on the ease of park-based playdates

June 13, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wonders exactly how many of us here just want to go apeshit 

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 WARPWe're almost exactly one month out! 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)+ +  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.One of my Pandemic Finds is a podcast called Mall Talk, which sadly ended its run not too long ago but has an extensive back catalog and is still a good listen if you either enjoy shopping or just miss the unique commercial ambience of malls. The hosts, a pair of LA-based women who work in comedy, open every episode they can by asking each other how their trips to the mall that week were (my listening has taken me to the first year of the pandemic), which means they end up talking a lot about a strange nexus of commerce in Glendale where there are two malls literally next to each other called the Americana and the Galleria. When I went down to LA in the first weekend of June and ended up having a fair amount of bafflingly free time, I decided to actually go see 'em for myself, and I'm here to tell you that shit is (a) real and (b) bonkers. The Galleria is what I think of when I picture a mall: a big building with shops lining the corridors, full of light and echoes and shiny floors. As malls go, it's pretty nice, actually. I think it's a Westfield joint, so that's probably not surprising. But the Americana is madness: picture an enormous, elaborate outdoor fountain with a big fake lawn next to it, then line the space around it with extremely fancy shops and restaurants, with a couple little side "streets" projecting off the courtyard with more extremely fancy shops and restaurants. There's an unattended armoire-looking thing by the fountain with neatly-folded free blankets you can just grab if you want to lay out on the fake lawn. It's outdoors, but it still somehow smells nice, or maybe it just projects such an aura of casual commercial opulence that you think it smells nice. I bet this place is fucking magical come Xmastime. Of course I was listening to an episode of Mall Talk while wandering around both places — which again, I must emphasize, are literally next to each other — and it felt right. The end; no moral! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.As it did with the kids, the Gut Bug ended up lasting about 24h or so for me. Weirdly, there was no barfing, which seems to be a true anomaly, as it hit everyone else with that particular bat including Mavis's best friend Maya, who came to help while I was out of town and whose self-sacrifice was (and is) much appreciated. Mavis herself was the last to succumb, although her bout with it was thankfully just a milder version of mine somehow, praise be to the disease demons and other malign spirits under whose baleful eye we toil.Up until this weekend, Quentin had never had a real playdate, which as far as I can tell was just a result of some confluence of pandemic + the age he's at + general fatigue + we've never done this before or whatnot. I figured there was an easy way to fix this by just emailing some parents of preschool kids that Quentin mentions a lot at home and seeing if anyone wanted to meet up at a local park some weekend morning. It turns out I was right, and so Saturday I got him into the car so we could go check out a new playground he hadn't yet seen, and as if by magic, his friend Izzy was already there. They had a great time! The only downside is that now Quentin wants to go to that same playground every Saturday just in case Izzy's there. Which may not be a downside? Further updates as events warrant. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • What would it mean to treat guns the way we treat cars? (Vox) 

  • Straddling that line between interesting and unsettling: judging from historical precedent, there should honestly be more political assassinations happening now, given everything that's going on. (~$Atlantic) 

  • Nazis out to start shit at an Idaho Pride event actually got arrested! Will wonders never cease. (NPR) 

  • But don't get complacent, either; the top bit of Monday's issue of Garbage Day talks about research that indicates the right wing has better ground game than we do, and that has Implications. (Garbage Day) (Paper) 

  • We should maybe think about other gases when we consider climate emissions targets. (U of Washington) 

  • The Scientists exposed a kombucha culture to simulated Mars conditions for a year and a half, and surprisingly, one of the bacterial species survived. I'll leave it to you to imagine what happens if someone accidentally fires a ball of it at Mars and leaves it alone for a billion years or so. (Göttingen U) 

  • Why do people sometimes make non-optimal choices? (RPI) 

  • A data scientist went deep on the early part of the Bitcoin blockchain and discovered it's not as decentralized as its evangelists want everyone to think. ($NYT) (Paper) 

  • Some Engineers have devised a way to use radio waves to detect when someone's trying to fuck with hardware components. (RUB) 

  • Anyone else who had "prototype living skin for robots" on their dystopian future bingo card can go ahead and mark that one off. (Science Alert) 

  • The Scientists are starting to see some success treating a particularly stubborn bacterial infection with targeted viruses. (Pitt) 

  • How do animals perceive the world? (~$New Yorker) 

  • Smart windows are a killer energy saver; here's a good read on the current state of the tech and why it hasn't been widely adopted yet. (Knowable) 

  • "Top performers don’t always provide the best advice" (British Psychological Society) 

  • Healing surgical wounds sometimes bind themselves to neighboring organs: not great. The Scientists have demonstrated a special hot glue that should theoretically solve this highly inconvenient problem. (Japan's Natl Institute for Materials Science) 

  • It's possible there might be a specific area of the brain that essentially helps people form their worldview — a "gestalt cortex," if you will — but no word yet on how to hijack it or otherwise force people to reset their views. (UCLA) 

  • A look at historical data from the last two decades reveals an interesting but probably unsurprising conclusion about the risk of premature death as it correlates to how Republican your county is. (Brigham & Women's Hospital) 

  • The Scientists are trying to figure out whether probiotics for corals could be a thing. (Science Alert) 

  • What would it actually look like to stop using plastic worldwide? (BBC Future) 

  • Japan's testing an interesting-looking offshore power rig. (Science Alert) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumIntentional Fallacy Fistfight, It's On Now(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.