selfies for everyone, from everyone

March 30, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's doing its best to fight off the Isolation Madness and wishes you success in this quest as well.

You'll Like This

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

Idea Factory Giveaway

No new episode this week because, well, there was one last week. Also, weirdly, the quarantine + parenting means I have less free time than I used to, which is a reality I just need to absorb and accept.

This doesn't mean you can't still drop by Apple Podcasts and give us that ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating; if we emerge from the other side of this with an unstoppable tide of good ratings and reviews behind us, you will have only yourselves to blame.

Instant Band Night 15: POSTPONED

At this point I'm going to be honest and say that May 14 feels hell of optimistic but it costs us nothing to keep hope alive right now. 

And listen, if we have to postpone 'til the next one, we will, and we'll all see each other then. Won't that be a party!!

It's also still on Facebook if you're there, too

* * 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.

In last week's issue I mused briefly on the construction of a Google Photos album that would allow me to put fun selfies submitted by friends into the rotation on our TV, and I am here to tell you that this was in fact a goddamn fabulous idea. If you've got a Chromecast or some other functionality on the big main screen in your house that lets you show random pictures from albums you select, ask your friends for fun selfies immediately. And if you're reading this and we're pals, go ahead and send me one if you haven't already (or let me know if you want one from me); having your face pop up on my TV without warning is a guaranteed grin.

#dadthoughts

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

We think we've completed the Donald Duck phase of Quentin's potty training, inasmuch as he's gone three days without pants and seems to have solidly grasped the concept of "I need to sit on the potty when I feel a bathroom situation comin' on." We're moving on to what the book calls Block Two, in which he goes commando and will get an idea of how nasty it feels to have an accident in clothing (though of course we're aiming for zero of those) (pause for hollow laughter from fellow parents). Wish us luck!

Fascination Corner

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

  • Not gonna lie; there are a lot of Covid-19 reads competing for your attention. Do this one. (Atlantic) 

  • Gonna let the headline do the lifting on this one: "Fear of Disease and Workers’ Rights: What We Can Learn from American History" (Teen Vogue) 

  • Rings in your teeth can serve as a kind of record of events in your life. (NYU) 

  • Graphite nanoplatelets embedded into plastic surfaces can unstoppably slice and dice bacteria, disinfecting them more or less by simply existing. What's that feel like to the touch, though??? (Chalmers U of Technology) 

  • Solidarity, quarantine parents. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • While we're in isolation, we're signing up for streaming services, and it turns out Disney+ is winning. (Forbes) 

  • Mavis and I discovered the charms of watching marble racing for ourselves a while ago, and now that there's no more sports around, so is everyone else. (~$Boston Globe) 

  • The term "social distancing" is misleading; "physical distancing" is more accurate. Which is why WHO no longer uses the former. (Science Alert) 

  • Patrick Stewart is reading us a sonnet a day, people!!!! (Patrick Stewart's Twitter) 

  • If we ever get back to the moon and start 3D printing shelters from lunar regolith, we might have to mix it with our own pee to get good building materials, at least according to this proof of concept. The article doesn't tell us what the finished product smells like, but the pictures speak volumes. (CNET) 

  • We've identified hundreds of thousands of virus species, but there might be trillions out there in the -- yes -- virosphere. ($NYT) It turns out sea animals like the humble sponge might be helping to keep them in check by filtering them out of the water. (Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research) 

  • Speech recognition algorithms turned out racist because of course they did. (Ars Technica) Relatedly, white people tend to still move into white neighborhoods, even in racially diverse metro areas. (Brookings Institute) 

  • At least some companies know how to mobilize in the face of this ventilator shortage. Hint hint, Elon. (TechCrunch) Please feel free to picture Jeff Bridges from the first Iron Man movie here: Dyson designed a ventilator in 10 days from motor technology they already had!!! (The Verge) 

  • The next time somebody asks you why we should care, maybe just point them to this. (Aspen Institute) 

  • The primordial ancestor of all animal life has been discovered, and it looks hilarious. (UC Riverside) 

  • Oh, we needed this! I mean it. Vox has a writeup on the flowering of mutual aid groups everywhere. (Vox) That said, crowdfunding can't help everybody, and we shouldn't have to bear that burden for everyone when actual filthy rich people exist. (Vice) 

  • Bless you, weirdos in Animal Crossing. (Polygon) 

  • That thing about life returning to the waters of Venice was actually credible, it seems. Huh! (The Guardian) 

  • Even more seemingly fantastical, the rona has turned Nextdoor nice. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Here's a good collection of WFH mishaps for all of us. (Fast Company) 

  • Speaking of WFH, the BA Test Kitchen is definitely on that train, too. (~$Vulture) 

  • Fish at the bottom of the sea undertake seasonal migrations. Why, though? Why? (NSU Florida) 

  • I suspect the underlying cause is going to take a long time to actually figure out for real, but "women live longer" turns out to be true for a whole bunch of animals aside from us humans. (U of Bath) 

  • For when this is all over, some thoughts on how to design cities and buildings to better prepare for pandemics. (Fast Company) 

  • Machine learning has shortened what would be a 50-year search for new battery materials to five weeks. (MIT) 

  • Podcast listening has actually declined since we all went into isolation, probably because nobody has a commute anymore. (WWD)

A Fictional Thing

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

A band and their album

Steel Hull Crush Depth, The High Cost of Killing

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.