the Ultimate Truck is ready to deploy

May 11, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that would like to establish a small but no less valid Hall of Fame of Songs With Outros That Fucking SLAP For No Apparent Reason that consists of the last couple minutes of "In Our Gun" by Gomez and "White Light" by Shura, though doors are of course open to additional applications 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayNo new episode this week; see you next week, though.Don't forget to rate us ✨✨✨✨✨ on Apple Podcasts if you feel like being an amazing human!Instant Band Night 15: POSTPONEDWhat do we think? July 9th sound good? Honestly, who the hell knows, but let's try to be optimistic. We can do thisFacebook event's still up, too, because why not* * s t a y   h o m e   / /   s t a y   h e a l t h y * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I read an Atlantic piece on how the President is unraveling and it's ....... fine, but presents empty polemics where a solution should be. I'm not suggesting you burn a click on that one. Do this one instead (~$Atlantic), which is by Renee DiResta and talks about how misinformation runs rampant partially because experts don't fucking know how to talk on the internet while craven bullshitters are going buckwild.Choice quote: "All too often, the people responsible for protecting the public do not appear to understand how information moves in the internet era. Meanwhile, people who best understand what content is likely to go viral are using that knowledge to mislead."She runs the Stanford Internet Observatory, people: she knows what the fuck she's talking about. Just, you know, something for your day today. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.A billion years ago (read: sometime in the winter) I made a few tweets about how Quentin's idea of the ultimate truck was probably several different trucks and construction vehicle parts mashed together. A week or two ago, my friend Kelly who happens to be an incredible artist graced my Facebook wall with a drawing so magnificent that it immediately transfixed Quentin; I had to put it in my Google Photos so I could call it up at will on my phone whenever he asked to "see the truck." There was never any doubt as to which truck he meant.After a while, though, I realized there was a better way. I've probably waxed lyrical about the street we live on in previous issues; one of the many great things about it is that we have a Google Group to which emails get sent maybe a few times a week. I put the word out wondering if there was anyone who had both a color printer and a lamination setup (for some reason I had a feeling this was now within the realm of possibility for crafty or maybe business-y people), and sure enough, I got a reply within a few hours. Thanks to one of my excellent neighbors, Quentin now has a hard copy of the greatest truck ever put to paper in a form I'm reasonably positive he can't easily destroy, and I'm left with a feeling of deep gratitude for the various kinds of community that the structure of my life has made possible. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • People don't usually go apeshit and try to eat each other the instant something scary happens; quite the opposite, in fact, which is probably something we should try to keep in mind (especially because even this instinct does have a breaking point). (Nautilus) 

  • This is the last word on the Alison Roman Discourse that's probably going to be a Thing for the next 5 seconds in internet time. (Claire Willett via Thread Reader) Speaking of which, let's just make it official: Guy Fieri Is The Only Good Food Person Left. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Everybody wants to make materials that can grip like gecko feet, but it's hard to do; scientists may have figured out an easier way to do it. (Georgia Tech) 

  • CSAs are having a moment, understandably, which is nice if you live in an area where farms are a thing. (NPR) 

  • Christ, this is depressing: one way to tell that black people get pulled over way more for no reason is that it happens measurably less at night, when it's dark and the fucking cops can't see their skin color as well. (Stanford) 

  • This is actually a pretty decent rundown of internet quarantine humor. (Vox) 

  • I didn't know this: there's literally a billion years missing from our geologic record. (UC Santa Barbara) 

  • Finland's universal basic income experiment: still good. (Science Alert) 

  • Good? Deepfakes may not be as big a problem as we thought? Bad: because cheaper, easier techniques for disinfo are already pretty damn effective. (NPR) 

  • I don't know what to do with this: the atmospheric electrical field produced by global lightning activity may have an effect on us at the cellular level. What? (Tel Aviv U) 

  • If you're a giant fucking nerd and you're looking for something long to read, why not try the beginning of this analysis of the destruction of Saruman's army from an ancient military historian; there's a link in the beginning to his six-part series on the defense of Minas Tirith that's probably the real beef in the burger, text-wise. (A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry) 

  • Maybe we should be looking for hydrogen-breathing aliens. (Science Alert) 

  • Solar chimneys are a great way to design energy efficiency into a building, but also boost the safe evacuation time by a crazy amount if the place catches fire. (RMIT) 

  • What are the physical traits that help an animal elicit feelings of protection in people? Researchers made up some fake ones to find out. (Anthropocene) 

  • Here's a great longread on the monumental difficulty of giving AI common sense. (Quanta) 

  • Do we really need offices? At least in their present form? (1843) 

  • Scientists have figured out how to make paint that's as infrared-reflective as white, but can be any color you want; helps with cooling costs. Smart! (Anthropocene) 

  • During the Irish Potato Famine, the Choctaw Nation sent them $170; now the Irish are paying it back. (NBC News) 

  • "30 million Americans are unemployed. Here’s how to employ them." (Vox) 

  • What's a good way to go about looking for exoplanets that might have life? How about a "detectability index"? (Astrophysical Journal) 

  • This story about a 5yo who highly uncharacteristically decided to get in his mom's car and drive it to California to buy a Lamborghini gives me both the chuckles and a heart attack simultaneously. ($NYT) 

  • Here's how to successfully take some vacation time under quarantine. (Vice) 

  • The University of Bath has published an open-source design for a lab-grade microscope that can be 3D printed for about £15 in materials. (U of Bath) 

  • Impromptu online classes that have been understandably but hastily slapped together just aren't as good as regular ones; should there be partial refunds for college kids? (AP) 

  • Scientists have designed a device that uses sunlight to split water into hydrogen; the question, as always, is "can we mass-produce it cheaply and quickly?" (Rice U) 

  • Don't worry about how many jobs robots are going to replace; worry instead about which specific ones it'll be. (MIT) Also, the inventor of the Roomba himself gives some insight into why he thinks the robot takeover isn't coming anytime soon. (Nautilus)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumMarian Seedbomb, The Love That Grows From Within 

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.