on exits

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that should know better than to eat those roasted salted peanuts over a keyboard, but then why peanuts so tasty, I ask you 

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: YOUIT'S NEXT WEEKI recently had the opportunity to describe Instant Band Night to some folks who'd never been, and what came out of my mouth was "Whether you choose to play in one of the bands or just watch it all unfold, it's a joyful celebration of spontaneous creativity that we could all probably use more of in our lives." I'm just sayin'!!!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.(Heads up that this one's morbid, which I guess is fitting for Halloween)On my shelf right now is a book that I'm never getting rid of, for two reasons. One is that it's a copy of Klingon for the Galactic Traveler; self-explanatory. The other is that my friend Laura gave it to me not too long ago, on one of the last times I saw her before she was killed in a hit-and-run on her bike a couple of weeks past. At her celebration-of-life, I bore witness to the truly staggering array of people she'd blessed (there's no other word) with her friendship, alongside many many families whose kids knew her as "Rainbow Laura," their excellent and hypercompetent nanny. We all knew her in slightly different ways and aspects; not everyone knew she was a big Star Trek nerd, for instance (it was somehow one of the first things we connected on when we met years ago at a friend's big birthday party) — but we still knew her. "How the fuck," one friend asked us and the universe at large through his tears, "did she give so much of herself to so many of us and make it look so easy?" I don't know how, either; she just did. And for this we thanked her.After a late-night karaoke hang with a friend — possibly the last person she talked to on this Earth — Laura got on her bike and called out "Love you" before she pedaled off. He was there at the celebration and spoke of this with soft wonder: what a way to leave. Even without knowing she was going for good, what a way to leave. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.First of all, a nonzero number of you donated to Quentin's Tigerthon fundraiser last year, and for that I thank you. All the stuff the PTA funds really does make his school experience flat-out fantastic!We're approaching the point where we're going to have to take a wall off Felix's crib sometime in the near future. This means he's going to realize he can get himself in and out of bed at will, and from there it's going to be a short conceptual leap to "Maybe that means I can leave the room entirely and go snuggle Mama." I would really like for him not to make this leap and instead be content with staying in bed when he needs to sleep. Or at the very least staying in his room while the light is red.* Does this mean there'll be more playing with toys before he feels the need for sleep? Can we at least try to encourage playing with stuffies only? Watch this space for further developments.* We have one of those Hatch lights that changes color, and in the boys' room red signifies Sleep Time; when it turns green at 630a, that means Time To Be Awake. This worked more or less as designed with Quentin, but Felix seems not to need as much sleep as his brother, and thus the light holds no sway over him. 

Fascination Corner

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

• "The poster’s guide to the internet of the future: The platform era is ending. Rather than build new Twitters and Facebooks, we can create a stuff-posting system that works better for everybody." (The Verge) 

• The Scientists are serious when they say we're in deep fucking shit with climate change right now. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

• Let's just do it already: The Scientists have shown that adding crushed volcanic rock to croplands pulls CO2 out of the air even in dry climates. (UC Davis) (Paper) 

• We may not have to settle for just capturing carbon; The Scientists think certain microalgae could soak up CO2 and convert it into useful or nutritious compounds. (U of Houston) 

• Why does The Machine only generate hot people? (~$Atlantic) 

• The Scientists have found a way to recycle the superabsorbent material inside diapers by blasting it with UV light for about five minutes. Theoretically, it should even work on used diapers! (KIT) 

• Here's a set of living guidelines for AI development; you gotta start somewhere, dammit. (Nature) 

• Meanwhile, those maniacs at Boston Dynamics made a robot tour guide just by connecting a bunch of Machine-enabled technologies, and it's fucking wild to witness. (Video) (Blog post) 

• The Moon is 40 million years older than we thought. What else is it hiding???? (Northwestern) (Paper) 

• "A surprisingly radical proposal: Make people happier — not just wealthier and healthier: We finally have good data on what makes people happy. Why are we afraid to use it?" (Vox) 

• The more curious we are, the more eager you'd think we'd be to discover the answer to something, right? So why do we hate spoilers so much? (Duke U) 

• If nothing else, we can at least rely on The Machine to count fish for us. (Anthropocene) 

• Uranus has an infrared aurora, which may help to explain why it's so much warmer (relatively speaking) than it should be, given how far away it is from the sun. (U of Leicester) (Paper) 

• The Scientists have discovered that one of the main chemotherapy drugs doesn't actually work the way they thought it does in the real world, which isn't the bad news you might think it is. (U of Wisconsin-Madison) (Paper) 

• Just a heads up that anger can be useful for achieving your goals, according to a new study. (American Psychological Assoc) 

• Nobody counts the trees in Europe that aren't part of forests, which means there's literally a billion tons of biomass — previously uncounted until The Machine got involved — that have been left out of all the models. (U of Copenhagen) (Paper) 

• Something about this feels oddly soothing and I don't know why: The Scientists have demonstrated a soft 3D printing material made from dinoflagellates that glows when pressed or twisted. (UC San Diego) (Paper) 

• I love these ancient petroglyphs, though I really don't love the reason why they're resurfacing. (Guardian) 

• The Scientists have come up with another answer to the Fermi Paradox, this time using a tweak to something they call "percolation theory." (Science Alert) (PDF of paper) 

• Candy corn is good and I miss it and I do not apologize to you or any other (Quartz) 

• Two new squid species, each no larger than a fingernail, have been discovered in the reefs of Okinawa. (Okinawa Inst of Sci & Tech) 

• "‘She Eats, She Pays, She Gets the F– Out’ Servers, bartenders, and owners explain what happens when Taylor Swift visits their NYC restaurants." This article offers an interesting meditation on the questions we all have about this, namely WHY? Also, I should note that the trick where you put a . after the .com in this URL will still work if you hit the "you've read too many free articles" wall. (~$Vulture) 

• What if we could tweak our gut microbiome to affect stuff like our blood pressure? The Scientists are testing this idea in rats right now, and it looks promising. (U of Toledo) (Paper) 

• The fungal genus Mycena appears to be in the middle of an evolutionary leap from a pure saprophyte to a mutualist that can offer nitrogen to host plants in exchange for carbon. Good for them! (U of Copenhagen) (Paper) 

• Margaret Atwood reviews a Machine-generated story "from" her; let's just say she ain't worried about The Machine right now. (The Walrus) 

• The Scientists have worked out a way to turn a plant into a toxic chemical detector. (UC Riverside) (Paper) 

• We can't fucking stop scrolling because our brains love novelty, is all. (U of Copenhagen has been on a tear this issue for some reason) (Paper) 

• Our immune system weighs about as much as a pineapple. (Science Alert) (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 Kevin Grieve 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 Don Kaveen on Unsplash🎸 Reader Kyle M is pretty sure "The Bone Archive is a European pop band. The title track Taking Heavy Fire is about dating in the app era. They sound a bit like Architecture in Helsinki."🐝 Reader Katie S says "The bone archive definitely sounds like the bird and the bee based off of the artwork, but the lyrics are all intense, heart punchy lines like something we'd put as an instant messenger away message back in the day 😂" 

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.