the sound of furious techno

October 03, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's proud as hell to be part of a wedding crowd that will absolutely mob the dance floor if/when the DJ decides to put on the Mortal Kombat song 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Ignite SF #15I'm giving a talk at the next Ignite event in San Francisco! Ignite Talks are great: you get 5 minutes, and your slides advance automatically every 15 seconds. This'll be my first one, but it's gonna be a doozy.Discount code: IGNITESPEAKOctober 117p447 Minna St 94103Idea Factory GiveawayIn the back half of 2022 I hope to recover enough energy to restart some hobbies, and this podcast is on that list. In the meantime, you can find its 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 podcastInstant Band Night 17: GO TIMEI don't say this lightly: you have to come to the next Instant Band Night. It's the November one (add it to your calendar now!), which means it's the one where we get a cake and sing happy birthday to Quentin. No, he won't be there, but we'll take a video!!If you don't already know what Instant Band Night is, imagine a great party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot. If you play music, you can be one of 'em, and if you don't, you can just watch. It is, and I'm not exaggerating here, fucking incredible.🎶🎸 IT WILL SOON BE TIME TO PARTY 🎸🎶🎶🎸 IN WHATEVER WAY YOU LIKE BEST 🎸🎶Nov 106p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  S E E   Y O U   T H E R E  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I literally just got back from LA, where I am pleased to report two excellent friends of mine got married in a shockingly beautiful spot surrounded by extraordinarily well-dressed and joyful pals. The DJ they hired was a beast, and I think we all danced a lot more than we were prepared for; my body feels surprisingly unpunished the following day, but I think only because a buddy advised me to stretch before collapsing into bed.Friends who live outside of LA but have visited occasionally: the light is different there, right? It's not just me? There's something qualitatively different about the color of the sunlight down there. It's more ........ yellowy? Pink? Can this be explained by smog? Haven't we radically cut car emissions over the past few decades? What's happening down there, or am I nuts, is what I'm askin' here. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.One thing I forgot to tell you about last week was that toward the end of the RSV infection's residency with Quentin, his right ear started to hurt. So we took him in to see a doctor, who averred that it was infected and that the cause was most likely one of two things: 

  • The RSV getting frisky and deciding to diversify

  • Some whole other bacterial nonsense getting established

We'd know in a few days when he kicked the RSV to the curb. If his ear still hurt, we could safely conclude it was a novel ear infection, for which she wrote us a scrip for amoxicillin; in the meantime we could manage the pain with the standard OTCs. 

  • The next day his right ear just plain stopped hurting all on its own.

  • Then a day or so later, it started to hurt again a little.

  • In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, his LEFT ear started to hurt, and his right ear felt fine.

  • I administered ibuprofen and decided to fill that amoxicillin scrip after breakfast, which I did through the app (usually it takes an hour or two).

  • Quentin had a good day at school, but then at post-TK aftercare his left ear started to hurt so much he was getting sad and distracted, and I needed to come get him because they weren't goddamn legally allowed to dispense acetaminophen or ibuprofen, and where the FUCK was that amoxicillin

  • I gave Quentin his ibuprofen when we got home and packed him off upstairs to maybe nap a little, and called the pharmacy, whereupon I learned there was apparently an "expedite" flag in the app that I was supposed to tick if I wanted it done same-day, which I absolutely did not fucking see, but they were able to flag it for me and I'd get a notif in 15 minutes, okay thanks!!!!

  • So then I had to drag him to the Berkeley Kaiser building so we could get the amoxicillin instead of letting him watch cartoons on the couch like he wanted and 🔥🏠🔥💀🔥🏠🔥

With this he was able to return to school Thurs and Fri, and I did depart for my LA trip Saturday morning, but of course while I was gone Felix popped a fever on Sunday and started producing industrial quantities of snot. Given how things went the last time I went on a trip to LA, this was cause for a nontrivial amount of concern on my part. I have since returned, and he's still feverish and snotty, but no other symptoms seem to have surfaced. The doctor we talked to mentioned that fevers and a slightly elevated heart rate are common with teething (the new total is 4 molars and 4 canines!), but the snot seems suspicious, so we're gonna keep him home until he's fever-free. We're supposed to schedule an actual in-person visit if we wake up on Wednesday and he's still at it temperature-wise.A while ago I was talking to my therapist about my burnout, and she remarked to me that whatever free time I got during (for instance) the kids' naps didn't really count, because there was no guarantee of a solid and consistent duration for said naps, so I was always mentally ready to spring back into action and couldn't actually truly relax. She hoped I would start to be able to remember how to unwind once the rhythm of school for Quentin and daycare for Felix was established. It turns out: no the fuck I can't, because microbes are everywhere and there is no respite from Nature. This is oddly comforting in a general planetary "life finds a way" sense, but in another sense I don't think I've had more than 2 or 3 days in a row of "free time" yet. Will there ever be a point where a consistent week of it appears? Is it going to happen? Am I chasing an impossible dream???? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • The Iranian government is hard at work trying to cut its citizens off from the internet. (~$Slate) 

