ritual update

November 30, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's starting to feel a stress about holiday cards somewhat akin to the stress of wedding invitations, albeit on an admittedly smaller scale 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway152 - All Roads Lead to Mayonnaise"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Jenna (@rockbottomyet) dig up some marvelous ideas for highly diverting content, advanced technology, and finding love."Jenna's previous episode was great, but is this one ........ better? HIGHLY POSSIBLE. There's only one way to find out!Something I really like about what I think of as the newer era of the podcast is that we're starting to run into friends who've started keeping their own idea files. These are always, always a great time; I strongly urge you to start writing down your own ideas for whatever (apps, stories, physical products, civil services that should exist, etc) the instant they occur to you; there's going to be gold in there somewhere, I promise. For those who'd like to (re)visit episodes with guest idea files specifically, I've got episode numbers for you:Steve124126Ken129131Amy137139Ken (again!)142144Jenna150152We're still at 33; can we get to 40 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings in Apple Podcasts before the year is up? Dare we dream???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.My birthday's this week and I have no idea what I'm doing for it aside from eating as much apple pie as my metabolism will allow.* Is there anything I want to ask for? I genuinely have no idea. An internal search for THINGS I WANT yielded 0 results. All the things I really want are activities with pals, which: have you seen what it's like out there, rona-wise? In lieu of getting to hang out with my friends, I suppose the next-best thing I can ask for is something that's genuinely brought me some smiles since lockdown began: pictures of my friends. They've gone into an album that our Chromecast puts up on our TV when it's idle, and they're great. Send me one you like (even if you've done it already); consider it a birthday present!* Having gotten bloodwork a few months ago that let me know I was technically prediabetic, I've kicked a lot of my sugary, floury, potatoey mainstays to the curb. And I mean a lot. Seeing as how I was basically eating like a teenage boy, I have to imagine the new me that subsequently emerged gets to have some homemade baked goods now and then. We'll find out in the new year when I go in for my next blood draw. Fun fact: it takes your body about three months to replace all of your blood cells! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Just to keep everyone abreast of the situation, the current state of the bedtime ritual is as follows:

  1. After brushing teeth and putting jammies on, Quentin must help close the blackout curtain.

  2. Everyone must lay down on the floor so Quentin can point to all the shadows on the ceiling and name the objects that make them.(NOTE: If Quentin attempts to dawdle too long, this step can and will be skipped; crying is both understandable and permissible, but the judgement of the bedtime tribunal is absolute.)

  3. Proceed to the rocking chair, where Daddy must put Quentin in his lap and tell him a highly abbreviated history of the Golden Gate Bridge that segues into the most recent family visit to Ocean Beach; no other story will be accepted at this time. Lights must be extinguished at the halfway point.

  4. Daddy and Mama must swap places, at which point Mama must sing Quentin "I've Been Working On The Railroad," which we call the Railroad Song; no other song will be accepted at this time.

  5. The white noise machine must be activated.

  6. Quentin must be put down so he can walk the five feet from the rocking chair to the crib, at which point Daddy must hoist him into the crib.

  7. Blankets, goodnights, time for sleeping.

I'll update everyone when Quentin makes a different choice of bedtime story (which I have to admit does not seem likely at this point, but there was a long while where we thought the Tom Thumb + Romulans story would be it for eternity) or song. Now that it's Xmastime, I wonder if we should try playing "Jingle Bell Rock" around the house just so he can hear it and maybe request it at the actual appropriate time of year.  

Fascination Corner

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

  • Renee DiResta is always a must-read. "Right-Wing Social Media Finalizes Its Divorce From Reality" (~$Atlantic) 

  • Relatedly, Francis Fukuyama's proposal for "How to Save Democracy From Technology" is "basically middleware" and it seems suspect at best, but what's the alternative? (Foreign Affairs) 

  • The scales on moth wings comprise a surprisingly effective acoustic metamaterial that absorbs a wide range of sound -- important when your main predator homes in on you via echolocation. (Chemistry World) 

  • Unsurprisingly, lack of coordinated response to a pandemic means there's just a continuous rolling boil of activity throughout the nation, which is exactly what I said would happen and what's happening now because we haven't closed down the goddamn state borders (U of Florida) 

  • Should, uh, should we consider microdosing lithium? (NEO.LIFE) 

  • As much as we deride the way boomers use Facebook, it's not as if they enjoy it either. ($NYT) 

  • HONK HONK we might now have an AI capable of determining a protein's 3D structure just by looking at its amino acid sequence!!!! (Nature) 

  • All right, here's a good Xmas story for you. (Thread from @RichyCraven on Twitter) 

  • Is flying actually safe now? (No) (Undark) 

  • Years ago, paleontologists found a fossil of a T-rex and a triceratops battling to the death and now it's going on display for the first time while they continue to work on it. (CNET) 

  • Jesus. Here's "Everything You Already Forgot About 2020" (Vice) 

  • Scientists have built an AI capable of identifying potentially useful new materials, a thing that I'm pretty sure I've talked about before but can't be bothered to search the archives to find. Anyway, this time it found something that seems great for advanced computing. (NIST) 

  • Trump heeheehee actually lost ground hahahaha in most of the heheheh counties where he held his big stupid hahahahaha rallies (NBC News) 

  • Here's some concrete advice for pointing out the most common logical failings of conspiracy theories. (Guardian) 

  • There's nearly a trillion gallons of freshwater in the rocks underneath Hawaii. (Inverse) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumA Large and Angry Crow, The Crushing Weight of So Very Many Tasks 

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.