the flu's no joke this year, folks

January 22, 2024

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that finally started to feel better just a couple days ago and still thinks it was a good idea to get the flu shot even if it missed the particular strain that hit us 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Instant Band Night 25: PI DAY 2 (PIE HARDER)You don't have to take my word for it anymore! The Oaklandside did a writeup on Instant Band Night and you can read it right here!!Whether you choose to play in one of the bands or just watch it all unfold, it's a joyful celebration of spontaneous creativity that we could all probably use more of in our lives; also, there'll be pie. Come have pie.March 14 20246p$10East Bay Community Space507 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 YOUNew year, new space! Why settle for a boring garden, potted plant, or domicile when you could have a little statue of a crazy-colored tardigrade, a delightful friend to hold your last fruit, a Star Trek buddy in a party hat, or an Ediacaran life form right now. Take a look and consider some clever ceramics for yourself, for family, or for a dear friend far away.Idea Factory GiveawayI 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.The Authoritarian Playbook for 2025 lays out a pretty comprehensive picture of what's going to happen if Trump wins this year. Fortunately(??) they also have a What We Can Do section, but I added those question marks because folks, #6 is "Uphold the rule of law and democratic institutions, and always repudiate violence", which are followed with points like"Protect the first targets and arrange to advocate for the most vulnerable.""Evaluate security at the community, household, and personal level.""Work to protect free and fair elections in 2026 and 2028."How, though?????? How are we gonna do any of this while also repudiating violence? Has it occurred to the fine writers of this otherwise very sensible document that at least part of the reason we're in the place we're in is because right-wing bigots are no longer scared to operate in public. We have to start kicking some Proud Boy asses. I don't like it any more than you do, but these shitbags need to be made afraid again if we're ever going to get right with ourselves. I'm just sayin'. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.I would say that right now we're somewhere around 2 steps forward, 1.78 steps back as far as Felix's potty learning journey.There have been a couple days when he came home from daycare with his original pants onThere have also been several pants-soaking accidents over the weekendHe has put at least some of his pee in the pottyHe no longer seems to be hanging onto his poop for days at a timeHowever, he also doesn't seem to recognize when he starts pooping, so we've had several poop accidents (or at least the beginnings of several poop accidents that then complete themselves in the potty, which is good)He doesn't seem to enjoy the fact of having pooped his pants, though, which is also dataHe seems to release his pee a lot when sitting at the table after attempts to get him to put it in the potty, which is admittedly discouraging but whaddayagonnadoThe current working theory is that we just have to be more diligent about sitting him down after meals and really getting some reading in. Neither Mavis nor I have had much of a speaking voice lately (I literally haven't been able to talk above a harsh forced whisper since about Wednesday), which I think he doesn't super like, so hopefully Potty Reading Time will become more of a draw as we start to sound human again. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Some animals are going to be able to evolve fast enough to survive climate change. Which ones, though? Can we help the others? These are all very good questions. (Hakai) (Paper) 

  • If you remember reading about cytokine storms during the furious start of the pandemic, The Scientists have now hit upon a method for calming them down, which is great news. (Osaka U) 

  • We are absolutely terrible at recycling clothes, mostly because they tend to be a mix of fibers, but The Scientists have hit upon a method for separating them out; now we just need someone else to investigate scaling it up. (Aarhus U) 

  • "The Self-Checkout Nightmare May Finally Be Ending: Self-checkout is a failed experiment, and a growing number of stores are backpedaling on these cursed machines" (Gizmodo) 

  • A cloned rhesus monkey has survived to adulthood for the first time; clones are still very hard to do, folks. (Nature) 

  • Stop to think about it for a second and shells are really weird: how do soft, squishy animals make hard mineral armor??? The Scientists have figured it out. (U of Konstanz) (Paper) 

  • New ideas have a harder time being accepted, and now we know why. (U of Utah) 

  • Some Engineers are highly optimistic about using The Machine to find not just new battery materials, but new materials in general. (The Verge) 

  • As the climate warms, the atmosphere should hold more water vapor; this is simple physics. But predictions that arid regions should see moister air have absolutely not panned out, which is fucking baffling The Scientists. (Natl Center for Atmospheric Research) 

  • How about a battery-free sensor that can harvest energy from its surroundings? (MIT) (Paper) 

  • "Burn After Wearing: A mountain of used clothes appeared in Chile’s desert. Then it went up in flames." (Grist) 

  • Cobalt is currently a big component of lithium ion batteries, but it's terrible for many reasons. Some Engineers have come up with an organic compound that works just as well (if not better) and costs way less to make; fuck yeah. (MIT) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists are having what I suppose you could call a surprisingly acrimonious time trying to nail down the nature of consciousness. (Nature) 

  • A mysterious brown stain on the head of a centaur from the Parthenon has been baffling The Scientists for centuries. (U of Southern Denmark) (Paper) 

  • Observational data from the Jimmy Dubs is really messing with The Scientists' theories about the formation of the universe. (Vox) 

  • Some Engineers have invented a way to print metal nanostructures that's much quicker and cheaper than anything else out there. (Georgia Tech) 

  • A new and better study trying to find neurological evidence that videogame violence affects our empathy says there isn't any. The method is interesting; I would love to talk to whoever had to build their modded version of GTA 5. Does that happen all the time? Is there a cottage industry of tech guys who have to make weird versions of existing games for research purposes? (U of Vienna) (Paper) 

  • "The tyranny of the algorithm: why every coffee shop looks the same: From the generic hipster cafe to the ‘Instagram wall’, the internet has pushed us towards a kind of global ubiquity – and this phenomenon is only going to intensify" (Guardian) 

  • I love that the cast themselves were actually split on Tuvix. Janeway was right to do it, btw. (Gizmodo) 

  • The Scientists have discovered surprisingly simple rules that seem to underlie the connections between brain cells. (UChicago) 

  • There are some astonishing correlations between positive community outcomes and just having a bunch of the farmers in your county be women, according to a new study that you can just go read. (Penn State) (Paper) 

  • Some Engineers and The Scientists have been working on fitting a robot with the right tech to capture super-detailed 3D images and sequenceable tissue from fragile deep-sea creatures, and the results are impressive. Get a look at that rotary-actuated folding dodecahedron, or as I hope they probably called it, the CAPTURE SPHERE. (URI) (Paper) 

  • A project to test the viability of beaming space-based solar power back to Earth has wrapped up with some really solid data. (Caltech) 

  • Do any of those One Weird Tricks To Be Happy actually work? The Scientists are analyzing the research, and there are in fact some real winners. (Knowable) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their album

Photo by Garvit Nama on Unsplash(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:

Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova on UnsplashReader and alternate universe music critic Steve says: 

That cover image says guitar music to me. Which means All-Pet Conference is a supergroup considering of members of the Allman Brothers and... Peter Frampton and Pete Townshend. Yep. And "Known Quantities of Mercy" is a bit of a fancy title for an album they were going to call 'Drivin'; it's Peter Gabriel's fault, they shouldn't have let him in for this album, he invited Brian Eno over, it all went a bit arty. For their next album they "forgot" to tell him about it, they called it Fast Songs for Fast Cars, the target audience couldn't get enough and thought that album should be President.

Reader Benjamin says: 

I never would have thought that drum-and-bass would have meshed with a jangly surf guitar, but here it really does.  Surprisingly well.  It's like Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, except collar-tuggingly sexy.  I remember a friend once describing an album as "Something you put on the stereo when you want to get your leg over." All-Pet has always been libidinous, but I suspect Quantities of Mercy is going to give Barry White a serious run for his money in the Gen-Zed crowd.

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.