Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that cannot, will not be stopped, ever

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 27: JULY, JULY

Instant Band Night mixes music and spontaneous creativity to create a one-of-a-kind event that's almost unbelievably joyful to either participate in or just show up and watch. No, really, you have to see it to believe it! July will be the last one for four months, so if you haven't been able to make it this year thus far, this'll be your last chance for a while. I promise you nothing less than an explosion of jubilance in the form of music that will surprise and delight you every few minutes. Who could say no to that!! Get your tickets now and tell your five coolest friends.

July 11 2024
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

If you know somebody with almost aggressively whimsical taste, or just happen to be a person with an appreciation for playfully intelligent ceramics, then I know a very exclusive online store you should visit. Nerdy little totems for your garden or shelf! Ediacaran biota! Tardigrades with outrageous paint jobs! A fruit holder that you really have to see to believe! Get in there

Idea Factory Giveaway

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

So last week I lost my mind and did a 2000+ word writeup on my idea for a Star Trek hotel that greatly improves upon the idea for the tragically failed Star Wars one. I regret nothing.

One aspect of it that I hadn't fully worked out was the Special Two-Day LARP that takes place at the Star Trek hotel maybe once or twice a month, tops, and is meant to be (in theory anyway) the kind of multiplayer experience that the Star Wars hotel was shooting for but failed to actually deliver. I freely admit to still not having figured out the entire thing — I am, despite all evidence to the contrary, not a professional RPG or LARP designer — but I have figured out ............. some scattered bits of it. So I'm going to give you my current best guess as to what I think will go on inside this thing that I'm making up myself from scratch and will never actually happen: the essence of the creative experience.

Lower Decks! Lower Decks!

When you book your ticket for the Special Two-Day LARP, you'll get an email directing you to a form you need to fill out with your division preference (ranked choice) and clothing sizes. This is because when you arrive at the hotel — excuse me, when you board the ship — you'll be directed to your quarters, where there's a Starfleet uniform in your size and hopefully your chosen color waiting for you. And you get to take it home afterward.

You are part of the crew, but you're lower decks. You're an ensign at best. And your job for the next two days, along with everyone else who's staying onboard, will be to help keep the ship running (maintenance! scans! crawling through Jefferies tubes! your uniform division color will determine the sorts of tasks you get) and occasionally contributing to the active mission the ship is on — the story, as it were. You'll get an app on your phone that can either be a padd or a tricorder; in padd mode, it pings you with messages from your superior officers that contain tasks to complete, and also has a map of the ship. I've decided that the crew quarters/shipboard guest accommodations will also have small sets interspersed between rooms: science lab, sensor cluster, etc, where tasks can be done and small scenes staged if need be.

So yes: you'll be getting tasks to complete while you're aboard — you're part of the crew after all!!!!! — but we're not going to pack the schedule; you'll have plenty of downtime. You and all your fellow guests have been split into shifts — Alpha, Beta, Gamma (there is no Delta Shift) — each with its own complement of red, gold, and blueshirts. As a player, you might be assigned into temporary work crews comprising other shiftmates from different divisions who get especially complex stuff done as a group and then disband. "Report to Stellar Cartography and run scans on systems in the following sectors in the following wavelengths" (guess we gotta build Stellar Cartography; that's going to be a two-story set), "Get to Jefferies tube 47A and recalibrate the EPS grid manifolds," "Go to the bridge and monitor Science Station 2 for anomalous signals; log any fluxes you see," "Activate your tricorders and search the ship for inverted tetryon signatures, then report to Lt Snorflin at Tactical." You might only contribute part of a task, so the rest is left to other shiftmates or other shifts. This shit is going to be complex. We're talking escape room-tier minimum. You're going to need help. You might even have to go down to main engineering and sign out a toolkit!! (Something that's occurring to me that I enjoy is that the hotel staff will need to reset the puzzles after they've been solved, so the next work crew can do them when they're assigned, but since the hotel staff are also in uniform, nothing will look unusual to the casual observer. Ha!)

