Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that places no word count limits on dreams, friends

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 will return in July and then take a four-month hiatus, so if you've missed the previous unbelievably excellent installments, this really truly will be your only chance for a good long while. I promise you nothing less than an explosion of joy 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.

I got a cold and watched that Jenny Nicholson video about the Star Wars hotel (it's very good) and fully lost my mind: even after experiencing a comprehensive four-hour deconstruction of why it didn't work for Star Wars, I still think a version of this would absolutely work for Star Trek. Take my hand and walk with me on my journey into madness, where I have infinite money, talent, and team to make it all happen!!

Overall vibe

If you want to make a hotel/resort experience that takes place inside a fake spaceship, I still think Star Trek is the way to go: so much of Star Trek takes place on ships, and we've seen the rooms are pretty nice!! Like the Star Wars one, my Star Trek hotel is also a simulated starship, but with better rooms and more fun stuff to do.

Are you ready for this shit

You'll arrive at Farpoint Station,* where the concierge checks you in and your luggage gets whisked away by station staff. Gift shop's also here. When you're checked in and ready to head to your room, you're brought to one of several transporter rooms. If you never went to the Star Trek Experience at the Vegas Hilton when it was active, I am truly sorry for you, because they had a ride whose boarding process included getting beamed away: you and your pals were herded into a zone where you were clearly meant to board a run-of-the-mill 20th-century simulator ride, and then there were jets of mist and a sound and suddenly you were in a transporter room on board the goddamn USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D. It was fucking magical and I never, ever want it explained to me. Anyway, that's what happens to you at my Star Trek hotel: you step onto a transporter pad and get beamed from Farpoint to a Galaxy-class Federation starship. Exit the transporter room and walk down the ship's corridor to take the turbolifts to Cargo Bay 1, where a "temporary muster point" has been set up (this is where the guest services desks will be), or just follow the lit-up companel signs to your cabin. Yes, it will look like guest quarters aboard the Enterprise-D, more or less — maybe a little smaller — but it'll have the carpet, the plant, the glass coffee table, and most importantly a window that looks out into space.

Or!!! If you booked the resort, keep heading down the hallway and take another turbolift to a different section of the ship where the holodeck entrances are. The holodecks, naturally, are running a Risa program, so you walk through the doors and under the arch and suddenly you're outdoors looking at a beautiful landscape with a pool and whatnot, plus the resort accommodations where the more conventional fancy rooms are, and also the restaurants and entertainment venues, all themed. There's a Quark's. There's a Klingon bar and grill. A Bolian salon/spa. Talaxian arcade?? Nausicaan axe-throwing pit?!?! Come on!!!!!!!!!

Key learnings

Two things stuck out to me that the Star Wars hotel fucked up that I think the Star Trek version can do better:

• LARP too complicated: Give 'em credit where it's due, the Star Wars hotel fucking swung for the fences trying to make a multi-hero story guests could integrate with, but it just didn't work. Technical failures! Possible conceptual flaws! Too much stuff packed into the schedule!

  • The fix: Just make it mostly a hotel most of the time. One or two weekends a month, there's a two-day fully-immersive LARP adventure that people explicitly book separately, and it's more expensive (more on that later). But at all times, hotel staff will be in uniform with division colors that make sense: concierge and guest relations in red, support and janitorial in gold, teal for any medical personnel. I think that means the people working in food services have to wear that plaid/vest combo the Ten-Forward staff have on, but there are certainly worse outfits.

• No resort: The food at the Star Wars hotel was good, but there was no pool and no other luxury resort type stuff to do. It didn't sound relaxing.

  • The fix: Putting an actual resort in the Star Trek hotel under the guise of a permanently-running Risan holodeck program. The sheer elegance of it!! When the weather is bad, hotel staff in gold uniforms can make apologetic comments about how the sim's malfunctioning.

Roleplay though

People are going to want to stay onboard the ship. That's good! The thing about the ship cabins is you can build them in maybe two semicircular layers (the rooms will need to be curved because these are quarters onboard the saucer section, naturally) and just bury them underground. They don't need real windows — you're putting screens in that'll show a space view, especially when the ship goes to warp and you can see those rainbow trails. Inside the semicircle there's a lot of space where you can put the other, bigger sets: the bridge, main engineering, Ten-Forward, etc. None of those have real windows either, and also I don't think it matters where you put them physically: just stick a pretend turbolift in front of all the entrances and make guests take those whenever they need to go there! One thing we're also doing is putting little hidden speakers everywhere that put out a small amount of shipboard white noise; it may not even be noticeable on a conscious level, but it'll be there and it'll be soothing. This speaker network is also a great way to make an actual announcement if there's a real park emergency.

