the germs of damocles

July 22, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that hopes everyone else is enjoying stone fruit season as much as we are out here. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway116 - The Lesser Chrises"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Ben Hoyt (@bhoyt47) dig up and vastly improve ideas for gathering opinions, experiences, and money for charity as well as restaurants and a must-have enhancement to the iOS keyboard."We should've had Ben on here forever ago, because the magnitude of the improvements he brought to some of these ideas is frankly infuckingcalculable. Also, the idea he bestowed upon us revealed a heretofore-unexplored world of frustration with the iOS keyboard.If you haven't yet, subscribe by searching "Idea Factory Giveaway" in your podcatcher of choice (and let me know if it doesn't pop up). If you're already there, feel free to leave a 5-star rating and a nice review (it helps; algorithms, etc, you know the deal).Instant Band Night 12: The DozenthOH IT'S HAPPENING 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.Not a lot to report in this space other than that I'm still trying to figure out the airflow in our apartment; cool breezes will waft in through windows on opposite sides of the place; are they leaving through the kitchen and bathroom windows? They must be, or else there's an invisible wormhole open somewhere that we can't detect. Or maybe it's time to postulate "dark matter air," which acts on normal air but can't be felt by living beings somehow. Listen, I'm working on it. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin picked up a cold from somewhere; no idea. This one mostly presents as a fever, a river of snot, occasional light coughs, and what must be a generic feeling of crumminess; kid's at like half his usual energy level, and his appetite is down.* He responds well to ibuprofen and he's not barfing or anything, so it's not as terrible as it could be. I'm mostly just wondering when it's going to hit me; if it's fluid-transmissible, there's no way I haven't had some breach of hygiene with snot-wiping or somethin', even though I wash my hands every time it crosses my mind. Check this space for updates! 🤞🎃* Though not out completely: he still drinks his milk and his enthusiasm for fruit and pickles (eternal shout out to Grillo's hot Italian dill spears) seems undiminished. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Hold up: why the hell do we think other people's productivity tips will work for us? (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Activating certain neurons in the visual cortex of a mouse can make it see lines that aren't there. It makes sense, but still. Still! (Science News) 

  • "So I want to be very clear about what the country saw last night, as an American president incited a chant of “Send her back!” aimed at a Somali-born member of Congress: America has not been here before." Read the rest. (Atlantic) 

  • Not that you really needed it, but this list of 10 reasons why it's actually a terrible idea to storm Area 51 is amusing for its wild swings between the pragmatic and the totally ridiculous. (Popular Mechanics) 

  • Eradicating mosquitoes with engineered bacteria and clever irradiation! Let's do this! (Nature) 

  • When 2050 rolls around, we need to be producing 50% more food and slash carbon emissions at the same time. There is a plan, turns out, but we need to actually follow it. The full report is longer than some novels I've read, but there's also a summary version that's only 96pp, so phew (Fast Company) 

  • Are we getting better at building beefier neural network hardware? Seems like it. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • A new technique that was supposed to resolve the question of how fast the universe is actually expanding just made everybody more confused. (Nature) 

  • I'm extremely curious to see what people buy and use the Boston Dynamics Spot for. (The Verge) 

  • E-bikes everywhere would actually help cut down on CO2 emissions a bunch. (Outside) 

  • Speaking of which, how about some 3D-printed carbon fiber bikes? (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • Some of these Democratic candidates need to shut the fuck up about bipartisanship or we're all completely boned. (The Nation) 

  • Jesus creeping Christ in the cornfield: fast food work is actually much more stressful and miserable than anybody (except the people currently doing the work) realizes. There's a whole book of this knowledge? I might not make it past the first goddamn chapter. (Vox) 

  • Penguins in a sushi shop. Penguins in a sushi shop. (RNZ News) 

  • Parenting is enough of a job that it should be reflected in the tax code. (Vox) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some superheroes/villains from a strange and exciting new comic7-Man ThunderDisastridFilthrichard 

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.