the first rule of Covid Club

March 14, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wants everyone to know the first rule of Covid Club is that you can definitely talk about Covid Club; in fact it's probably the only rule 

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.You can read the #dadthoughts section for a better idea of the timeline, but I caught the rona sometime last week and started to really feel it on Friday. It mostly just feels like a moderate cold, except for the part where I live in absolute terror of losing my senses of taste/smell and having them return all fucked up, which I've read a little about and sounds like the most horrifying thing that could happen. I've been trying to smell/ taste things and wondering: is this it? are they gone? are they going to come back in a way where the only thing I can apparently taste is garbage? Just now I shoved my face into a container of Trader Joe's garlic dip and got absolutely nothing, so it's gone. Great. On the one hand, this does render me mayonnaise-proof for the next howeverlong. I no longer have to worry about what condiments got accidentally included on my burgers or burritos, etc. On the other hand, I just have to worry about it all coming back in the most horrible way possible! So that's where my head's at these days, mostly.edit: As of this morning (Tuesday the 15th), I can actually report that it's not all the way gone -- it's almost like I'm tasting the ghost of whatever I'm eating -- but this phenomenon remains deeply unnerving. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Last Tuesday, we got an email from Quentin's preschool letting us know a couple kids had tested positive for the rona, and would everyone please schedule PCRs and do a home test Wednesday before sending their kids to school. Quentin's home test turned up positive incredibly quickly, and thus began our Journey Into Isolation. He's fine, of course; he was fine the whole time, except for a strange cough/snot situation he'd started having the week prior -- we'd taken him in for a PCR when it showed up, and it came back clean -- so our best guess is he caught some sort of bullshit cold, and then a week later the rona found him. Felix's nose has been a little runny, and he's running a manageable fever, but he's otherwise in good spirits aside from his usual occasionally antagonistic attitude toward naps.Mavis and I started feeling crappy on Friday. Interestingly, we've got slightly different varieties of crappy: mine is a blend of feverish chills and a very occasional cough, while Mavis is feeling aches and a sore throat. Thanks to a 230a wakeup that featured a readymade headache, I've discovered that ibuprofen works miracles for me, so that's nice. As of this writing, which is Monday the 14th, I think I'm feeling slightly better than I was yesterday, so let's hope this trend continues. (edit: now that it's Tuesday the 15th I definitely feel better, which is encouraging)Quentin, the Patient Zero of our house, is doing fine -- the only symptoms we can really see are his cough and the occasional snot, which again predate his exposure significantly, so it's going to be up to a rapid antigen test to tell us when it's time to send him back to school. The lasting impact that I currently fear the most is that we've allowed another TV show into our house -- Octonauts -- to which he's currently fiercely addicted. The end of every 13m episode features a "creature report" where they do a song about the sea creature they've just encountered, and it's basically impossible to purge from my brain. The show is otherwise adorable, but learn from my example and heed this warning about the song. Beware!!!!!! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Cop fuckups are literally costing billions. ($WaPo) 

  • Kinda sounds like DAOs don't really work, folks! ($NYT) 

  • This almost certainly shouldn't be new information, but The Scientists have done the math, and it turns out living in a community with a lot of racism in it makes your health worse. (American Psychological Association) 

  • Not only is it probable that the Amazon is closer to the tipping point than we thought, we won't be able to tell when we've crossed it until it's too late. (Guardian) 

  • Sure sounds like bug farming is going to become a thing, but it's going to take a lot to get me onboard, personally. (NEO.LIFE) 

  • Why are movies so long? (Variety) 

  • The appearance of life on Earth actually left measurable traces down to the lower mantle of the planet. (ETH Zurich) 

  • The Scientists have run tests that confirm common houseplants can remove air pollutants, but they're not .......... entirely sure how. (U of Birmingham) 

  • The use of leaded gasoline shaved somewhere between 3-7 IQ points off every American before it was banned. (Duke) 

  • There's a particular sentence structure in legalese that makes it harder to understand. (MIT) 

  • The wreck of the Endurance has been found. I know it's mostly the music doing the work, but the video is oddly soothing: who wouldn't like to just be down at the bottom of the Antarctic sea, getting gently colonized by anemones. (BBC) 

  • Observations of yellow-bellied marmots indicate that the ability to hibernate really does lengthen your lifespan, at least if you're a yellow-bellied marmot. I'm just linking to this one so we can all look at yellow-bellied marmots. (UCLA) 

  • The Scientists think it might be possible to squeeze CO2 into materials called "CO2 hydrates" that could be stored at the bottom of the ocean to prevent them from blowing back up into CO2. (Natl U of Singapore) 

  • According to archaeological evidence, one of the longest-lasting cities in ancient Mexico endured for over a millennium because it was a nice place to live with a more cooperative mindset. (Field Museum) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some bandsThe ConfusersArsebastardQUEENUS(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds 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.