stuffed animal pals new and old

April 18, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that just this past week rediscovered how good it is to just get a whole pineapple and chop it up 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayThe thing about having a 4yo and a baby who doesn't yet sleep through the night is that you can't put them in the same room together overnight, and it's also not possible to put yourself in the room with him without causing even more sleep complications. Long story short, we're sleeping in the office (the house's third and possibly actual master bedroom, considering it has the attached half bath) on the pull-out couch, which is also where my computer is, so the edit on the last episode we recorded (which admittedly was last year) still isn't quite complete. But it'll get there someday!As of the time of this writing, there are still 43 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings, plus howevermany wonderful reviews. You have the power to take us to 45 and beyond: you!!Instant Band Night 15: TIME WARPJuly 14th! The line must be drawn here and no further!! We WILL have an explosive celebration of musical creativity that must be seen to be believed, and you! will! be! there! (Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  r e t u r n i n g   i n   2 0 2 2  + ++ +  h a n g   i n   t h e r e  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I own exactly one hoodie, and it's starting to show its age. I should get a new one, but the demon that lives inside my head wants it to be something just a little bit special without being ostentatious. I can't just get another copy of the current one because nobody makes it anymore: it's the command red TNG hoodie that ThinkGeek made during that sweet, sweet era when there was a real TNG nerd embedded somewhere high up in their product department.* In an ideal world it would be a zip front and roughly equally nerdy in reference but not obviously nerdy or cheesy-looking, which rules out that Boba Fett one that made the rounds a while ago. Plus: not a giant Boba Fett fan, honestly.It turns out they still make N7 hoodies, but $75? Is that just how much a good hoodie costs now? This is something I'd likely be wearing every day, so I'd feel better if I knew it would last. I've almost talked myself into it, but if you have any suggestions, feel free!* This was when they made the PJ set that was basically a two-piece comfy version of the season 4+ TNG uniforms. Those days are long gone and I've got a set in every color, which I avoid wearing too often because I really don't want to wear 'em out. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.While he still sleeps with all of the stuffed animals I took to calling the Crib Crew (who I suppose should be renamed the Bed Buddies since it's been a minute since he actually slept in a crib), Quentin seems to have nominated three particular stuffies to be his main bros during the day, too. Every morning he gathers the following stuffies to be brought down with him from his room: 

  • Bunny is still his unquestioned favorite who goes with him essentially everywhere and is always summoned whenever he gets a booboo. Bunny is eternal.

  • Cozy Doggy, interestingly, is the second. Cozy Doggy was a longtime reject from the Bed Buddies; at some point, he got snuck back onto the bed and Quentin never kicked him back out. The reasoning behind his recent promotion is still unknown.

  • Mavis works at Discord, who have a blue robot(?) mascot they call Wumpus; at some point they sent her a stuffy of Wumpus and he was partially integrated into Quentin's menagerie. At first, Quentin was conscientious about returning Wumpus to the office overnight, but lately Wumpus has been spending more time up in Quentin's room.

They don't accompany him everywhere to everything: sometimes Bunny is brought along on the ride to preschool and is left in the carseat to wait for Quentin until he's picked up in the afternoon. On weekends, Quentin brings Bunny up to his room for 1-3p Quiet Time; when we ask if he wants to bring Cozy Doggy or Wumpus, he always tells us no, because he might forget to bring them back down again. ??? You do you, buddy. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • "The Final Pandemic Betrayal: Millions of people are still mourning loved ones lost to COVID, their grief intensified, prolonged, and even denied by the politics of the pandemic." This one's a gutpunch, folks, courtesy of Ed Yong. (~$Atlantic) 

  • If you want to know why the leadership of gigantic social platforms behaves the way it does, you could do far worse than to read a couple long threads by a very smart person who used to run one. (Yishan Wong on the actual reasons why censorship is unavoidable) (Yishan again on why people are the problem -- specifically people's behavior) 

  • Your top-line non-rona Atlantic read of the week is this one about the out-of-hand polarization of America, why it might be the fault of social media run rampant, and how it could conceivably be fixed. (~$Atlantic) 

  • "Why So Many Conservatives Are Talking About ‘Grooming’ All Of A Sudden" (short answer: it's their latest bullshit culture war dog whistle). (538) 

  • If we actually stick to the promises made in COP26, we can avoid warming the planet over 2°C. If we actually stick to them. If. (BBC) 

  • Season 5 of Pottery Throw Down is up, people! This is not a drill (NPR) 

  • BART is decommissioning old trains and asked for proposals from anyone interested in taking a car; here's what's happening to some of them. (~$SF Chronicle) 

  • Timnit Gebru is still doing stuff! In fact, she's doing more stuff! (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • I'm not going to pretend to understand 100% of it, but this is still an interesting read about how the suspensions in EVs differ from gas-guzzlers. (The Autopian) 

  • Open science is generally agreed to be a good thing, but what do we do about advances in bioscience and biotech that could easily be turned to nefarious ends? (Paper) 

  • According to one study, your likelihood of perceiving men or women's faces as more or less dominant can be strongly correlated with your political orientation. (U Toronto Scarborough) 

  • I don't know if this is going to be controversial, but I don't think we've hit bottom yet as far as fuck-dumb covid conspiracy theories go. This looks like the bottom, but I bet there's way more room down there. (Vice) 

  • The Scientists have been worried for a while about the freshwater from the melting ice caps shutting down a particularly important ocean current, but a new mathematical model seems to indicate it might be more resilient than they think, at least to this particular stressor. (U Wisconsin-Madison) 

  • What we talk about when we talk about assholes. (U of Georgia via EurekAlert) (Paper) 

  • Cloning pets is becoming somewhat more commonplace. (~$WaPo) 

  • It almost doesn't need explaining, but here's "Why We Should Rebuild the Civilian Conservation Corps". (Aspen Institute) 

  • Enthusiasm for crypto correlates with the so-called "dark tetrad" of personality traits, which can be boiled down to "impulsive psychopaths" for headline purposes. (The Conversation) 

  • The Scientists have now developed a device with no moving parts that can convert heat to electricity better than a steam turbine. (MIT) 

  • A small survey of conservatives seems to indicate that they think the news media is trying at all times to make them feel bad. Which honestly it fucking should, because they're absolutely and unequivocally the assholes in the room, but hey. (The Conversation) 

  • Some Engineers have been thinking about using kites for generating wind power instead of giant heavy turbines. (Knowable) 

  • Here's a poll that will give you actual numbers on how hard JK Rowling has set her own reputation on fire with various demographics; the drop in Gen Z alone is breathtaking. (Morning Consult) 

  • Plastic batteries? Plastic batteries. (MIT Technology Review) 

  • Complex biological life might have popped up on Earth only about 300M years after it formed. (University College London) 

  • Okay! The Scientists have demonstrated a method for using methane-eating bacteria to generate electricity, which is a great climate 2-for-1. (Radboud U) 

  • Speaking of 2-for-1 deals, The Scientists have also worked out a way to make sand out of mining byproducts, which is fantastic because we're using a shitload of sand right now. (U of Geneva) 

  • Data seems to indicate we feel better about telling lies that we think might eventually come true. (APA) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some Federation starship classes and names that an online neural network gave me after I fed it two lists of canonical onesOriole-class USS Narc FlowScion of the Wild-class USS Neo GeoCaptain America: The Winter Soldier-class USS Razorcrop(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think these ships look like, because now I'm curious) 

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.