Yes there will be a big overall story that you'll be a part of simply by existing on the ship. But you'll only see glimpses of it: lower decks, remember? There are trained hotel staff character actors playing the command-level staff — the bridge crew — who run scenes, but will you see every single one of them? Likely not!! But you might be in the room somewhere for one or two important moments — and so will everybody else. You might see something happen on the bridge while you're scanning debris. Someone else might see an interesting little scene down in main engineering. There will be nudges, probably in the padd app or verbally from staff, that uhh you know, maybe go down to Ten-Forward and see what the rest of your shipmates have seen? The bartender in the big hat might say "Well, those folks over there look like they just got off duty, they might have something interesting to talk about." Trade some gossip with your crewmates? Piece together the story that way? Is that a thing that could work? You can tell I've never done this before but I'm having fun cooking here!

Repel boarders

The thing is that at some point during the ship's mission, shit is going to go entertainingly sideways and your ship WILL be boarded. But it's okay! You were trained for this! Literally: it was on your schedule of activities. Early on day 1, your padd app told you to report to Cargo Bay 2, where one of the security officers gave you the rundown on how to handle this exact scenario: "In the event the ship gets boarded, you'll go to your arranged muster point, where you'll be issued a phaser like this and one of these armored vests, etc," and you proceeded to practice shooting each other, taking hits, falling dramatically unconscious, getting revived (see below). Essentially, you and your fellow players are playing PHASER TAG against a team of actors, also in vests (and maybe Jem'Hadar masks or whatever the setting demands). Your phasers make noises, your vests vibrate when you get hit, and there'll be tech onboard that tracks the hits you take, essentially tallying hit points:* if you get hit too many times, your vest vibrates for a long time, your phaser stops working, and you have to sit down (bonus points for enacting as dramatic a stunning as possible, maybe). Lucky for you, other players who maybe don't feel like engaging in battle can be handed blue doctor coats and hyposprays that will "reactivate" you and your equipment, and you can keep going! In general, I want to say players in red will get a type II hand phaser, players in blue will default to medical personnel but can certainly be issued phasers if they're in the mood, and players in gold will be given phaser rifles, which take more hit points away from the enemy actors.

Battle will take place mostly in the ship corridors and sets, obviously, and I've just now realized there needs to be a Sickbay set. It's a good thing I have infinite money in fantasyland! I've also realized something about how to keep the battles going in an interesting way, because I don't think I can have an infinite number of enemies. But! Downed enemy actors can be dragged away by a teammate out of sight, and then reenter the battle somewhere else through an employees-only maintenance door or something — "Didn't we just clear out Science Lab 2?" "They just keep beaming in more guys!"

This is the part where I want to say "the outcome of the overall battle will affect the storyline" but really, it shouldn't. There's only two possible outcomes! The ship gets taken over (bummer), or the crew successfully manages to fight off the intruders (rad) — of course we're going to take the second option!!! I think how well the battle goes may have some effects: how about a ceremony at the end of the stay where players can get medals for various kinds of heroics? There's probably other stuff we could do, too, I just haven't thought of it yet. I'm only one man!!

Anyway, that's what I've got for the Big Fancy LARP. Details will have to be left to the actual writers and actors who'll be hired once this all gets built (in my mind, in fantasyland), but one thing I like is that to my eye, the Big Fancy LARP is infinitely remixable with the appropriate amount of prep time. For three months it's some kind of Neutral Zone drama with the Romulans, then next season the ship is transporting a dangerous prisoner who's wanted by Orion security, then in the fall it's Those Damn Cardassians Again. Come back in winter for Borg Fest! All we need is the world's biggest budget for actors, costumes, and tech support. That's doable, right??

