they know we can see them

June 20, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that feels like cherry season should've lasted a little longer 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayThe thing about having a 4yo and a baby who doesn't yet sleep through the night is that you can't put them in the same room together overnight, and it's also not possible to put yourself in the room with him without causing even more sleep complications. Long story short, we're sleeping in the office (the house's third and possibly actual master bedroom, considering it has the attached half bath) on the pull-out couch, which is also where my computer is, so the edit on the last episode we recorded (which admittedly was last year) still isn't quite complete. But it'll get there someday!As of the time of this writing, there are still not only 43 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings, but someone managed to slip past the perimeter and enter another lovely review, which I only just saw now! Whoever you are, you have not only our thanks but our favor should we ascend to the throne. The rest of you: a new standard has been set!!Instant Band Night 15: TIME WARPWe're less than a month out! Vax! Boost! Mask! Otherwise your ass isn't getting in the door, and after a two-year hiatus, I cannot imagine what kind of amazing shit you're going to see, so make it happen! (Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  r e t u r n i n g   i n   2 0 2 2  + ++ +  h a n g   i n   t h e r e  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry."The Gerontocracy of the Democratic Party Doesn’t Understand That We’re at the Brink" ($NYT). This is incredibly hard to argue against. I mean for fucksake: 

Earlier this year at the National Prayer Breakfast, to give another example, President Biden praised Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, as a “man of your word” and a “man of honor.”“Thank you for being my friend,” Biden said to a man who is almost singularly responsible for the destruction of the Senate as a functional lawmaking body and whose chief accomplishment in public life is the creation of a far-right Supreme Court majority that is now poised to roll American jurisprudence back to the 19th century.

Joe. Joe. This is what we talk about when we wonder aloud why there wasn't a better candidate than Joe Biden at the end of the whole primary process. Republicans in office have long acted like they're invisible even though we can fucking see them doing what they're doing, and THE ABSOLUTE LAST THING IN THE WORLD they need is help from the goddamn President undermining democracy as we know it. Shit like this will only make them bolder, although since they've faced pretty much zero consequences thus far for their bullshit, I can understand why they don't seem particularly worried right now. Let me be clear that I don't like it. I don't like that we can see them doing this shit, they know we can see them doing this shit, and they're doing it anyway. Just on the face of it, that seems like a bad sign, doesn't it? I can't be the only one who wonders about this. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix seems to be getting more and more verbal, although none of what he's saying makes sense yet. He's babbling a lot and it's very good, is all. Soon — soon! — perhaps he'll be on the way to acquiring actual language, at which point I will be very keen to find out why he still sometimes wakes up at 10p and more reliably around 3a, and if there's anything we can do to help that not happen. Fascinatingly, Quentin has been mildly lobbying us to put Felix down for nighttime in the crib in his (Quentin's) room, which was of course always the plan anyway, but Quentin seems to want to advance the schedule more quickly than we do. This would require two things that I don't think Quentin has fully internalized, namely: 

  • Felix needs to sleep consistently through the night

  • Quentin needs to have a more regularly chilled-out bedtime

We're trying to help with the latter, but sometimes he just wants to shout and laugh and flail around the whole time we're trying to get him changed into his PJs for the traditional story and song. If we just throw Felix in there with him right now, do both things somehow resolve themselves? Does having Felix in there make Quentin realize the value of calming down for bedtime, and will Quentin's presence somehow soothe Felix back to sleep for his wakeups? Or (more likely to me, anyway) will it just create new and unforeseen problems on top of worsening both preexisting situations? This is not a scenario I'm inclined to experiment with, but who knows. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Hmm. "Stop telling kids that climate change will destroy their world: Some “climate anxiety” is the product of telling kids — falsely — that they have no future." (Vox) 

  • Bloomberg Philanthropies released a study that basically says painting art on crosswalks makes them safer for pedestrians and drivers alike. (Paper) 

  • Our map of the galaxy is getting better all the time. (Nature) 

  • Speaking of galaxies, if you were a kid in the 80s, you may want to sit down for this reboot, which was easily my favorite Lego set of all time. (Polygon) 

  • I just now this minute learned about an international effort to monitor the temperature and salinity of the ocean (which has huge climate implications) with a vast fleet of self-diving robots that's been underway for a while now. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • In general, giving refugees cash is preferable to trying to give them stuff, but it works better if you also give local stores some money too, so they don't raise prices on everybody. (The Conversation) 

  • Yet again, once more, The Scientists have created what looks like a cheap, easy carbon capture solution that they're hoping to scale to industrial levels. (Anthropocene) 

  • There's a multiplanet system just 33 light years away! (MIT) 

  • I admit to a blind spot when it comes to prehistoric mammals, mostly because dinosaurs have been right there the whole time, but I think we can all agree "bear dogs" sound pretty cool. (PeerJ) 

  • I missed this one when it went up originally: "I Gave Myself Three Months to Change My Personality: The results were mixed." (~$Atlantic) 

  • Moth wings retain their sound-absorption properties even if you just glue them to a metal plate, which has promising implications for one day designing sound-dampening wallpaper. (U of Bristol) 

  • Experimental data suggests most humans can be trained to echolocate in about ten weeks. (Science Alert) 

  • It looks like mouse brains have a "low power mode" that activates when they haven't eaten a lot and makes them run less well; The Scientists theorize we probably have it, too. (Quanta) 

  • There's a company working on making consumable proteins out of essentially recycled CO2, which the article's title likens to "Pulling Steaks From Thin Air." (NEO.LIFE) 

  • The plastic junk islands floating in the ocean might be a hotbed of antibiotic potential, at least according to one study. (American Society for Microbiology) 

  • There are polar bears living in Greenland, which gives us at least a nonzero amount of hope that there might still be polar bears once we've melted the North Pole. (Nature) 

  • Survey says most people don't actually have unlimited wants; in fact, it tends to top out somewhere between $1-10M. (U of Bath) 

  • Make sure you're uncaffeinated before you go shopping, or you might end up spending more. (U of South Florida) 

  • This is a level of raw, unadulterated bravery that I will never be able to achieve: a guy rolls a d20 to determine what kind of sandwich he's going to make for lunch. (Polygon) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumGhost Siren, There Is No Darkness(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.