During most of the month, I think the bridge and main engineering are mostly just photo ops — maybe you have to book a timeslot? Just so you're guaranteed some time with just you and your buddies? But I also think there should be opportunities for what I'm going to call mini-LARPing: you and your pals can book an hour-long session and the staff trains and then runs you through a short scenario. If you've ever played Artemis or the actual Star Trek VR bridge crew game they put out a while ago, you know where I'm going with this: for however long, you and your friends are now the crew of a genuine-ass Federation starship trying to survive a battle! It's fuckin' Kobayashi Maru time, motherfuckers!! Everyone gets their own station! Lights flicker! Mist shoots out of stuff! The whole bridge shakes! There might be a warp core problem — better call down to main engineering! Whoever's down there gets escape room-style minigames and puzzles to work out and help their shipmates. At some point — and this will happen in every run of every scenario — there'll be a very mist-forward "coolant leak" near the warp core that forces whoever's in the room to duck and roll beneath a descending garage-style blast door before heading up to the bridge to activate their station up there; bonus points if the player can work in a "We lost a lot of good people down there, Captain." Maybe there's an actor in makeup who menaces the crew on the main viewer from time to time (pick beforehand from a list of villains! want to fight Klingons? Romulans? a rogue Borg tactical sphere? etc). Can you see it? I can see it, and it fucking rules.

I must at this point mention that in my world, you can buy an add-on where a camera crew joins you, and they cut up the footage afterward to make you and your pals your very own mini-episode. Yes the editing and post-production are expensive and time-consuming; I'm creating jobs here!!!! Maybe ...... okay, hear me out: there's an array of hidden fixed cameras and microphones built discreetly into the set, and also players are issued a combadge with an individual RFID tracker that pings the cams and mics, so they only save footage when a player comes close. After the players are done, a machine algorithm uses the data gathered to assemble a rough timeline of each player's material and create a draft movie that a human editor can pick up and fine-tune. Yeah?? When you check out, you get handed a USB drive that looks like an isolinear chip with your mini movie on it, and maybe another one with all the raw footage just in case you're feeling ambitious!!!!

For one or two other weekends during every month, there's a heavily advertised, much more involved, and way spendier LARP for people who really want to get into it. It takes place over two days. There are lots more actors portraying characters necessary for the plot/gameplay. Don't bother packing for the daytime: all players are issued a uniform they get to keep afterward. Do I have any details on the scenario or RP? I do not. But I fully believe it's possible to construct something you could run over the course of a weekend that would keep a hundred paying guests occupied, amused, and delighted, provided you have a truly ridiculous amount of money and people, which I do because this is utter fantasyland.

Also it probably won't cost six grand. Probably??

Let's gooooooooooooo

The rest of the time — and I cannot stress this enough — the Star Trek hotel is just a very heavily and specifically themed all-inclusive resort that has nice, fancy rooms and luxury amenities plus bookable ship cabins and opportunities for photo shoots or quick one-shot roleplay adventures for the real heads. You don't ever have to enter those latter parts if you don't want to! You can just hang out at the resort and have fun with all the themed entertainment, which I must stress is going to be both in-universe plausible and great, with something for everybody. Yes, there'll be a daycare, and yes, Flotter will be there in some capacity to entertain the kids. The food hall is my favorite part by far; I could pitch you Trek restaurant concepts all day. Romulan gourmet soup stand. Gummi candy store staffed by Ferengi where all the offerings are shaped like alien bugs. A vending machine where you can get a jumja stick or a three-pack of those nutrient pucks Picard and his new friends kept getting in "Allegiance." There will be an entire plant-based food vendor with a wide variety of delicious options for all meals, and it will be run by Vulcans.

A word on the gift shop

Question for you: have you ever watched a Star Trek show and seen a Starfleet officer pull on a jacket or shoulder a duffel bag that had the words "STAR TREK" on it? If so, then friend, I want to know where you get your hallucinogens because I want to experience this exactly once. All of the gift shops on my hotel grounds sell responsibly sourced, highly thought-out, well-made items that would be in-world plausible and have no obvious branding. Of course you can get a hand-carved horga'hn, but let's go bigger. Why not a light-up Tox Uthat for your nightstand? Ressikan flute for you, queen? How about a whole-ass knife store that's nothing but various kinds of Klingon cutlery? There will absolutely be an entire tailor's shop whose whole job is to put you in the Starfleet uniform of your choice; there may or may not be a Cardassian managing the place who's got a 50/50 cheerful/menacing vibe going on. There'll be not one but two stores that sell little models of ships: the regular ones and the gold ones. Don't tell me you can't picture it!!!!!

I think that's about it

Thank you for coming along with me on this bespoke journey into 100% insanity; now can somebody put me in touch with the Star Trek licensing people and also give me a billion dollars to build all this? Okay, thanks a lot!!

* For timeline purposes and because it's fun, I'm positing a version of Farpoint that got built after the events of the TNG premiere where the Denebians got their act together and just built a normal surface base without suborning an interstellar lifeform.

#dadthoughts

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

In recognition of the fact that I totally lost my mind this week on the Medium Ramble, I just want to acknowledge here in writing that for at least two nights running, there have been no post-bedtime emergences from Felix except for the one he makes when he decides he's done with his booklight (usually just 1-3m into the 10m span): he opens the door, hands me the light, and then goes back into the room and closes the door himself. Thanks buddy!!

