SPACEGAME is coming

June 26, 2017

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, your weekly window into whatever's on my mind. This edition includes an actual in-person event! Don't forget to scroll down to "Looky Here" (maybe I should rethink what to call that section). 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Thanks for sticking around while we checked out Hawaii; it turns out it's almost cartoonishly beautiful and relaxing. We drove up a dormant volcano, ate one of the best meals of our lives, and also got to climb aboard a submarine that dove 150ft underwater and drove us around to look at coral and fish. Seriously. Eight-year-old me would've been so jealous his entire limbic system would've spontaneously ignited. It was great. It turns out the way water and light at that depth work mean that everything is mostly differing shades of blue, but the tradeoff in losing some aquarium-style color is the fact that you're actually on the bottom of the fucking sea looking at fish in their natural habitat. Fuck a helicopter tour; if you're ever in a place where you can ride around in a submarine, do that instead! I wasn't even paid by the company to do this, it was just really exciting. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We're preparing for a pair of baby showers* slightly less than two months out, which means building the registry. Babies, as it turns out, require a lot of stuff. I think we've gotten a handle on most everything, but of course there are always unknown unknowns, as the saying goes. If you're a parent or have close contact with parents currently, what's one thing you didn't know you needed that you now know you do?* We're not having two babies. Because I'm the way I am, I've cultivated a variety of amazing and highly treasured social circles that total to a faintly absurd number of friends, which means instead of renting a banquet hall, we're just gonna have two showers: one for Mavis's family and friends, and one for me and as many of my local pals as can reasonably fit in the house of the fantastic person hosting it. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • The only way I condone this is if the cakes also taste nasty or are laced with bacterial spores. Which I realize is a crime. So maybe not.

  • When you read a headline about AIs that spontaneously develop their own language in an experiment on dealmaking, what do you want to read? Maybe some examples of said language? Thank fuck this got followed up.

  • I call bullshit on this study of people who actually like the Transformers movies; unless someone at Ranker wants to reveal their methodology, it's next to useless. Useless, I tell you!

  • Here's this week's "tech is making places like San Francisco impossible to live in" piece, with a twist: there are also solutions at the end.

  • Suppose you live someplace it's impossible to build a flushing toilet. What now? What if your toilet turned your poop into electricity and fertilizer? No, seriously.

  • They keep finding new exoplanets, people! It's like there's a whole galaxy full of them or something!

  • A company? research group? rogue gang of data scientists? fed a gigaton of data into some computers and came up with an intriguing map that redraws the five boroughs of New York somewhat drastically. 

Looky Here

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway45 - Drama for Funzies"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Annie Gaus (@anniegaus) recommend quality shows to each other before delving into a theory of weaponized hippie pastimes and other highly useful concepts."It turns out we're all into quality Gentle British Television, which I think is an indicator of its value in these troubled times.You can subscribe using:iTunesRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/SPACEGAMEIf you happen to be in the San Francisco Bay area and have ever wanted to be part of a literal starship crew -- setting course, raising shields, throwing power to the engines, all that jazz -- I'm starting a more-or-less quarterly event series at the East Bay Community Space that I call SPACEGAME, where you can have a drink and play a little starship bridge simulator you may have heard of called Artemis.East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609Thursday July 138-11p$5 door$5 for a slot on a crewBYOBHere's a link to the Facebook event because I'm a nice person! 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumThe Council for Sexual Responsibility, What Hideous Cargo Yet Remains 

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.