on the value of excessively-advanced literature

July 13, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants to warn you up top that the Medium Ramble gets a little dark, so if that's not your thing this week, you can skip it if you want -- there's some super intriguing links in Fascination Corner! 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI know there's supposed to be a new episode this week, but I'll be honest with you: I haven't had the time to do any editing somehow. I'm not sure where the time went, and I'm going to do my damnedest to make sure to find some this week, but there it is; sorry about that. In the meantime, you can still listen to any of the other 142 episodes in the back catalog (not including the bonus ones that are either for Star Trek nerds, tabletop dice gaming nerds, or both); while you're there, if you'd favor us with a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating on ye oldynne Apple Podcasts, that would be great of you. Thanks in advance!Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberIt seems laughable to try to throw Instant Band Night without a proven vaccine in place. Let's see what's up in November 2021.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook* * s t a y   h o m e   / /   s t a y   h e a l t h y * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Am I the only one who sometimes -- sometimes -- daydreams a world where we wake up one morning and the cops who killed Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain are found on the steps of their respective precincts with their heads missing? Is that an insane thing to think about? Shouldn't cops who murder unarmed civilians for no reason without punishment fear lethal retribution from the citizens they're supposed to be protecting? Why aren't these men living their lives in our collective gunsights, metaphorically speaking? Especially if the usual apparatus of justice seems to be utterly ignoring them? Would fear of being killed by an outraged citizenry perhaps keep cops from murdering unarmed civilians for no reason in the future? I'm just asking questions here; is anyone else asking them, too, even if only in their hearts? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin's fascination with "where does the pee go" ultimately resulted in the purchase of Underground by David Macaulay, whose name you may recognize from the rightfully ubiquitous The Way Things Work book that I think we all had.* Obviously the text of it is way too advanced for Quentin, who's two and a half. But the drawings! The book has chapters for each municipal system, including (crucially) the sewer network. Parents: if your kid wants to know where the pee goes, get yourself a used copy of this book. Plus, after approximately 8000+ cover-to-cover surveys of every single illustration, I think Quentin has a reasonably solid conceptual framework for the sewer system, as well as water, gas, electricity, storm drains, deep-bore subway tunnels, and the four major types of building foundations (floating, friction pile, bearing pile, and pier). I think. Just so you know, we've never referred to this particular volume by title; he knows it (and requests it) as The Pee Book.We've become big fans in general of getting Quentin books that are too advanced for his reading level (which is nonexistent, let's be clear) but are also crammed with pictures and illustrations. Occasionally these books come with mysteries of their own: after being alerted to Quentin's interest in construction machinery, my amazing network pointed me to a book literally called Giant Earth-Moving Equipment, which is full to bursting with huge color photos of absolutely enormous excavators, all of which seem to have been purpose-built for strip-mining in various contexts. Quentin calls this one The Digger Book, and he fuckin' loves it, which why wouldn't he -- lots of the photos also contain bulldozers, which are comically tiny compared to the machinery they accompany, as well as giant dump trucks. What I can't work out is who this book is actually for -- at no point does it ever explain how these machines work; there's no diagrams or anything like that.** It seems to be a light history of the industry surrounding the building and maintenance of these things? Who wants that? Strip-mining enthusiasts, maybe? I strongly suspect curious mechanical engineers would get frustrated with this book's lack of details. It's marvelous for tiny toddlers who love looking at construction equipment, but that's plainly not its core demographic. Who, then? All of this is to say that on a recent walk, I passed by one of the many Little Free Libraries in our neighborhood and discovered a literal textbook on construction surveying. I did fish it out and flip through it, and it was satisfyingly technical and chunky, but sadly had very little in the way of pictures of actual construction, so I put it back. Maybe someone else will find it and make use of it properly.* Did you know there's an updated edition where he explains things like touchscreens and wifi? Hell yeah** Interestingly, I just clicked around a little in Google Books, and it looks like the guy did write a book subsequent to this one actually explaining the inner workings of these machines. Huh. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Read this: "The Government Can Afford Anything It Wants." Seriously, read it!! (~$New Republic) 

  • Possibly also relevant: past studies show that money and happiness are correlated up to about $75K or thereabouts, but the correlation has been strengthening over the past few decades, which seems to indicate the same amount of money buys more happiness than it would've in 1972. (The Conversation) 

  • The proof-of-concept looks weird, but I bet somebody's up to the challenge of designing a noise-cancelling windowframe insert that looks nice. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • What are these odd radio circles (ORCs) being detected in deep space? (Science Alert) 

  • Let's read Sarah Jeong's take on that stupid fucking Harper's letter and call it done, how 'bout. (The Verge) 

  • If generation ships turn out to be the only viable means of interstellar travel, we should be prepared to deal with serious linguistic differences between the crew and planetary populations. (U of Kansas) 

  • Jurassic Park Updates is your new Twitter follow for the week. (@JurassicPark2go) 

  • Scientists have figured out a way to clear industrial wastewater of pollutants with electricity. (U of Sydney) 

  • Unfortunately, Steph Korey does not appear to have learned anything. (The Verge) 

  • If you can put a fractal pattern of holes into something, say by 3D printing it, you can make it incredibly shock-absorbent, which might have implications for armor design in the future. (Los Alamos) 

  • "What I Learned at the Most Instagrammed Outdoor Places" (Outside) 

  • Does anyone else find it interesting that this time around, Zuck's genuflection in the direction of something approaching humanity is absolutely not satisfying the people it needs to? Like actual civil rights leaders? ($NYT) Perhaps this isn't surprising now that their civil rights audit has been released, and it's ........ not great. (Gizmodo) 

  • Here, have a very good dungeon generator. (DNGNGEN) 

  • Our idea of the ideal romantic partner may not have anything to do with special insight into our own personalities; we may simply be listing traits that everybody likes. The paper might make entertaining reading? (UC Davis) (PDF of paper) 

  • Ah, fuck. The ethical models we're trying to build for autonomous vehicles don't take into account the possibility that someone might actually be trying to do something bad, which is an oversight. (NC State) 

  • Talking in a high-pitched, excited voice to our dogs when we're giving commands makes them try harder, but also make more mistakes. They're just so excited to do things for us! (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History) 

  • Here's a treat(?) for those of you who've read to the end of this section. The Breakthrough Listen project has released what it calls the Exotica Catalog of interesting extraterrestrial phenomena relevant to the search for intelligent life. The paper itself (at least, what I could understand of it) is fascinating for a number of reasons, but I'll point you to the real money parts, at least for me. Section 6.1 describes five types of anomalies that, and I quote, "all else being equal, roughly increase in order of mysteriousness." Spoiler: a Class V anomaly is something that appears to defy known laws of physics. Flip ahead to Appendix C and you'll be greeted with a list of anomalies, and there are entries of observed phenomena for all five classes. I don't know exactly what all of them mean, but it's fun to look at and think about, even for my dilettante ass! (Science Alert) (PDF of paper) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumA Strangled Cry of Triumph, Five Minutes From North 

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.