(unintelligible squeaking noises)

November 01, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's hoping its voice comes back soon, like ideally today or tomorrow 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayAt this point it probably shouldn't be surprising that there's no new episode, but there will be eventually. In the meantime, why not listen to literally any episode from the back catalog? There might be an incredible idea to steal! That's the whole point of the show!!Some superhero -- some demigod among mere humans -- has put up a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ rating on our Apple Podcasts page, bringing us to a grand total of 39!!! Who will cement their entry into the hall of victory and get us to 40 this week? Will it be YOU? Look deep within and ask yourself: why not??Instant Band Night 15: January Dreamin'That's what we're calling this, the fifteenth installment of Instant Band Night, unless it ends up getting pushed to March. In which case it'll need a new name. Whether or not it comes to that is dependent entirely on the vax schedule for kids under 5! (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.Well, we both caught Quentin's cold. Thankfully, the barfing part of it skipped us; instead we were gifted with some snot, annoying coughs, and the near-total loss of our voices. I'm on day two of this bullshit and I sound absolutely fucking ridiculous to myself. There's no conversation to be had with me; I eventually have to back down to a whisper in order to make myself intelligible, rather than trying to force air through the broken-down squeezebox that up until fairly recently functioned perfectly fine as a vocal apparatus. So that's where I'm at right now.Our TV's built-in Chromecast still does the thing where it pulls photos from Google albums that we specify, which is great, especially because one of those albums is just a bunch of selfies from friends I haven't seen in forever. That album is starting to feel out of date, though, since it hasn't had any updates in probably a year. I think the time might be coming where I ask my pals for more pictures. What do you think? If you're reading this and we're friends and you haven't sent me a photo of your excellent face in a while, feel free to make that happen! Although there might be some back and forth -- if you just hit Reply to this email and attach a photo, the attachment might not go through because of how Tinyletter seems to work. But we'll figure it out; I believe in us!! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin's cold is more or less over, although we're still having him sleep with his head on a somewhat elevated pillow setup so he drains better and hopefully doesn't cough -- honestly, his cough has gotten a whole lot better. The thing we're trying to figure out now is a weird muscle cramp in both his calves; we're seeing his doctor today, so fingers crossed.Halloween was last night! Quentin wanted to reprise his astronaut costume from last year, which I was only too happy to do; Felix is a baby with essentially zero agency, so we dressed him up as a strawberry and nobody could stop us. Despite his blossoming enthusiasm for decorating the house for Halloween, Quentin didn't show much interest in actual trick-or-treating, which was just as well for us because (a) neither of us had the energy after the week we'd had (b) that would just mean he'd have a giant pile of candy, which is generally not a thing we're trying to make happen in this house. I had a conversation with him today, however, where I implied that trick-or-treating would set him up for more or less the whole year candy-wise, which admittedly is how I remember it happening when I was a kid. We'll see what he does in 2022. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • This week on Facebook choosing to immiserate the world in the name of profit, and I mean that literally, is this Atlantic piece on how shitty it is everywhere other than the US, and that's saying something. (~$Atlantic) 

  • A nonzero portion of Facebook employees have been voicing concerns at various levels of strength for a while. (Politico) 

  • Meanwhile, of course, you know what ol' Zucky did in lieu of anything remotely useful. "Zuckerberg Announces Fantasy World Where Facebook Is Not a Horrible Company" (Vice) 

  • Some extremely ambitious scientists are looking into building a machine learning system that can help identify and eventually translate sperm whale language, if it even exists. (Hakai) 

  • Does your dog tilt their head when you give them commands? That might mean your dog is a goddamn genius. (Science) 

  • When you wear an exoskeleton that helps you lift heavy things, you have to think a lot about how to operate it, which cancels out whatever help you're getting from the exoskeleton from a body-benefits perspective. (Texas A&M) 

  • There's a star in the constellation Pisces where some of the planets are orbiting perpendicular to each other!!! (U of Geneva) 

  • If 3D-printed houses really are starting to look good to the construction industry, then I am begging them to adopt more interesting shapes. There's no reason not to! Also, a home interpolated into a cluster of cool-looking domes would be essentially hurricane-proof, which will be ........ important in the coming years, depending on where you're living. (Axios) 

  • After the Mendocino Complex wildfire, at least one group of deer returned to the forest while the trees were still smoldering; turns out they did okay. Might not work for everybody, though. (U of Washington) 

  • A lot of the rosy predictions the ridesharing companies made at us have been turning out not only to be untrue, but the exact opposite of what's ended up happening. ($NYT) 

  • One of the steps in filtering water involves dumping chemicals in it to make the viruses clump together so you can sift 'em out; turns out you can get that done by blasting electricity into it instead! (Texas A&M) 

  • This hoverbike looks extremely cool and I do not apologize to you or any other. (Reuters) 

  • I missed this back when: Twitter ran an analysis of the racist abuse hurled at POC members of England's soccer team during the Euro 2020 final, and fully 99% of it was non-anonymous. Can you fucking imagine. (Of course you can) (Twitter blog) 

  • Here, have some engagement photos taken at Berkeley Bowl. (SFGate) 

  • What if lidar is for suckers? We don't have lidar and we can drive more or less okay with just our eyes; what if there were cameras for cars that worked pretty well? (Ars Technica) 

  • UC Santa Barbara is moving forward with an absolutely insane-sounding dorm. (Independent) 

  • Researchers have found a way to enhance the effectiveness of antibiotics by pairing them with chemicals that draw killer immune cells to their targets. (Monash U) 

  • "Is It Worth Trying to Sway the Most Staunch Climate Deniers?" (BU) 

  • Have a list of the countries and agencies working on the riskiest civilization-level shit right now. (BBC Future) 

  • This method of handling space junk removal makes a lot more sense to me than the one with the fucking harpoons. (U of Utah) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumDeep Mother Darkness, Now THIS Is An Emergency(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.