A brief word on RP safety and game-breaking

Something that occurred to me while I was watching another Jenny Nicholson video** is that the Star Trek setting also has the potential to incorporate an intrinsic (though by no means unbreakable) protection against weirdos being weird, which to my mind seems to come in two flavors:

👀 Players developing parasocial relationships with actors and following them around trying to monopolize their time/attention
🤏 Players getting Inappropriate with actors

First of all, of course my Star Trek hotel has an entire little handbook on LARP safety that all incoming guests have to sign, plus a brief in-person training (that can totally be done in-world) once they get there. But! Also! The fact that all players are also low-ranking Starfleet personnel onboard a Federation starship means that within the confines of the setting, they have to follow orders. If you keep following the ship's XO around and she needs to get rid of you for story purposes or just so she can have a break, she can just tell you "Dismissed" to your face and you have to leave. Starfleet officers do this all the time!! Try to smack her ass and you will meet the ship's Security Staff For Real, and you will not like it. I don't have any more to say on that, I just think it's a neat little confluence of player/actor/setting requirements.

I think I'm done for real this time

That's pretty much it for the Star Trek hotel idea; I probably said this last time, but this is truly a shocking amount of thought to devote to something that has a zero percent chance of ever existing. Did I at least manage to bring it to life in your mind? Someone let Jenny Nicholson know what her work has wrought, and in the meantime, thank you for holding onto this idea for me; I'll see you at the Klingon grill in all our dreams.

* Years ago I played laser tag at a place like this down in Fresno that was next-fucking-level; unfortunately they closed, but the gameplay/tech was capable of all this, and it was truly excellent. So I know it's possible!!

** The Evermore one, specifically; I consider watching close to eight hours of this person making good point after good point to be essentially a masterclass bootcamp in mass-marketed LARP design

#dadthoughts

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

It's the last week of kindergarten for Quentin and we're just concentrating on bringing this plane in for a landing. He had a great year; he had a good class to mix with and his teacher's a superhero. His kindergarten graduation present has already been secured: a copy of what I think is technically the fourth but definitely the last(?) fully-illustrated Dinotopia book, JOURNEY TO CHANDARA (the third one seems to be a prequel of some sort and doesn't involve any of the characters we know, so pffbhlbhbhht). If past patterns are any indication of future performance, we're going to be reading this thing cover to cover to Quentin for a while.

Felix continues to be a bedtime Jack-in-the-Box of varying intensity: sometimes he pops up once or twice immediately after the ritual is completed at 720p and calls it a night, other times it's every five goddamn minutes until close to 9p. What's the determining factor? There either isn't one or it's such a complex gestalt of overlapping influences that trying to tease them out, much less mitigate them, would be a fool's errand. I think tentatively we'll settle on "it's a phase" and hope its duration is measured in days and not months. I'm holding onto a shred of optimism here!!!!

Fascination Corner

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

• I still doubt he'll ever see the inside of a cell, but I did briefly taste the concept of unfettered joy again hearing about Trump's conviction on all 34 counts(!!!!!!) [sickos_yes.jpg] in that hush money trial. (NBC News)
  

• "Are your internet habits killing the planet? The internet is quickly becoming a major contributor to climate change. Here's how to understand the problem—and what can be done to fix it." (HEATED)
  

• The Scientists may have captured the first known video footage of a juvenile colossal squid in its natural habitat; the article is worth it just for the charming details about the trip, honestly. (Hakai)
  

• Some Engineers have come up with a low-energy method of desalination for making water that isn't human-drinkable but is just fine for agriculture, which accounts for 70% of our freshwater usage anyway. (Anthropocene) (Paper)
  

• The Scientists think they've identified the neural mechanism that distinguishes speech from music. (NYU) (Paper)
  

• All we really know is that The Kids These Days are more depressed and using social media more, but the two may not be directly correlated. Touch grass, maybe? Look, the science is ongoing. Literally. (Johns Hopkins Medicine)
  

• Amazon's drone delivery service just passed another regulatory hurdle. (CNBC)
  

• I guess it's known that plants generally have bigger genomes than we do, but it's still weird that a fern — a fern!! — has a genome 53x the size of ours. (Science)
  

• Did technical docs on Google's entire-ass search algorithm just leak? They won't say, but 🤔🤔🤔 (The Verge)
  

