Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that truly does wish you all a very good new year

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.

NEXT WEEK: Instant Band Night 29: NEW YEAR'S BALL AGAIN

You've got at least one fancy party outfit in your closet that you haven't worn in a while: it's time. Or rather, it will be next Thursday. Because we're kicking 2025 off with an explosion of musical creativity in our most fabulous clothes!! We all deserve to have at least one source of unalloyed joy in our lives that cannot be touched, do we not??? Also, for real, it's going to be a fucking blast if the last 28 of these are any indication, and it's time! to! make it happen!!! Come play onstage or just be in the crowd for a new debut of a brand new act every five minutes or so; there's nothing else like it in the entire Bay and possibly the world??? Send everybody you know the link, put on your red shoes (metaphorical or otherwise), and let's fuckin' do this

✨🪩✨
Jan 9 2025
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 55th St 94609

(Eventbrite) (Partiful) (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 YOU

Excellent new tardigrades! Chaos mushrooms! Plus the rest of the almost aggressively whimsical, playfully intelligent catalog you may or may not have come to know already, perfect for yourself or a highly discerning friend in your life: there has never been a better time than now.

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after two+ years of inactivity, but I'm putting a link to its evergreen 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 podcast

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.

The kids have been off school since the start of last week and I've lost all sense of time and meaning, so I just barely remembered to set this issue up to send tomorrow morning! So this one's going to be quick. Look, it's over right now!

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.

Thank you to everyone who checked my math last week — the actual solution did occur to me when I woke up the next morning, which was that I'd failed to divide the final number of cubic inches by the corresponding figure for cubic feet. The true answer is that I did in fact clean 4 cubic feet of Legos, which is still a damn lot of Legos, and I think the kids are still kind of conceptually concussed by the sheer volume of possibility that they're presented with.

It was a very good Xmas but I don't have the wherewithal to go into it right now: there was also an Xmas cold of some sort that's been working its way through the house. It began as a fever — mercifully brief — and has now settled into a long tail of coughs and snot and whining, which frankly I'll accept any day over any more dramatic gastrointestinal symptoms you could care to name. Quentin got it first, then Felix, and now Mavis is starting to feel a little under the weather, so I type this to you now under the point of a quantum Damoclean sword that may or may not manifest depending on whether my immune system has been properly prepped. We can only live in hope??

Fascination Corner

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

(Liminal Week means this is maybe the shortest link list you'll see all year, though there are some real bangers in here regardless!)

The Scientists say they've figured out a way to make cancer cells ......... revert to normal ones? ?? ?? (KAIST) (Paper)

"Stand For Something: Biden has left the Democrats with no claim to morality." He's right. Don't say anything until you've read the whole thing. (How Things Work)

The Parker Solar Probe successfully pulled off the closest-ever approach to the sun by a human-made object. (NASA)

Some Engineers think they've cracked the uncanny valley problem for realistic android faces. (Osaka U) (Paper)

Here's a good longread on Why Netflix Is Like That Now. (n+1)

Despite available evidence to the contrary, some software can still be well-made and nice to use. (Disk Horse)

This is a good essay on the seeming inescapability of technofeudalism and what Luigi Mangione means as far as enabling us to enforce some accountability on the overlord class. The main takeaway quote you might want to ponder is "My reading of [a book about the success of peaceful disruption] was that the ideal combination is a large, non-violent civil disobedience campaign coupled with a small, disciplined armed faction." (The Bigger Picture)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.

A band and their album

(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:

Reader Mari/bouncinglime says "Midnight Mushroom is definitely an improv jazz band. This 'Masterpiece' is a three-hour live show in which the music never fully stops."

Reader Eden says: "I'm impressed this album surfaced... That was quite a trip and fantastic travel, but I thought this journey was kept amongst travelers. It would make sense that we are all travelers here.

"As remembered, the ambiance of railroad was calming for collective murmurs even as the conductor brought occasional screeches to the attention of everyone. Whatever's happening in Berlin was forgotten as this modern industrial scene passed through.

"What magic too! The album covered all predictions of what was captured on this platform."

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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!