sure, day 54, let's do this

May 04, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that still chuckles at this tweet and wants to know if the mini-thread that it inspired resonated with anybody else or if I was just narrowcasting at my old college housemate unconsciously 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway138 - A Vulcan MomentJon (@ferociousj), acting co-host Kelly, and special guest Lily (@lilyrosesloane) reveal a deluxe assortment of ideas for public utilities, weaponry, and consumer electronics, among others.We get into a brief but surprisingly deep corner of Star Trek lore on this one, folks. Also it may be worth noting that this was recorded on Day 3 of my own continuing shelter-in-place adventure.We're still holding steady at 31 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings in Apple Podcasts, but surely there are two (2) of you out there who can push it to 33 just for the sake of symmetry. Doesn't it just feel nicer to look at? You know I'm right!!!!Instant Band Night 15: POSTPONED📣 JULY 9TH 📣🚀 PREPARE FOR AN ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE AMOUNT OF FUN 🚀It's also still on Facebook if you're there, too* * s t a y   h o m e   / /   s t a y   h e a l t h y * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Let's flip the scriptUsually this section is for whatever I want to talk about, or just rant (see below), but I've got two questions for you first:1. Is there anything you want me to talk about that I haven't yet?2. How are YOU doing?My inbox these days is largely work-related, and I'm honestly curious how everybody I know is doing right now. Drop me a line, even if it's literally just a single line of text. I realize this is slightly hypocritical as requests go, since I'm blasting this to lots of you instead of doing it one-on-one, but look: it's not a matter of love, it's energy, which I don't have a whole lot of by the time my day is done: it's 70% parenting, 30% work, 10% personal interests, and by then I'm already at 110% capacity, so you see the problem. But: I do miss you and wonder how you're doing (yes, you), so let me know how you are if you can, no matter how briefly; every reply is a bright, warm light in my inbox.And now for some cusses.In case you're wondering where my head's at re: the 2020 electionWe live in a universe where Joe Biden tweeted "The American people are stepping up and rising to meet this moment. It's time for our president to do the same." Jesus fucking Christ, Joe. It is absolutely fucking mind-mangling to me that there exists a single person on the surface of this planet who somehow believes that Trump's even remotely capable of Presidential Behavior after four years of absolute unmitigated grade-A concentrated bullshit sewage pouring nonstop from his stupid flapping fuckwit mouth in every available public venue at maximum volume. FOUR YEARS OF THIS. Where the fuck have you been, guy? I'll vote for you because I fucking have to -- the alternative is clearly four more years of President Racist Fuckstick -- but I'm not gonna like it, for this and many other reasons. We could've had Warren, for fucksake. Fuck. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin has reached the stage where he's putting out nonsense rhymes for words he's uttered. "Time to sit at the table wable babel gable!" He often giggles after a string of them. It's very good. I don't have anything to add to that, honestly. Every age past roughly 6mo has been An Extremely Precious Age; at some point the other shoe's going to drop, I just know it, but I'm glad to have a written record of the before-times. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • We have the "fiscal space" to do a lot more in response to the recession the rona's going to bring, which we're gonna need if we want to keep it from being a disaster. (Center on Budget & Policy Priorities) 

  • Here's a nice rundown of the technical and conceptual challenges to building a warp drive as we currently understand them. (Gizmodo) 

  • An Amazon VP resigned over the company's response to the warehouse worker protests with a pretty decent blog post (linked in article). Good for him. (The Verge) 

  • Scientists have worked out a cheap, relatively easy way to produce hydrogen peroxide, which would be great news for hospitals if it turns out to be quickly scalable. (UCSD) 

  • The rona's headed for Trump Country. What this article presupposes is that peoples' minds are open to change, which means once the case/death rates start to climb, physical distancing and other sensible anti-rona measures will start to seem better to the folks therein. That's .......... a big assumption, honestly, in my opinion. (Brookings Institute) 

  • You could waste a lot, and I mean a lot, of time with this neural net meme generator. (Imgflip) 

  • How are we actually going to pick the vaccine? Turns out it's going to be extremely complicated and require a literally unprecedented degree of international cooperation, so 😬😬😬 (Nature) 

  • Speaking of international cooperation, creating an elite science council to advise the world on global catastrophes sounds like a good idea, but we'd also have to create a parallel one to convince the world to actually listen to the advice given, which seems like an impossible task. (Scientific American) 

  • As the cradle of American innovation, Silicon Valley's good at building software to make parts of our lives slightly more convenient, but on the whole, we're fucking terrible at building things we actually need at anything resembling scale, like medical equipment. The hell happened? How do we fix it? (~$MIT Technology Review) 

  • That said, look at what the chief scientist at Nvidia made: a $400 ventilator that can be assembled from off-the-shelf parts in about 5m if you know what you're doing. (TechCrunch) 

  • Normally it takes hours to make ceramic components for basically anything: the temperatures involved means it takes hours to bring the oven to the right heat, and then the stuff has to bake for yet more hours. What if there was a way to do it in, say, ten seconds? (U of Maryland) 

  • Social scientists have come up with a whole suite of recommendations for rona response on a societal level; the full paper seems to be free access, so why not take a look. (NYU) (PDF of the paper) 

  • Click if you want an exhaustive ranking of the sex appeal of every D&D monster in roughly alphabetical order. (Grant Howitt via Threadreader) Grant Howitt, btw, is the mind responsible for Honey Heist, so you know it's legit. 

  • "Our employment system has failed low-wage workers. How can we rebuild?" (Brookings Institute) 

  • Turns out there are other things that bubble up from the seafloor along with petroleum, like deep microorganisms from the crust of the dang Earth. Fhtagn. (Marine Biological Laboratory) 

  • While we're all still isolating, rekindling contact with people you fell out of touch with is nice, actually. ($NYT) 

  • The sheer scale of this grift combined with its utterly shambolic execution is mind-boggling. At least it sounds like he doesn't get to keep the money? (BuzzFeed News) 

  • On the occasion of his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly has 68 bits of unsolicited advice for us. (The Technium) 

  • "In a Pandemic, Is ‘Wellness’ Just Being Well-off?" (The Cut) 

  • One of the theoretically fundamental constants of the universe turns out not to be. What? (U of South Wales)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumSparkleshark, We Will Take What We Need Until it Is Gone From You 

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.