real octopus mystery hours

September 04, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's keeping the rest of the hot weather back by sheer force of will 

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 22: WILDNext week!! It's next week!!!!! Come see bands put together in five minutes by strangers perform one-of-a-kind onstage miracles, or be part of the action yourself!! No pressure, though: you really can just watch if you don't want to get up there; every band needs an audience.Sept 14 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.I regret to inform you that my brain has generated another facet to the Mystery of Octopus Fuck Mountain, which I covered in this section last week.So the octopuses come to Octopus Fuck Mountain because the warm water makes their eggs gestate faster. Like twice as fast. But how do they know that? If they've never done it before? And also they die directly afterward?Is it just instinctive? "Warm water feels good, I'll fuck and lay my eggs here." Then how come there are no other benthic octopuses doing that in this place? That at least has an answer: the paper talks about how long it takes any organism to hatch an egg down there (insanely long), especially octopuses, which means anything that can shorten the gestation period should theoretically be a welcome advantage, but there are also problems with trying to speedrun it: the embryos might develop all fucked up, or the resulting offspring might become dependent on existing within their warm water envelope and not be able to leave it without dying. These pearl octopuses can handle it, it seems. But how do they know that going in? Are we just seeing the hand of natural selection at work? Is that all? It still doesn't answer my first question about how they know to come there in the first place. Imagine: if only I'd become a marine biologist in the first place like my little kid self wanted, I might be able to figure out the answer!!! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Oh, this weekend! This weekend was good — the kids had a nice time around the house and going to a couple of playdates (some more hastily-arranged than others) — but it was also A Lot. My kids are not by any stretch of the imagination badly-behaved, but they were just ...... I don't know, folks. They were just on one this weekend and I have no explanation for it. They were equally happy to return to the daycare/school routine this morning, at least, for which I am profoundly grateful. Special thanks to Aunties Avery and Maya, who provided invaluable help, witnessing, and distraction for our energetic and exhausting (precious) children. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • At present, The Machine isn't very good at producing accurate output, but if you feed it output from itself, it gets even worse, something The Scientists have already nicknamed "model collapse." Guess what this portends for content on the internet! (Business Insider) (Paper) 

  • I really truly want there to be someone keeping track of all these: The Scientists have demonstrated yet again another method for industrial carbon capture; this one works at room temp and doesn't take a prohibitive amount of energy to run. (ACS) (Paper) 

  • FUCK: those stupid right-wing boycotts are actually spooking The Corporations. (Vox) 

  • Some Engineers have built a better, greener solid-state battery that charges ludicrously quickly, and they're working on commercializing the technology. (Empa) (Paper) 

  • How many of these are there at this point? The Scientists have created another instance of The Machine capable of designing new proteins from scratch, though the press release doesn't say anything about testing them IRL. (AIP) (Paper) 

  • Well, fuck: The Scientists have demonstrated that microplastics fuck up mouse brains and bodies. So what, uh ....... what are they doing to our brains and bodies? (U of Rhode Island) (Paper) 

  • Replacing saturated fats with sugar is a wash, healthwise, but you know what does work? Herbs and spices. Who knew!!!! (Penn State) 

  • I, uh, don't really want dream recall to be linked in any way to Productivity In The Workplace. (Notre Dame) 

  • Give it enough simulation hours and The Machine can get good enough at drone piloting to beat humans in a real-world race some of the time. (U of Zurich) (Paper) 

  • Why are post-Chernobyl wild boars still so damn radioactive while the other animals are mostly fine? (Technical U of Vienna) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists ran some simulations and it looks like the population floor for a notional Mars colony could be set at just 22. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

  • Here's a great longread on the debt all fighting games and beat-em-ups owe to Bruce Lee. (Guardian) 

  • It's already over by the time you read this, but fair food should be honored, especially that of the Minnesota State Fair, which one day I will be lucky enough to attend in person with my family. (Axios) 

  • Wildlife photographer of the year preview is up; be forewarned that there's a few at the end that are pretty heavy stuff. (Guardian) 

  • The Scientists have come up with a preliminary checklist for determining whether The Machine is conscious or not; thus far, we don't have to worry about it, it seems, but I'm gonna read the paper regardless. (Nature) (Paper) 

  • Say what you will about Burning Man, but it seems pretty inarguable that its environmental impact is pretty narsty. (Vox) 

  • This has already been done in white, but now The Scientists have demonstrated a recipe for paint in any color that can reflect enough incoming infrared to reduce energy costs for cooling and heating by 21-36%. Nice! (Anthropocene) 

  • New Cambrian guy dropped. (U of Leicester) 

  • I don't know why this is such a Machine-heavy edition of the newsletter this week, but check out this instance that learned how to identify the components of chemical mixtures on sight. (Hokkaido U) Or this one that can predict — with surprising accuracy — the smell of a compound by looking at its molecular structure. (Monell Center) 

  • I know this is going to sound nuts, but climate change appears to indirectly be leading to more child marriages. (Ohio State) 

  • Just 12% of Americans eat half the beef consumed on any given day in the country (you can guess which 12% exactly). Why do this when Italian sausage is clearly the superior meat, if you're gonna go the meat route in the first place. (Tulane) (Paper) 

  • Cats love umami the way we love sugar, especially the umami in tuna, and The Scientists have proven it experimentally. Still not sure why they love the tuna flavor so much, though, considering they evolved inland where tuna are — to say the least — scarce. (Science) 

  • The story about the woman with a live worm in her brain is regrettably true, so if you're anyplace where carpet pythons live, maybe don't go foraging out there for cooking greens if you can help it. Just FYI, the press release doesn't have any pictures, but the paper does. (Australian Natl U) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists think there might be an Earth-size planet on a tilted orbit way out in the Kuiper belt. (Science Alert) 

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 Marek Piwnicki 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 Yuebirds on Unsplash🥸 Reader Laura says: "I think this is a comedy album. Sketch group. All men, one non white for “diversity”. It’s terrible."🦷 Reader Gary says: "Dunno anything about this one, but I hear their frontman moonlights ina Muse tribute band called Recalcitrant Toothpaste." 

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.