  • Elon Musk's phone is full of texts from desperate sycophants who are constantly proving themselves to be not very bright. (~$Atlantic) 

  • I don't want to get too optimistic, but this article about Republican dads turning away from the party hard after Roe got gutted is still interesting. Yes, they all have daughters. No, they should not have needed to, yadda yadda empathy yadda yadda basic humanity. Still: huh. (~$The Cut) 

  • Does anyone have a plan for how we protect libraries from MAGA terrorists? Anyone at all? (Motherboard) 

  • NASA successfully fired a 1500lb box into an asteroid only 530ft wide 7 million miles away at 14,000mph on Monday, and it was taking pictures the whole time. (NASA writeup) (Pictures) 

  • Looks like The Scientists are starting to crack the notoriously poor recyclability of plastics wide open! (U of Colorado Boulder) 

  • Sphagnum moss has incredible potential to stop floods if it's planted in the right spot. (Guardian) 

  • We kind of knew this already, but having a hierarchy to fall back on can make it easier for both superiors and subordinates to inflict harm on others. (Netherlands Inst for Neuroscience) (PDF of paper) 

  • The Scientists have always known life began in water but weren't sure exactly how, since the reaction theoretically requires the loss of a water molecule. They might finally have the answer: droplets!!! (Purdue) 

  • Some Engineers have demonstrated a device that can help deliver heat when it's cold and cool things down when it's hot, all the while consuming ......... zero energy itself. Okay! (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • According to a small study, dogs can smell when you're stressed, which means stress makes your body produce a literal detectable odor. (Queen's U Belfast) (Paper) 

  • If you're looking to replenish your fecal microbiome, it looks like capsules work just as well as the colonoscopic method. (U of Minnesota) 

  • The structure of an extremely rare diamond hints that there might be a shitload of water locked in the rock of the Earth's mantle, possibly more water than exists on the surface of the planet??? (Goethe U in Frankfurt) 

  • The Scientists have proposed a model for regulating facial recognition, at least in Australia. (UTS) 

  • Why do you like the music you like? Here's an old but interesting paper. (Greenberg et al) 

  • Some Engineers have built the biggest ionic microprocessor yet, which is basically a computer chip that only works when wet and is a little slower than the regular kind, but could be used for more efficient neural networks. (Harvard School of Engineering) 

  • "Star Trek has truly reinvented itself: The sci-fi franchise is all TV these days, and there’s something for (almost) everyone" (Polygon) 

  • It's the year of our lord 2022 and I'm only just now discovering what "laundry stripping" is? If that's even a real thing? Have you done this? How'd it work? (Arm & Hammer) 

  • Some Engineers are still out there trying to figure out how to harness wave power. (Anthropocene) 

  • Look at that: an electric airplane prototype actually flying. (AP) 

  • Here are what appear to be the most popular Brands with Gen Z right now. (Morning Consult) 

  • The Scientists have run a study that seems to suggest people will pay more for things with more texture to them??? (Hiroshima U) 

  • "The Disappearing Art Of Maintenance: The noble but undervalued craft of maintenance could help preserve modernity’s finest achievements, from public transit systems to power grids, and serve as a useful framework for addressing climate change and other pressing planetary constraints." (Noema) 

  • Why build a robot out of solid parts when you can make one that moves around by extruding material out of itself like a plant. Answer me that (U of Minnesota) 

  • Your wandering mind might actually be a good thing. (Knowable) 

  • Some Engineers have built a proof-of-concept laser roach-killing device with parts that cost no more than $250 total. (Motherboard) 

  • Bears might actually be way more omnivorous than we thought, which has Implications for how we've been feeding them in zoos. (Washington State U) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumCharacter Selection Screen, You've Got a Lot of Nerve Coming Here, Buddy(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.