tiny tactical nostalgia attack

April 02, 2018

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter too lazy to learn the chords to songs that have a bridge in them. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway65 - Instant Band Night"Jon (@ferociousj), guest co-host Laura Glu (@lauraglu), and special guest Fiona discover notions for party products, vital services, and a live music concept Jon has actually put into practice."I want to live in a world where the decoration grenade is a viable idea for a product that won't be horribly misused; I'm just putting that out there now.You can subscribe using:Apple PodcastsRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/Instant Band Night 4 On The FloorI'm doing Instant Band Nights every two months now, so you're just going to hear about them way more often (#sorrynotsorry). If this one is anything like the last one, you're not gonna want to miss it. In case you somehow don't know what I'm talking about, the idea behind Instant Band Night is simple:1. The stage has a drum kit, guitar, bass, keyboard, and mics.2. We draw names out of hats to make instant bands that get 10 minutes in the green room to plan an 8-minute set.3. A hat-drawn artist will also take the stage alongside each band to draw their gig poster on a meeting room easel pad.*May 10 (Thurs)507 55th St (@ Telegraph)Oakland CA 946098p$5 doorBYOBInstant Band Night 3 was the first time we actually got a level of attendance that allowed for there to be one band in the green room while another one was rocking onstage, and it was goddamn glorious. I'd love to get the same number of people, if not more, at Instant Band Night 4 -- which is where you come in: open up Facebook or your email and invite anyone you know in the Bay Area (links are below). Help me, only hope, etc.Thank you.* There are details and FAQs on Eventbrite and Facebook if you're into that sort of thing. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I've been experiencing an extremely powerful wave of nostalgia for a very specific game, namely Advance Wars: Dual Strike for the good ol' Nintendo DS. I still have my copy of it, but I lost my DS a long time ago; is it time to get a DS Lite from eBay or something? They're like $35 used now. If you can think of a reason why this is a bad idea, speak now or forever hold your peace. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Three things:1.Quentin's new signature move these days is a thing I call "Hamletting," which I'll just let this Insta post summarize. It wasn't until later that I also realized it's sort of a wizardly gesture, which led to me losing my mind a little; shoutout to the excellent Charles Vestal for showing me the quick/dirty way to get this done in Photoshop.2.This might be TMI, but you knew the risks when you signed up for this mission: Quentin doesn't poop as often as he used to. I don't know why this is. Judging from the available evidence, there can only be two possible theories: 

  • His body is somehow storing it for periodic megapoops, a thing which has only happened twice

  • His body is converting the available mass into more Quentin instead

I may or may not keep you updated as this story develops, but I wanted to note it now.3.In a couple months, we're going to start Quentin on food. I've been told to make the first thing he eats avocado, the logic being that if we give him banana, he may expect foods to be sweet and reject avocado if it's offered subsequently. Given that I have a sweet tooth whose mass exceeds the Chandrasekhar limit and collapses into a black hole every time it manifests, this may be advice worth heeding on the off chance he's inherited even a fraction of it from me. BUT SO ALSO: I'm going to start researching homemade baby foods. I'm at home, I do all the cooking already anyway, and I have a stick blender; this oughta be fun. Does anyone have good recommendations for me? (I realize this is something that can be Googled, but we all know the internet is also full of absolutely insane garbage and I would much rather take advice from known individuals than some Rando McCrystalvibes, nahmean?) 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Going outside your filter bubble doesn't help moderate your views -- in fact, it does the exact fucking opposite, which is the most hilariously bleak thing I think I've got for you this issue. 

  • Somehow I'd already been made aware of the sand issue when it comes to global concrete usage; now we have a potential solution. I want to say "hurry up with the testing," but on the other hand, this reveals that up until now I haven't had the slightest idea how you test a potential new building material vis-a-vis its aging properties. "Build something with it and wait 20 years" seems ........ suboptimal? But also I don't know how you'd speed it up?? 

  • Neural laces or foametal -- which Culture technology will we get first? I'm currently placing money on the latter, but I wouldn't mind if it's the former, either. I want to see foametal as, yes, a building material and not just an armor substrate, but hey: baby steps. 

  • I agree in principle that biomimicry and robot design should really go hand-in-hand almost 100% of the time, but you'd have to give the wheelspider one hell of a nonthreatening paintjob if you were thinking of deploying it at scale. I'm just talking here. 

  • U.S. cities can save billions with green, resilient design, says report. The article gives you the gist, but it also links to the report itself, which is goddamn fascinating. Just throw it on your Kindle or whatever, and don't be intimidated by its length; 2/3 of it is appendices. 

  • So: protein engineering. Given that proteins are, you know, the basis of pretty much everything important about how life functions at the cellular level, shouldn't we try to lock this down a little? I realize that's a shitty thing to want to do, but it seems to me that the possibility of something goddamn hideous happening goes up the more people get involved. Or is it so computationally intense right now that we're not worried? 

  • I love that it's 2018 and we're still discovering new human organs. Or organ. Technically, a distributed one. Wild. 

  • Hold up. Wait. Stop. Hold everything. Home geothermal? Even if it's just for heating and cooling, that sounds amazing and also kind of insane, in a good way. Their website is pretty light on the explanation front -- I want to know how this tech works, dammit. 

  • More biomimicry for robots. More, I say! Even underwater! 

  • Longread on the state of comedy on the internet; worth it. Not much else to say here. 

  • It turns out there are a lot of interesting uses for jellyfish, but this stinging cell thing sounds nuts. Do nematocysts used for healing purposes simply not hurt? How do you load them with something other than toxins? Annoyingly, the article doesn't seem to answer either of these questions. 

  • Open this article on how Theranos and Zenefits are a feature, not a bug, of Silicon Valley just for the header pic/caption combo. 

  • Okay, so the Pacific garbage patch is 16 goddamn times bigger than we thought. There has to be a way to monetize cleaning it up. Byfusion, where you at? It's been a couple years; how's it going? 

  • I feel like there's been a small-scale explosion of field sensors for plant monitoring over the last couple years. Yes? No? In any case, this thing sounds like a great way to get a lot of data, provided it works and they can make, like, a million of 'em. 

  • I can't believe anybody thought this stupid connected wine dispenser thing was a good idea. What I mean to say is: I completely fucking can, I just don't like what it implies about us as a culture. 

  • A digital protection agency is an interesting idea, but [points to current government]. I mean, right?

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumFishgrizzly, Beast Speak Calmly 

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.