Snoopy Quest 2017

October 30, 2017

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, where we're still on high alert for the arrival of a certain baby. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway55 - Luchador Appropriation Anxiety"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Liz Dembski uncover ideas around art, food trucks, and a startup idea that may or may not have already been done."This was the first episode recorded with Besha after she got back from her sojourn in the Brit-lands; she returned with some weirdly interesting information about land usage over there.You can subscribe using:Apple PodcastsRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/ 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.There is a stuffed Snoopy still in my possession that I've had since more or less the day I was born. At some point in my childhood, I read the tag on his bottom: KNICKERBOCKER, which presumably was the name of the company licensed to make him. I, of course, concluded at the time that it was his actual name, and so this Snoopy has been Knickerbocker ever since. Thirty-ish years later (I don't know when I learned to read; when do kids learn to read?), Knickerbocker is still kicking around, but he's getting a little threadbare; he's seen some shit. Baby Lemon is going to get to meet him, maybe they'll even become bros, but Lemon deserves a Snoopy of their own. This turned out to be harder than I thought. The text below is a Twitter rant that resulted from a, well, you'll see: 

  • Pro tip: there is no place on the surface of the Earth that will sell you a Snoopy in person in this, the year of our lord 2017 

  • I know you can buy a Snoopy online but I wanted to meet potential Snoopies and judge their firsthand suitability for my impending offspring 

  • None of the indie toy stores I called had a line on a Snoopy of any sort, they suggested I attempt contact with "big box" toy retailers 

  • I AM AWARE THEY'RE ON TOYS R US DOT COM BUT GUESS WHAT THEY *DON'T* HAVE ON THEIR PHYSICAL STORE LOCATION SHELVES BECAUSE I CHECKED MYSELF 

  • Also, nobody talk to me about a Hallmark store, all the Snoopies they have at Hallmark stores are some Halloween bullshit right now 

  • I AM NOT GETTING MY KID A SNOOPY COVERED IN SPIDERWEBS OR WEARING SOME KIND OF PUMPKIN COSTUME, I WANT *SNOOPY* NOT A GOURD GOLEM BEAGLE 

  • Just say No to eldritch Snoopies, Dunwich Horror Snoopies, blood wraith Snoopies, undead psychovore Snoopies, antediluvian chaos herald Snoo 

  • Anyway I went on Amazon & bought an extremely fuzzy Snoopy that ships in 1-2 months(???)And that's my courageous storyThe end; no moral 

  • (PS: the Snoopy museum in Santa Rosa presumably has a gift shop but they're closed while they de-smoke the place)

So despite my desire to meet a prospective Snoopy face-to-face, I ended up getting one that had an extremely odd "ships in 1-2 months" timeframe on it despite being sold and shipped by Amazon. Either that was some kind of weird glitch or they figured out their Snoopy supply chain in record time, because I got an email a couple days ago that said he shipped; he should be here Wednesday. Maybe Lemon will too. That'd be synchronicity for you.(Of course, my friend Jenna pointed out that the Great America theme park down in Santa Clara sells Snoopies. I don't know how I could've forgotten that, especially since I went there myself not too long ago. My memory is clearly not to be trusted.)Maybe this belonged in #dadthoughts, but since it's more about Snoopies and the near-impossibility of finding them in person, I thought it oughta go here. Plus, it's my damn newsletter and I do what I want. Also, I'm curious: who else here still has a toy from very early childhood? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Have I talked to you about Baby Club yet? The first rule of Baby Club is you have to talk about Baby Club.Actually, Baby Club is just my nickname for a thing Kaiser does here in NorCal that they call "Centering Pregnancy" or something, which is just a fancy term for "we put you in a room with a couple doctors and about 10 other moms+partners who're having their babies at roughly the same time as you." There's some guided curriculum-type discussion, quick private exams, and lots of time for questions and answers from around the room; it's fuckin' great. Baby Club used to meet every month, but as we get closer and closer to the fulfillment of the prophecy, the pace increased to biweekly meetings, and we just put together an independent email list so we can stay in touch once the official meetings stop. I highly endorse the Baby Club concept; I'm not sure how you'd get one started if you're about to have a kid yourself and your medical provider doesn't set it up, but hey, it's the future -- the tools probably exist out there.This is all just to say that I wanted to make buttons for my fellow Baby Club members, but I was having trouble coming up with a good graphic element until inspiration struck last night: I'm not an astrology guy, but I at least know enough to be aware that all the babies in Baby Club are going to either be Scorpio or Sagittarius. What about a scorpion holding a drawn bow and arrow with its tail? I know just enough Google Image Search + Photoshop + Illustrator to be a danger to myself and others. I think I've gotten it more or less worked out, but only time will tell (I don't know if anybody even wants a button, much less likes my goofy design); if they turn out good, I'll show everyone a picture in the next issue, maybe. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Goddamn hell yes transparent solar cells! Who cares if they're less efficient; the sheer available surface area of existing windows is pretty significant.

  • Is there any danger to taking the weapons bacteria use on each other and multiplying them to fight infections at scale? Honest question here. I'm glad they're doing the research, at least.

  • This week's Atlantic read has nothing to do with Trump [spits], but is instead about using tailored videogames played by soldiers to figure out what kinds of tanks and vehicles they'd actually find useful. Say what you want about military spending, but this is an interesting way to get your user requirements, no?

  • I don't want to say you have to read this thing about "robot bees" that can both swim and fly, but if you don't find out what their mechanism for actually exiting the water is, you are missing out.

  • For years, I've been saying that hybrids and EVs should make the TIE fighter's hollow roaring sound in order to alert pedestrians; here's an almost comically exhaustive study by human-computer interaction design studio ustwo.

  • We can eliminate extreme poverty and fight climate change simultaneously. Can we get people to a "doing reasonably okay" state and also fight climate change? Ehhhhhh.

  • Something that for some reason had never occurred to me before to wonder despite now being obvious: "Matter exists, but if antimatter is also a thing -- and we know it is -- how is there a universe at all?"

  • If you haven't already read a thing about the Heisei Ninja and how old he turned out to be when they caught him (not to mention his reasons), please do so immediately.

  • Climate change is making bugs worse. Can we get an update on that bug-killing laser array or what? Does anybody know somebody on their team?

  • I'm glad we live in an era where we can get oral histories of things, but most especially things like David S. Pumpkins. Any questions?

  • Can we get one of these flowchart-style breakdowns every time there's a Trump fuckup? We might as well just make them a regular weekly feature, honestly.

  • Here's your unsettling politics read of the week: 20 of America's top political scientists gathered to discuss our democracy. They're scared.

  • I honestly do not know how to feel about the proliferation of startups with names from deep nerd canon -- first Palantir, now Anduril (also, let's not forget a cloud services startup I called out in much earlier edition of this very newsletter called Bespin Global). It's ... good? It's bad? I don't know. Let me know if a terraforming company called Weyland-Yutani ever gets started, and then I'll have an opinion for you.

  • What's the smallest size/age a Batman costume comes in these days? Asking because of a reason.

  • Okay, so for about a grand, you can track the location of quote-unquote "anyone you want" through the magic of ad buys, but there are some caveats here that thankfully the article does go into. Still: not great!

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some bands started by catsU Stink UMorning GiftBirdblaster 

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.