Fascination Corner

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

• It looks like getting regular covid boosters can protect you against variants even the boosters themselves don't specifically cover. (Wash U in St. Louis School of Medicine)
  

• The Scientists have worked out how to make near-zero-emission recycled cement at scale(!!!). (U of Cambridge) (Paper)
  

• Would you like to stop seeing that Machine-generated garbage at the top of your Google results, or are you okay with it advising you to put glue on your pizza? (The Verge) Here's how to get rid of it for now, at least until (I assume) next week when Google figures out how to force it on us again. (Ten Blue Links)
  

• Hamilton Nolan wants to know what the plan is if — or more like when — Trump attempts to steal the election. (How Things Work)
  

• That subhead sure is becoming a common refrain: "Red Lobster’s Demise Was Never About the Endless Shrimp: Blame private equity and a decade of mismanagement instead". Is there anything private equity actually improves? (Eater)
  

• A fossil worm unearthed in the UK has The Scientists making Dune references, but it sounds more like a tiny xenomorph to me for reasons that will become obvious once you read the article. (Guardian)
  

• The DOJ is actually going after the Live Nation/Ticketmaster industrial complex! (Vox)
  

• Hurricane season's going to be bad this year. (Gizmodo)
  

• The Scientists have evidence that crows can count out loud. (Science Alert)
  

• A long and surprisingly comprehensive study in Finland suggests certain mental health disorders can be transmitted between The Kids These Days. (U of Helsinki) (Paper)
  

• What the hell is going on: The Scientists have discovered a bacterium that does the reverse of the usual, using RNA to write new genes into DNA. (Nature)
  

• That feeling of "oceanic boundlessness" you get while you're on shrooms is down to a pattern of neural hyperconnectivity the psilocybin triggers, according to a recent imaging study. (Elsevier) (Paper)
  

• Despite their insane budgets, the cops routinely trade their used guns in to firearms dealers in exchange for discounts on the latest models, and wouldn't you know it, 52,000 used cop guns were found at crime scenes between 2006-2022. (CBS News)
  

• Some Engineers have worked out a good way to recycle polystyrene! (U of Bath) (Paper)
  

• Huh: therapy cows who receive lots of cuddles show a strong subsequent preference thereafter for the company of women over men. (CABI) (Paper)
  

• Speaking of cows, H5N1 jumped to a person from a cow again, but just like last time it doesn't seem to have done much. (CDC)
  

• Reminder that the people who are actively making choices that worsen climate change have names and faces. (HEATED)
  

• Some Engineers built a set of Machine-powered headphones that let the wearer select a specific person they want to hear in a crowded room and stick to them even if they move around. (U of Washington) (Paper)
  

• The Scientists might be zeroing in on danceability as a measurable quality of music. You heard me. Look at the paper!! (Scientific American) (Paper)
  

• Here's the last word on the "man vs bear" debate for you. (Bikepacking dot com)
  

• A whole bunch of new exoplanets was discovered, including one whose year lasts less than twelve hours. (UC Riverside) (Paper) Also, a new Earth-size exoplanet dropped. (Royal Astronomical Society) (Paper)
  

• The majority of Americans polled by the Guardian believe the economy is in the toilet and it's Biden's fault, despite the fact that key economic indicators say the opposite, whatever the fuck those are. Maybe that's because everything is still expensive and nobody's getting paid, but what do I know, I just live here. (Guardian)
  

• Mosquitoes like people who emit certain odors the best, according to a new study, which means we should (in theory) be able to make really effective traps that mimic the smells they're after. (Nature)
  

• The Scientists did cellular-level studies of patients who received pig organ transplants and found some interesting stuff happened. (NYU Langone) (Paper)
  

• As a historian with a specific background in this exact thing, maybe we should listen when Thomas Zimmer has a clear-eyed point-by-point refutation of the most common arguments against the whole "is Trump about to do a fascism?" question. (Democracy Americana)
  

• Goddammit, Peter Thiel: stop putting Tolkien names on your nasty-ass bullshit. Palantir, Anduril, Valar—? If you're going to do it again, the next one has to be Morgoth or Melkor, full stop. Just fucking own it. (TechCrunch)
  

• Some Engineers created sensors inspired by spider silk that can be printed imperceptibly onto human skin. (U of Cambridge) (Paper)
  

• The Scientists have come up with a molecule that isn't a vaccine, but can stop flu viruses from invading lung cells; now they just need to test the shit out of it. (Scripps)
  

• Stars can die quietly — that is, they can collapse into black holes without going supernova first — say The Scientists after some observations of a far-off binary system. (U of Copenhagen) (Paper)
  

• Thrillist put together a pretty compelling list of the most scenic train trips you can take in the US. (Thrillist)

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 Patrick has the juice on this one: "While the organics of the galaxy enthuse about jizz, in the lower levels of Coruscant's oilier droid bars it's all about clunk music. Technology Problem's bleeps and bloops and heavy, thudding industrial beats cater to a whole generation of young mechs and servitor droids after a long day of doing the galaxy's dirty work. Bleak and futile, this new album sees Technology Problem exploring their angst in more emotive, almost post-clunk tone."

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.