the sea is still mostly unknown

February 24, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's tentatively hailing the coming of spring even though we really could've used more rain round these parts. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayNo new episode this week, but there oughta be one next week. That's right, we're back on the "every other week" plan!Some amazing person has now put us at 29 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings in Apple Podcasts. Let's see if we can get to 30! Or even 35! That's right, I'm dreaming big!!!!Instant Band Night 15: NUMEROLOGY📣 Two and a half weeks out 📣✨ GET HYPE ✨🎶 ROCK OUT 🎶Send your most trusted party people this link:http://bit.ly/instantbandnight15Or invite your people on Facebook if that's your jam* * w e ' l l   s e e   y o u   t h e r e * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I'm trying to come up with a way to introduce a friend of mine to Star Trek: TNG, and it turns out there are a bunch of ways to do it, theoretically. I'd be interested to hear your opinions, if you've got 'em!1.A list of s01 episodes to watch + s02 episodes to skip, basicallyWatch only these:"Encounter at Farpoint""The Naked Now""Where No One Has Gone Before" (Wesley-based reasons)"Hide and Q" (Q episodes are Required)"Haven" (this way Lwaxana Troi doesn't just pop up out of nowhere later)"Datalore""Skin of Evil""The Neutral Zone"Starting with s02, just watch everything, but skip:"The Child""Up the Long Ladder""Shades of Gray"2.Besha's SO suggests a simple 10-episode All Killer, No Filler list that serves to introduce various characters and concepts, like so:"Disaster""Who Watches The Watchers""Identity Crisis""Data's Day""Sins of the Father" "The Drumhead""Cause and Effect""Ensign Ro""The First Duty""Inner Light"3.I thought this was intriguingly ballsy, but my own attempt at the same type of list produced something very different:"Measure of a Man""The Defector""Yesterday's Enterprise""The Best of Both Worlds""First Contact""Schisms""Timescape""Parallels""Lower Decks"Is that an insane list? I look at it now and I wonder if maybe this is more like a Best Of instead of an Intro To, although ....... huh. No, I have no idea. Someone tell me which one of these works. Or do they all work?? 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.After a period of somewhat indifferent eating brought on by his ear infection, Quentin's appetite has come roaring back in a big way. I have to set my own breakfast up in the mornings before I give him his oatmeal; otherwise, by the time I've 

  1. Set my cereal bowl down

  2. Fetched the corn flakes and dried fruit

  3. Gotten out my vitamin and generic Zyrtec

  4. Grabbed a spoon

  5. Poured the cereal and sprinkled the fruit on top

  6. Taken the milk out of the fridge

  7. Sat down to pour and eat

He's already done with his oatmeal and is ready to move to the yogurt course. I think his spoon skills have increased dramatically, or maybe we need to make slightly bigger oatmeal bowls? Mavis thinks he may be having a growth spurt; I'm not inclined to disagree, honestly. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • This makes me laugh in a sort of weird, deeply-unsettled way: an expedition to map about 0.5% of the Pacific Ocean -- an area bigger than the entire state of California -- yielded 347,000 pictures of sea creatures, over 80% of which were a mystery to science. Some of that is down to the pictures being bad, but holy shit. Here's the writeup (Hakai) and here's the full paper (Frontiers). 

  • Psychologists may have discovered One Weird Trick to help you achieve your goals. (Queen Mary U of London) 

  • Who wants an electronic implant you can program and power with an external magnetic field? Everybody, it turns out, 'cause that would be incredibly useful. (Rice U) 

  • An actual feel-good story for once. Just this once! Savor it! (CNN) 

  • The electric vehicles we really need aren't cars at all. (The Week) 

  • A deep-learning network has identified a spicy new antibiotic all on its own. (Nature) 

  • This week's linguistic longread is about the spread of corporate garbage-speak. (Vulture) 

  • Here's every place that's tried a universal basic income experiment to date. (Vox) 

  • Exoplanets can be detected by the effect they have on their host star's aurora. (Quanta) 

  • It might be possible to assess your capacity for empathy just by scanning your brain. (UCLA) 

  • Researchers have modeled a more efficient, simpler design for a rocket engine they call a "rotating detonation engine," but they haven't worked out how to actually build one that works safely. (U of Washington) 

  • What in the hell is going on: did these people really figure out a way to see the interiors of objects without slicing them open? I'm sure the paper makes sense to scientists working in advanced (or theoretical?) optics, but to me it's entertaining gibberish; just let the title wash over you: "Hyperspectral terahertz microscopy via nonlinear ghost imaging." (U of Sussex) 

  • High school should start later for a variety of reasons, but among them: fewer car crashes. (American Academy of Sleep Medicine) 

  • Let's read another nice article about the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen!!! (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Uh: UMass Amherst researchers have created a device utilizing something they call "protein nanowires" that can literally generate electricity out of thin air. (UMass Amherst) 

  • There's a pink manta ray somewhere in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, people. Yes, there's a picture, thank fuck. (Science Alert) 

  • Here are some thoughts on where Jeffy Bezos could spend that $10B he nonspecifically committed to battling climate change. (MIT Technology Review blog) 

  • There's an ambitious coral rescue project underway right now in Florida. (Atlas Obscura) 

  • How do consumers actually feel about corporations that get political? (~$Harvard Business Review) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumPistol Wraith, A Strangely Muscular Darkness 

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.