social prediction time

November 06, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that is 1000% ready for CRAFT FAIR SEASON 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI know I say this every week, but the possibility that we may return to podcasting cannot be mathematically excluded! In the meantime, you can find the show's 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 podcastInstant Band Night 23: YOUTHURSDAY, THURSDAY, THURSDAYYou have one chance left this year to watch or make music with literally the best audience in the entire Bay!!Nov 9 2023 (click to add to your Gcal)6p$10East Bay Community Space507 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 YOUI've decided to experiment a little with the pricing in the shop, so if you haven't stopped by, or if you know someone with excellent taste who needs something that literally can't be bought anywhere else, maybe take a look right now and consider some clever ceramics! Brilliant little statues for your garden or home! A place to put your fruit! A little buddy to hold your garlic! I'm working (slowly) on even more delightful little weirdos and I hope to show you soon. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Nothing here for you this week, folks, but that's okay; there are plenty of interesting links below as always! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We had our yearly parent/teacher conference with Quentin's fantastic kindergarten teacher Ms. Ally last week. Everything's good, no worries. She did say something as part of her prep for our conversation that went something like "I'm going to talk to you about how Quentin is doing academically and socially," which made me think: I wonder at what age teachers can make an accurate assessment about where in the social universe a kid's going to end up? "Oh, that kid's going to be a Smart, that one will be a Popular, that one's a Sporto, etc." This is, obviously, not what Quentin's teacher talked to us about, but I wonder if she knows. Middle school was the kind of undifferentiated hell of everybody choosing one or two kids at a time to turn on like animals in a cage two sizes too small, but by the middle of high school, I'd settled into a weird but fulfilling middle ground between the Smarts, the Populars, and the Orchestra Kids.* Where's Quentin going to end up? My current read is that he's both smart and outgoing enough to probably end up more or less where I did, although his affinity for musical instruments is unknown. Judging by Felix's predilection for rolling and chasing balls, I wonder if we're going to end up with a Sports Kid in the #2 slot, which interestingly enough is also how my family went (I have a little brother who was a soccer superstar in his schooling years, contrasting sharply to my near-total athletic indifference). Seeing it typed out, I wonder if I'm just projecting an assumption based on my own experience and nothing else. Ha! "Yes, Quentin will also develop an obsession with The X-Files in high school and spend long nights at friends' houses watching episodes and playing Super Bomber Man until everyone passes out." Accurate! No problems with bias! Next!!* There were a lot of us in that space, which was interesting because it enabled us to create our own crowd that sustained us through graduation. I could write a medium-length book about my high school crew called WAS THIS NORMAL OR WERE WE JUST LUCKY that I think about five people would buy and two would read, but I really do want to know the answer. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • We have seven (7) years left at current emissions levels before 1.5C warming becomes inevitable. (Imperial College London) (Paper) 

  • "Why Norway — the poster child for electric cars — is having second thoughts: Electric cars are crucial, but not enough to solve climate change. We can’t let them crowd out car-free transit options." (Vox) 

  • There's been a breakthrough in solid-state battery design, though it's just a proof of concept right now. (Inst for Basic Science) 

  • The Scientists have worked out a way to cool a building down using passive radiative methods without sacrificing ventilation, which is extra impressive considering it's for use in hot, arid regions. (McGill U) (Paper) 

  • Some Engineers have, once again, for what seems like the thousandth time, created a method for turning CO2 into something extremely useful. Can whoever is scaling and commercializing these solutions talk louder so we know something is happening with them??? (MIT) (Paper) 

  • We're lucky E.coli is so hackable: The Scientists have created a version that can eat plastic and turn it into an industrially-useful compound. Probably this isn't going to be the last time they try it, which sounds great to me! (ACS) (Paper) 

  • Most ecosystem restoration projects are only a fraction as effective as they could be because nobody thinks "Hey, we should probably do something to keep hungry animals from eating all these tasty new plants we just stuck in the ground?" (Duke) 

  • If this gathering of a thousand Argentinian Spider-Mans doesn't bring a smile to your face, I don't know what will. (Reuters) 

  • How about a partially biodegradable, self-healing plastic that can change shape with heat? (U of Tokyo) (Paper) 

  • "Friendship research is getting an update – and that’s key for dealing with the loneliness epidemic" (The Conversation) 

  • The Scientists have invented biohybrid batteries that use formic acid to feed bacteria that provide electricity. (Wiley) 

  • Think about it for a second and it really does make sense that NBA players would know where all the good restaurants are. ($NYT) 

  • That did not take long: Sam Bankman-Fried is guilty (1), guilty (2), guilty (3), guilty (4), guilty (5), guilty (6) aaaaaand guilty (7). (TechCrunch) 

  • Speaking of scammers, I was just the other day trying to remember the name of Charlie Javice; I still think this one is funny. (Insider) 

  • This probably needs to be replicated on a larger scale, but The Scientists think cats might have hundreds of distinct facial expressions, which implies they're a lot more social than anyone gave them credit for before. (Science Alert) 

  • The Scientists are trying to figure out how your conscious brain changes its functionality when you're tripping balls on shrooms. (Inverse) (Paper) 

  • You kinda have to heat metal and beat it up in order to make it strong, which is why 3D-printed metal parts need a lot of tweaking. But! What if: lasers?? (U of Cambridge) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists are figuring out the best ways to turn complex datasets into music for easier interpretation, which (perhaps unsurprisingly) works. (Tampere U) (Paper) 

  • Want a dose of madness? Read these five very short interviews with some nuclear-grade morons who lost money on NFTs and still think they're a good idea. (Vice) 

  • Speaking of which: all my eyesight gone? People are still going to Bored Ape events???? (The Verge) 

  • The remains of the planet that crashed into Earth and made the Moon are still embedded deep in the mantle near the core. (Caltech) 

  • There are almost certainly fish living in a reservoir in Arizona who've been alive since they got dumped there a literal century ago, though whether they remember it happening is anyone's guess. (U of Minnesota) (Paper) 

  • It doesn't go super deep, but at least somebody talked to the folks who designed the 12ft skeleton. (Polygon) 

  • Seals helped The Scientists discover a new undersea canyon. (Scientific American) 

  • Learning a language that includes words for colors you don't have in yours can make you better able to perceive them. Which makes sense, but still. (MIT) 

  • Observations of a supermassive black hole about 14M light years away have shown it's only eating about 3% of the gas that surrounds it; the rest gets thrown out into the surrounding galaxy so it can start falling slowly back in again. (Natl Astronomical Observatory of Japan) 

  • Recent tests suggest that rats might have imaginations. (Janelia) 

A Fictional Thing

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

Photo by Eren Yildiz on Unsplash(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:

Photo by Kevin Grieve on UnsplashNo reader interpretations came in for this one, which looks to me like the second effort from a band sonically indistinguishable from Death Cab. 

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.