the watermelon protocol

August 31, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wishes this air quality app's persistent top bar notif would get its shit together and realize I'm not in San goddamn Leandro; just keep the Emeryville AQI reading, you little shit! You're making more work for yourself and it's not even right!!! 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway146 - Accountabilibuddies"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Gary Tyrrell (@fleenguy) unveil a superior set of ideas for consumer products and a post-pandemic social tradition practically guaranteed to ensure quarantine compliance."What's the minimum acceptable level of grift? Is the snack food idea we had subtle genius or absolute horror? Who WOULD be the most (in)appropriate orgy sponsor? Gary helps us wrestle with all of these questions and more.No new ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings or reviews this week; you could change things. You could make a difference.Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberIt seems laughable to try to throw Instant Band Night without a proven vaccine in place. Let's see what's up in November 2021.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook* * 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.We should've had it from the moment of President Fuckshit's inauguration in 2017, but better late than never; the energy of this thread from Gabrielle Blair is what we need going into the rest of 2020. I would like to take it a step further, honestly: what I want is that perception filter override device from that one Black Mirror episode. I would use it to take Star Trek and Star Wars and every comic and comic-related property away from MAGA nerds forever: every bit of video, still image, text string, fan art, costume, concept piece, all gone, rendered into unintelligible gibberish. One step further, even: I want the neuralizer from Men In Black, so I can take their memories of all that content away, too. Fuck you, you don't get to enjoy any of this even in retrospect! You don't get it back until I see you vote against Trump, publicly repudiate him and all his works, donate to at least three BLM causes, and get into at least five fights with MAGA relatives online. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.PSA for anyone raising a toddler that you're considering introducing to watermelon: adjust your potty protocols accordingly. Usually, Quentin can go for about an hour between "just checking" sit-downs on the potty, and even longer in the afternoon. My suspicion is he puts it all in his nap diaper, because between 3-5p he rarely has anything for us, and has lately taken to simply telling us "My body is empty of pee!" when we suggest a potty check during that particular timeframe.Anyway, we like to do a fruit snack around 9a, and we've discovered he loves watermelon. On watermelon mornings, the potty check cycle time is reduced to 25m post-consumption for at least three sit-downs; ultimately unsurprising, given the nature of watermelon, but it took a surprisingly long time for me to dial that in. Let this knowledge serve you well, should you be in a place where it's useful. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • "GOP Policies Are Shortening American Lives" -- tl;dr: your life expectancy is shorter by a couple years if you live in a conservative state as opposed to a more liberal one. (HuffPo) 

  • Evidence seems to suggest bacteria could survive in space if they form big-enough clumps. (Frontiers in Microbiology via EurekAlert) (Full paper) 

  • At least Facebook employees aren't happy with the company's response to all this either. I wonder if they'll get mad enough to do something large-scale? (BuzzFeed News) Especially since WHOOPS, THOUGH, HOLY FUCK, the event page was reported 455 times? WHOOPS? UH OH? (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Can having other robots around who appear to react emotionally help stop the abuse of a fellow machine? It's a surprisingly complicated question. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • "The Platform the GOP Is Too Scared to Publish" -- what I find interesting/disheartening about this is that I'm not sure there'd be much of a ripple if they actually did publish this as their true official north star. (~$Atlantic) 

  • Jesus, here's yet another device invented by scientists that can create fuel-ready material out of just sunlight, CO2, and water. There is an office somewhere collecting all of these and readying them for mass production, right? Someone? Anyone??? (U of Cambridge) 

  • Here's a firsthand account from someone who was abducted during Unmarked Federal Agent Season in Portland. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Why is Larry Ellison so terrible at charity? (Recode) 

  • This is a very, very good thread on the problem of epistemic closure and why Trump and his antics have been seemingly immune to facts. (Julian Sanchez on Twitter) 

  • If "college kids teaming up to rent big houses together for remote learning and togetherness" really, truly becomes a thing, I'm simultaneously kinda jealous at the coziness of it and dreading the absolute nuclear-level drama that'll probably ensue at 99% of these by mid-year. ($NYT) 

  • This is the first I've ever heard of "antivitamins" as a concept, much less as an antibacterial weapon. (U of Göttingen) 

  • We feed ground-up wild fish to farmed fish, which sort of defeats the purpose of farming fish in the first place. What if we just use food waste to grow bug larvae and feed those to fish instead? As a weird bonus, it seems to improve their immune systems. (Hakai) 

  • Actually, speaking of food waste, scientists in Singapore have demonstrated a method for using discarded orange peels to recycle lithium batteries. (Nanyang Tech) 

  • Painting one blade of a wind turbine black might reduce its likelihood of killing a bird by over 70%. Break out the rollers, people! (Ars Technica) 

  • Playfulness can be deliberately boosted in people. (Martin Luther U) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumSecret Goth Bar, What Were You Expecting Exactly 

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.