Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that needs to be careful around these sugar-free Werther's Originals
You'll Like This
Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.
Instant Band Night Returns Sometime Soonish?
I'm not going to lie: the team working on bringing Instant Band Night back has had some stuff going on. But it may yet return, so we should keep the hope alive and watch this space in the meantime!!
Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOU
Spare time has still been difficult to come by as of late; we know this. But we all need releases, and believe me when I say ceramics are high on the list for me even if I haven't been able to get my hands on the clay in a bit. Thus: the store still remains, and know that I haven't stopped thinking about new weirdos and perhaps even some dishware?? Watch this space, is all I'm gonna say, but take a peek at the shop in the meantime — maybe that garden you've been planting (or thinking about planting) needs a little buddy in there to surprise passersby?
Idea Factory Giveaway
I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after four+ 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.
Nothing this time, folks, too much to do around here!!
#dadthoughts
Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.
Felix's birthday is coming in about a month, so of course we needed to send the invites to his party today lest we fall behind; it's real birthday hours in our neck of the woods right now (there are two parties this weekend). It's hilarious to me that everybody specifies "PLEASE no presents!!" on the invite, but then sends everyone away with a goodie bag that has at least one little toy in it; the Great Material Continuum provides. Word to the wise: the biggest hit for Felix in the last few months was definitely one of these suction cup pop tube robots, so I think we're gonna get one for everybody along with probably a couple packs of fruit snacks and maybe some stickers. Little kids are easy to please!
Also, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who wrote in last week with breakfast cereal opinions and anecdotes; my readership is boutique-size but extremely high-value!!!
Fascination Corner
I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.
We really, truly need to get the fuck rid of Fox News. (The Conversation)
Anyone who's been daydreaming about just buying a big place to live with like five friends and being a happy community together should read this very good advice first. (Supernuclear)
The Scientists have successfully safety tested the first Machine-designed vaccine in humans, which happens to be an attempt at a universal coronavirus vaccine. Damn!! (U of Cambridge via Science Daily) (Paper)
Florida's the first state to sue OpenAI and Sam Altman personally for fucking up AI safety by not having it in any meaningful sense. (NPR)
According to the numbers, the EU could get fully half the materials it needs for green energy by mining the trash it's already thrown away. (Anthropocene)
Robotaxis don't cut down on traffic any more than human-driven ridehailing does, which is to say not at all. (Ars Technica)
They fixed it, but for a while there, any hacker with a VPN could ask Meta's support bot to give them access to high-profile Instagram accounts and it would just do it. (404 Media)
Fog is full of bacteria, it turns out, which to my mind just raises a whole lot more questions. Questions like: how'd they get in there? Are they just hanging out in the air all the time?? Are we breathing them in every time we go outside??? Are we breathing them in .............. right now???? (Futurism)
The federal Animal and Plant Inspection Service building has been infested by bedbugs. (NOTUS)
If we're going to have a goddamn technocapitalist dystopia on our hands, at least we can also have women building rad cyberdecks. (TechCrunch)
Bees have demonstrated the ability to problem solve in lab conditions. (~$Science)
The 144-year construction of the Sagrada Familia has been announced as "symbolically completed." (The Art Newspaper)
Socialization appears to be a baseline animal need, but if that's true, then where in the brain does it live? (Knowable)
The Scientists have observed a microbe that turns into what they're technically calling a cannibalistic supergiant that rampages around eating its fellows for 24h before shrinking back down to normal. (Science Alert)
Chinese robot companies are racking up millions of hours of training data by paying people to film themselves doing everyday chores. (Rest Of World)
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 Maximus Mazar 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 Luke Jones on Unsplash
No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think sounds like someone else's memory of what that one Modest Mouse song sounded like to them. Does that make sense?
I still could use some more submissions to build out a notional Reader Submission Month for band/album/artwork combos! Feel free to send something in; just tell me how you want to be credited!
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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at this page right here (which also has the archive)!
