Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that just now realized the last two Baru Cormorant books exist and can be absorbed posthaste

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 33: BANDSGIVING

It's true: we're gone til November, but that just means you have a couple extra months to build up delicious anticipation for the last Instant Band Night of the year — more time to mark your calendar and tell all your very coolest friends to save the night of November 13 for something INCREDIBLE. Come play or just watch; as always, it'll be like nothing else you've experienced.

✨🪩✨
Nov 13 2025
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 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 YOU

🎃🌴SUMMER SALE/NEW LITTLE WEIRDOS🌴🎃

That’s right, there’s new little guys in there!!! I've been experimenting with new glazing techniques and I have to say I think I've hit upon a winner! Also I have too many things on my "finished work" shelves and it's time to move some inventory, so I've put everything on incredibly deep discount. Decorate your garden or anyplace else that needs a splash of color or whimsy; they also make thoughtful and unique gifts for that special discerning someone in your life.

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after three+ 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.

I think those of us who've been hit with whatever bloodstream curse that requires us to watch our sugar intake can agree that the chocolate Magic Spoon is surprisingly good; it even makes chocolate milk if you leave it in for long enough and stir it around.

Can we also agree that the actual bag that holds the cereal is complete shit? It's extremely hard to pull open, and the odds that you'll create some kind of rip that renders your efforts to try clamping it closed a hollow mockery of human ingenuity are shockingly high. Are we supposed to rip it? By now we've all been subjected to that idiotic method certain potato chip bags try to force on us where we're cajoled to take hold of a pre-notched corner at the top and just make a tear down the fucking side of the bag, unquestionably the least reclosable state a snack bag could possibly be forced into. Is that what we're supposed to do here? Why would that be at all a desirable outcome unless we're also supposed to eat the entire box in one go, which does not seem like the intended use case by a longshot.

I don't want to put on a Seinfeld voice, but what is the deal with the shitty plastic they're using for this bag? My honest guess is that we're looking at Capitalism At Work here: they want to do what they can to bring the per-box cost down, and using crap plastic for the bags instead of something that will pull apart more easily without risk of tearing inconveniently helps them save money. But that's just a guess! Maybe their packaging team just doesn't know what they're doing! Here's a hint, folks: just call whoever did the bags for Cheez-Its. Once upon a time their bag was nigh-impossible to open, but it works just fine these days: it's a bag that holds crunchy things inside a box, it doesn't take superhuman strength to open, and its unpredictable tensile instability index (or whatever you want to call it) is low. Jeez, maybe I should go into packaging.

#dadthoughts

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

A couple weeks ago Felix brought home a goodie bag from a birthday buddy at his preschool that included a mini flashlight. This thing works amazingly well for (presumably) how cheap it is, and as an unintended bonus, the lens assembly comes off the front so the user can project a close-range "square stingray" of light from the casing. Felix was having a really good time waving it around after bedtime, to the point where we had to build it into the routine thusly:

1. Snack

2. Toothbrushing

3. Changing

4. Reading

5. 15m of booklight time (for both kids)*

6. 5m of flashlight time (for Felix) (contingent upon him not shining the light at Quentin in any way/shape/form)

The trouble is, this thing is so cheap the battery isn't replaceable. There's no door for it, no way to really get at the power source at all without completely bisecting the casing — it's clearly meant to be essentially single-use. I'm not sure what we're going to do when the battery runs down; for the moment we're safe, though, in that Felix seems to have forgotten about the flashlight's existence temporarily: we haven't had to do flashlight time for a few nights running. It's entirely possible he'll simply forget about it altogether if we don't mention it and he doesn't see it laying around anywhere. Best case??

* We had to put a hard cap on booklight time, a reversal of the more laissez-faire post-bedtime booklight policy, because otherwise Quentin would just stay up for anywhere between 30-90m reading and then complain the following morning of being sooooo tired.

Fascination Corner

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

• "Where does the climate movement go from here?" (HEATED)

• Some Engineers have done some testing and it looks like giving robots fear responses help them learn to navigate unfamiliar environments better. (IEEE Spectrum) (Paper)

• The Scientists have cooked up a fantastic-sounding bioplastic that's actually stronger than conventional plastics and degrades at room temperature. Let's gooooooooo (Washington U in St Louis) (Paper 1) (Paper 2)

• Hamilton Nolan's done this before, but he thinks (and I agree) it's worth outlining one more time the upcoming fuckery in store from insurance companies and cowardly politicians in the face of climate change. (How Things Work)

• As long as we're talking about it, The Scientists are ringing the alarm on climate change-induced groundwater depletion, too. (Arizona State via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Wasps!!!!!!! What to do when wasps show up to your picnic trying to steal your fucking pork loin or whatever you've got on your plate!!!!! (The Conversation)

• Check out the incredible tattoos on this 2500-year-old Siberian mummy. (BBC)

• Do ............. do individual cells have the ability to remember things? Fuckin' ...... how though?? (Quanta)

• Some Biomedical Engineers have hit upon yogurt as a source for an injectable hydrogel that can help repair living tissue. (Columbia Engineering)

• The winners of the Project Hyperion generation ship design contest have been announced! (Universe Today)

• Home Depot's got a regular-size skeleton coming this Halloween, but it's got animations and custom voice options whose potential for mischief seem high. (The Verge)

• The Scientists have performed the most definitive possible version of the double-slit experiment, which proves once and for all that Einstein was wrong about wave-particle duality. (MIT)

• You will absolutely not believe what Some Engineers have been fucking up for literal decades about simulating extraterrestrial rover performance. (U of Wisconsin-Madison) (Paper)

• That said, NASA tested a radar probe meant for the Europa Clipper mission on a recent Mars flyby and it works perfectly: hell yeah. (NASA)

• Is there really a krill boom or are we just overfishing the little guys? (AP)

• The Scientists think they've finally zeroed in on the genetic origin of potatoes! (Cell Press via Science Daily) (Paper)

• Universities need to stop capitulating to the fucking Trump administration already. (How Things Work)

• Gotta say I can't really argue too much with this ranking of the 19 best Taskmaster contestants thus far. (Radio Times)

• The Scientists report that reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone back in the 90s has really truly helped restore aspen forests. (Oregon State) (Paper)

• One of the factors behind conspiracy theories' staying power is the oft-overlooked fact that conspiracy wackos are having a nice time finding each other online and making pals. (PhysOrg) (Paper)

• It looks like Jolly Rancher's non-hard-candy offerings are blowing up, which is good news as long as they don't forget about the zero-sugar hard candy that my prediabetic ass just found out about!!!! (Food Dive)

• The Scientists think it might be possible that microbes living inside a subsurface ocean could potentially subsist on .......... incoming cosmic rays?? (Science Alert) (Paper)

• Putting solar farms in abandoned open pit mines would produce a tremendous amount of clean energy; just sayin'. (Anthropocene)

• The Scientists have captured video evidence of the deepest life yet recorded (5.6mi down), and there's a lot of it. (BBC) (Paper)

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 Laura says "This one is a tUnE-yArDs offshoot - maybe the acoustic tracks?"

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)!