• Well, a third person has now caught H5N1 and this time they developed a cough as well as eye gunk, but still — thankfully — no fever or anything else. (STAT)
  

• Abandoned croplands would be a good place to plant climate-mitigating plants, but how do we know where they are? Satellite imagery run through The Machine can tell us. (U of Wisconsin-Madison) (Paper)
  

• Some Engineers built a camera inspired by the structure of birds' eyes — raptors, specifically — that detect objects and motion a lot better. (Inst for Basic Science) (Paper)
  

• Unsurprisingly, at least to me, Polygon has the definitive take on the whole of Star Trek: Discovery, which I liked but also acknowledge has its flaws. (Polygon)
  

• The Scientists have discovered a better, greener termite lure. (UC Riverside)
  

• Evidence from a new study suggests little kids might trust robots more than humans, though nobody knows yet why exactly that might be. (Science Alert) (Paper)
  

• Goodbye batteries? Maybe? Indoor solar cells are spinning up commercialization, so who knows; it could happen! (~$Chemical & Engineering News)
  

• At least somebody (three groups in particular) is thinking about how to defend against audio deepfakes. (IEEE Spectrum)
  

• The Scientists have successfully mouse-tested an antibiotic that's hell on pathogens but spares the gut microbiome. Daaaaaamn! (U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
  

• Nutrition studies where the participants have to self-report their meals suffer from accuracy problems; taking photos works a whole hell of a lot better. (Curtin U) (Paper)
  

• The numbers say being a dad is worse for your heart than not, but better i/t/o overall death rates. So ....... I guess it evens out?? (Northwestern U)
  

• Tom, uh. Huh. Tom Bombadil is going to be in s02 of the Lord of the Rings show. Okay! (Polygon)
  

• Have The Scientists gone too far? What do you mean non-canonical amino acids, you maniacs?? Turn on your location, I just want to talk!!! (UC Santa Barbara)
  

• Some Engineers are sending a wooden satellite into orbit; not only do they think it'll be safer for the planet 'cause it should burn up completely when it deorbits, they say most (if not all) satellites going forward should be made of wood if it turns out to work right. Sounds good to me! (Science Alert)

• The Scientists have invented a transparent film that changes colors when specific voltages are applied, which would be great for making smart windows that could keep buildings cool. (ACS)
  

• Rich countries are stealing back climate funding they promised to poor countries, because of fucking course they are. (Reuters)
  

• If you needed a skin graft your body couldn't manage to produce, would you want to take one from a custom-grown animal? This is a question we might have to grapple with eventually; right now I'm not so sure. (Tokyo Medical & Dental U) (Paper)
  

• The Devils Hole pupfish have hit a population high not seen since 1999, those little blue scamps. (National Park Service)
  

• Another billionaire wants to visit the Titanic again, this time in what looks like a plausible vehicle designed and built by actual professionals? I gotta say I don't love billionaires giving their vessels names from the Culture; quit it, you assholes, those are ours. (NYT gift link)
  

• We should really be thinking about plugging used EV batteries into grid storage, folks. (Anthropocene) (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 Chris offers a glimpse into a frankly incredible universe with this one: "Shame Spiral's debut 'Put Your Mad Face On' introduces us to Elsa and Anadroit Ferrous, pioneering sludge-prog musicians hailing from a condemned children's summer camp somewhere in a region of the Vermont woodlands currently claimed to be owned by Canada, America, and an aging hypnotist at large in the south of France. This is the duo's second musical project together, recorded during their third legal marriage, and offers up an answer to the question "what if the negative universe versions of Mates of State fell under the religious thrall of a sentient drum machine with a slight case of epilepsy?", that must be experienced — preferably in an unfinished basement you have been taken to blindfolded via unmarked van — to be fully understood. Highlights include 'The Consequences of Saying the Name Jasmine In My Presence', dance floor filler 'The Car Is Dead (You're The Car Now)', and of course lead single 'Mother Was Right About Your Sort', featuring a looped recording of a shot from Elsa's derringer ricocheting off the metal plate in Anadroit's head."

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.