so what's going on today, folks?

November 02, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that reminds you to breathe and consider taking a quick walk around the block, 'cause this shit is probably going to be more of a marathon than a sprint 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway150 - Mixologists and Bibliophiles Unite"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Jenna (@rockbottomyet) unveil astounding dating and drinking-related ideas while pondering a media-related mystery."In which Jenna, one of our favorite guests, makes a triumphant return, this time with an idea file of her own that turns out to be full -- full! -- of untold treasures.I'm going to continue to assume that some of you have already voted, as I did some time ago; now that you've taken care of that large-scale civic duty, you can accomplish something small but still meaningful and hit that ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating in Apple Podcasts!!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.You know what I wish? I wish Instagram had functionality similar to Twitter's Lists. I could make a List comprising all the people I already follow, who are of course great, and another one that's nothing but former Bake Off contestants. Because at this point there's like a hundred of them, and I think it would be really soothing to just see their content and only their content for a day like today (or a week like this week) instead of my fellow citizens' fretting and urges to vote. I voted -- believe me, I fuckin' voted weeks ago by dropoff ballot -- and now that it's well and truly out of my hands, I need to think about literally anything the fuck else for just a zeptosecond or two. This should be an easy feature to build, right? Let's have it in an update by the end of this email, okay? Thanks. Thanks in advance! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.The neighborhood we moved to likes to decorate for Halloween. It's pretty charming, I have to tell you. Having lived in apartments or townhouses exclusively since graduating, this is the first standalone house I've ever rented, and also it's been one fucking shithouse year, so I just didn't have the energy to decorate (we haven't even hung any of our art we've accumulated on the inside of the place). We did have an idea for Quentin's costume, though, since he already has a space helmet and loves talking about space -- one of his favorite books for a long time was a cutesy storybook about Dr. Mae Jemison, which I could probably still recite from memory if pressed. We got him a longsleeve shirt and pants of the same orange color; all it needed was a little dressing up to become a flight suit. I cut a little tape and took some scissors and an exacto knife to a few swatches of construction paper, and the result was minimalist but really worked (in my humble opinion). I think I may have discovered my homemade Halloween costume aesthetic; we'll see what he wants to be next year and how I can pull it off with as few elements as possible, I guess! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Today's going to be a shitshow. Let's remember that. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Here's a guide that goes state by state: when will we know the results? (Vice) 

  • "How to Tell If the Election Will Get Violent" (~$Atlantic) 

  • If you didn't get quite enough Halloween, give this article about an extremely sweet pumpkin-carving game a read. (Rock Paper Shotgun) 

  • "Mythbusting: 5 common misperceptions surrounding the environmental impacts of single-use plastics" (U Michigan) As long as we're talking about 'em, plastic recycling doesn't produce a whole lot of super useful material, but that may be about to change, at least for one category of plastics. (The Conversation) 

  • The Atlantic has a good one for us this week on "The Difference Between Feeling Safe and Being Safe: The pandemic has broken Americans’ understanding of what to fear." (~$Atlantic) 

  • Some folks at Intel are working on an open-source way to turn smartphones into brains for robots. Right now it looks pretty cute, honestly. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • On one level it's slightly disappointing because Wohl is so unbelievably fucking stupid and inept, he makes an incredibly easy target, but on the other, he's escaped real consequences for so long that it's delicious to see the possibility he might actually face some. (Cleveland Plain Dealer) 

  • Floating gardens can make a positive impact on water quality. (Geological Society of America) 

  • At least one moral theologian detects a small but possibly growing crack in evangelical support for Trump; let's see how that bears out. (The Conversation) 

  • Someone let the farmers know that adding biochar to their soil can cut irrigation costs by a shocking amount. (Rice) 

  • Next time there should be a whole legion of these: a professional dominatrix who forces her Trump-supporting clients to vote Biden. (Daily Beast) 

  • I'm not quite sure how to feel about healthcare as a climate solution? (UC Santa Barbara) 

  • Here's a robot that can spin its wheels in a way that ensures it lands the right way up every time. (IEEE Spectrum) Speaking of robots, applying the lessons of dog training can speed up their task learning. (Johns Hopkins U) 

  • This article breaks down why boomers are so vulnerable to conservative bullshit nonsense, but doesn't provide any solutions. I mean, delineating the causes is sort of the first step toward one, at least? (HuffPo) 

  • Ancient Twinkies have provided an entertainingly weird mycological mystery. (NPR) 

  • We all like to talk a big game about the importance of empathy, but the data tells us that we think less of people depending on who they're empathizing with. The good news is that we seem to be doing it right: people who empathize with assholes get the sideeye they deserve. (UC Davis) 

  • Can human brain organoids become conscious? How the fuck would we even know? (Nature) 

  • There may have already been five different breeds of dog 11,000y ago. (Francis Crick Institute) 

  • Average human body temperature has decreased over the past two decades and nobody's really sure why. (UC Santa Barbara) 

  • Now that work from home is a thing, millions of Americans are planning to move. (NPR) 

  • Now it's time for an interesting (or at least diverting) longread about the creatures that emerged just before the Cambrian explosion. (Nature) 

  • Speaking of creatures from the primordial ooze, Joe Rogan is a stupid person's idea of what a smart person is. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • An ROV expedition about a half-mile down at the Great Barrier Reef caught footage of a ram's horn squid in its natural environment for the first time ever. (Science Alert) 

  • It took 37y, but restoration ecologists managed to transform a scrubby bullshit forest into something much more like its ancient self. (U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) 

  • Am I going to have to start listening to this inane-but-secretly-genius-sounding podcast about a dumb character's search for the "truth" behind the death of McDonald's pizza? ($NYT) 

  • Data from the Kepler telescope has led some scientists to peg their estimate of the galaxy's total inhabitable planets to 300M. (SETI) 

  • Microgrids are becoming a thing, at least partially because our infrastructure as it currently exists is "hella shitty" (that's a technical term). (EE News) 

  • The ESA has figured out where their Philae lander touched down, and it turns out comets might be much, much softer than we thought -- like "more fragile than freshly-fallen snow" soft. (Nature) 

  • Social activity provides tangible mental benefits, but it's always possible to overdo it. (The Conversation) 

  • Black soldier fly larvae are nutritious and high-yield, but how the hell are we going to get over our aversion to eating bugs? (U of Queensland) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumTouch Football All-Stars, In the Lee of Her Pitiless Gaze 

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.