could go, and Mavis was needed at home for Felix care anyway) on his way out the door. We were there for maybe two and a half hours all told (everything checked out), and when we returned, the first thing he said was "It didn't take that long!" Our brave little guy!!For some reason they never ran a covid test on him while we were there, though, so we had to go back out into the world on Sunday morning to get that done. By this time he'd been keeping down fluids and small amounts of increasingly less-bland food without a problem, but he'd also developed a runny nose. When he returned, his voice was noticeably scratchier, I assumed from crying and yelling (he's had a few covid tests by now and he doesn't like 'em -- who does, honestly), but he just got froggier and froggier as the day went on. Hilariously, he did use a literal entire box's worth of tissues; there'll be a time to teach him real consistent nose-blowing technique, but that time is not now.As I type this, we've just finished Monday. In some kind of miracle of medical logistics, his covid test results came back at about 4a: negative (last time it took three or four days). His energy is up to about 75%,* and his voice has improved, but his nose is still running and he's developed an intermittent cough that seems to worsen slightly, as all things do, at night. Pumping him full of Benadryl before bedtime (as suggested by the doctors) at least dampens the runny nose somewhat; our hope is that it'll also knock him out so he can just! sleep! Although it's 11p and he's already woken up a few times to cough or to loudly demand milk; pray that we have slept as you read this on Tuesday morning (or whenever it is you get around to reading this; now I'm curious -- when do you?).I don't know how people without at least one set of parents or siblings or whatnot nearby do this two-kid thing when one of them is sick. Mavis's folks have been goddamn superheroes, stopping by for hours to snuggle Felix or sit on the couch and watch Daniel Tiger with Quentin so one of us can the hell get a single thing done, like nap or buy groceries or clean the kitchen, which we have to do because of the ants. So the only thing I personally now have to worry about is the Damoclean sword of Did I Also Get This Thing Or What dangling over my head: after every meal, I've been feeling my stomach and wondering. The first thing Quentin complained of on Thursday was a sore throat, so I'm second-guessing every swallow. Currently I seem to be uncursed; we'll see what the future brings. As for Quentin, we're keeping him home again on Tuesday -- even if his energy is back, I don't want that a nose that runny happening behind his mask. The cough we probably can't do anything about; whenever I get a cold that involves a cough, the damn thing lingers for what seems like weeks after all other symptoms vanish, and I wonder if that's going to be Quentin's lot in life, too. If so: sorry, bud. At least you're getting some good TV time in.* Although he did spend plenty of time on the couch. He's good and hooked on Daniel Tiger, and we also introduced him to Reading Rainbow. I have some quibbles with how either Amazon Prime Video or PBS Kids seems to have arranged its episodes into an arbitrarily atemporal hodgepodge, but even the slightly unfamiliar 90s remix of the Reading Rainbow theme (computer animation instead of the animated butterfly) brought a little mist to my eye. LeVar Burton was fucking incredible in this show, and seeing him there again healed my soul a little. 

Fascination Corner

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

• Facebook's still not having a great time with Frances Haugen's revelations: while it seems that they've known about the platform's propensity to radicalize people for a while (NBC News), they were still wildly unprepared for the Capitol insurrection when it went down. (CNN) 

• Your must-read this week is from someone else's newsletter: "The Methods of Moral Panic Journalism" (Michael Hobbs on Substack) 

• Instead of complicated rent voucher programs, what if the government just mailed people a goddamn check to cover their rent? (~$Atlantic) 

• Uh oh! Whoops! Uh oh! Oh no! Whoops! Twitter did a study on its own algorithmic amplification and found out that right-wing nonsense seems to get consistently more of a boost and they're not sure why. Whoops-a-fucking-daisy! (Twitter Blog) 

• A BBC reporter on disinfo who happens to be a woman did a deep dive on the abuse and threats she receives on a regular basis, and it's ........ discouraging. (BBC) 

• "Employing" a robot actually gave human restaurant workers more time to interact with their tables and led to higher tips. Huh. ($NYT) 

• What will animals look like a million years from now? (Vox) 

• I think there's a reason why the only crime-vibes podcast I listen to is Scam Goddess. "True Crime Is Rotting Our Brains: I would sooner get stabbed again than have someone make a podcast about me" (Gawker) 

• It's actually quite possible to make lithium ion batteries from recycled materials that are just as good -- or even better? -- than the originals. (IEEE Spectrum) 

• Swarm robots aren't just a flying drone concept anymore! (Notre Dame) 

• If you make a fitness app, try including references to illness and death in your motivational messaging, because apparently those work better. (U of Waterloo) 

• Migratory animals travel long distances to feed and breed, but because we're making the planet shittier, it's not actually metabolically worth it to make the trip for more and more of them these days. Great. (U of Bath) 

• A kidney grown in a genetically modified pig was successfully implanted without rejection in a human test subject for a couple days; a small but hugely significant step. (AP) 

• Engineers have worked out a proof of concept for a low-power generator that mimics seaweed to harness wave energy. (American Chemical Society) 

• Huh. "The Meaning of Life Is Surprisingly Simple: You can make your quest for meaning manageable by breaking it down into three bite-size dimensions." (~$Atlantic) 

• The Vikings landed in North America exactly a thousand years ago. (U of Groningen) 

• Here, look at this crab from the dang Cretaceous era preserved in amber. I'd make a carcinization joke here, but what is there to say? Crab shape is eternal. (Harvard Dept of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology) 

• Some big companies are trying to decarbonize their shipping, but they're not moving fast enough. (The Verge) 

• The gun robot isn't autonomous, folks. (IEEE Spectrum) 

• Why do we trust machines so much anyway? (BBC Future) 

• You know what, I do like the idea of a Lord of the Rings-based exercise tracker. (CNET) 

• It turns out tap water is protecting us from microplastics. (Trinity College Dublin) 

• How about some conductive yarn for making some disturbingly cozy sweaters? (American Chemical Society) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumComma Cat, Now Who's a Hardass(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds 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.