Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that honestly loves almost nothing better than a good catch-up with old friends

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.

Instant Band Night 31: FLAVOR

NEXT WEEK

Holy fuck do we ever need something to do that isn't worrying about everything around us for at least a couple hours of surprise and joy and music

Mark your calendar for the next Instant Band Night on May 8!!!!! Do it now and tell everyone you know: whether you choose to play in one of the bands or just watch it all unfold, it's an almost unbelievably ecstatic celebration of spontaneous creativity that we all need at the cellular level.

✨🪩✨

May 8 2025
6p
$10
East Bay Community Space
507 55th St 94609

(Eventbrite) (Facebook)

+ + T E L L + Y O U R + F R I E N D S + +
+ + S E E + Y O U + T H E R E + +

Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOU

If you've been looking for a weird little guy to put in your garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then I have the perfect place to start your search. If you know someone else who needs a weird little guy for their garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then you're also in luck!!!!

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after three+ years of inactivity, but I'm putting a link to its evergreen Apple Podcasts presence here, which includes a back catalog over 150 episodes long chock-full of excellent ridiculousness, including an experimental tabletop RPG and a couple of Star Trek fantasy drafts that could almost be their own show if I had the time to make yet another podcast

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.

Nothing this week, I'm on vacation; don't worry though, there's still plenty for you below!

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.

I'm on a little solo vacation and thus I want to use this space to acknowledge Mavis, who's taking care of the kids (obviously) while I'm away and is objectively the most powerful mom in the known universe. We each try to give each other a solo trip — hers was earlier this year, in fact — and it's very much appreciated. This weekend Quentin had a birthday party to attend, and I suspect it was a banger; we'll see what the report is when I return Tuesday!!

Fascination Corner

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

• The Scientists are once again waving their arms and yelling that we're nearing not one but sixteen different climate tipping points and we need to change course now. (U of Exeter) (Paper)

• Speaking of which, The Scientists are pretty sure they can mathematically model exactly how much The Corporations owe us monetarily for fucking the planet up; maybe it's time to collect. (Dartmouth)

• Bendable ceramics?????? (U of Houston) (Paper)

• Some Engineers made a wearable patch that employs The Machine (Analytical Flavor) along with an array of little onboard sensors to detect (or at least make very good guesses at) the emotions of whoever it's stuck on. Which, you know, could have good or bad use cases. (Penn State)

• "How Big Tech hides its outsourced African workforce: New data reveals the hidden network of African workers powering AI, as they push for transparency from the global companies that employ them indirectly." (Rest of World)

• If you're gonna go on a 53mi walk through the British countryside, you might as well do it dressed as a giant bird. (BBC)

• Unsurprisingly, The Machine still can't read the room worth a damn. (Johns Hopkins U)

• What: The Scientists have invented a new color they call "olo" that you can only see using a technology that blasts your eyes with microdoses of laser light. (UC Berkeley) (Paper)

• Some Engineers got tired of having to learn CAD just to use a CNC machine and thought: what if you could just draw on the wood instead? (U of Tokyo) (Paper)

• Does a high-fat, high-sugar diet make you dumber? It does seem to correlate with not being able to solve a VR maze as quickly. (U of Sydney) (Paper)

• Speaking of being dumber, I feel like I almost grasp this one: The Scientists think it's possible that the appearance of cells with nuclei was essentially a mathematical inevitability based on the average length of proteins and how complex life was becoming? I think??? (Johannes Gutenberg U Mainz) (Paper)

• Funding has been secured to build an extremely cool-sounding solar panel recycling facility outside of Jacksonville. (Canary Media)

• The Scientists would like to be able to grow food in space from cell cultures so astronauts don't have to get it shipped up to them. (BBC)

• Some Engineers have yet again demonstrated a device capable of pulling drinkable water right out of the air, this time in the form of a sponge made from garbage, which sounds pretty damn sustainable to me!! (Anthropocene)

• Admittedly narrowcasting this at my fellow penitents of the Locked Tomb: behold the extremely rare and newly-discovered bone collector caterpillar, unofficial mascot of the Ninth House as far as I'm concerned because c'mon. (Ars Technica)

• The Scientists have spotted a Mercury-type exoplanet orbiting so close to its sun that it's literally melting away, shedding an Everest's worth of mass every time it completes an orbit (about 30 hours); at this rate it'll be gone in 1-2 million years, which gives you some idea how fucking huge planets are. (MIT) (Paper)

• Speaking of exoplanets, The Scientists think there might be way, way more super-Earths out there than previously imagined. (Ohio State)

• Which is good news if you're The Scientists who suspect life might arise fairly quickly on Earth-like environments! (Science Alert) (PDF of paper)

• Vox has a whole piece showing "10 charts prove that clean energy is winning — even in the Trump era" but I still don't know how optimistic to be. Right? (Vox)

• If you think you can wield capitalism as an ideological weapon then I guess you must grab a lot of swords by the blade: a website attempting to list MAGA-friendly businesses to fellow chuds turns out to also be a highly convenient spot to note local places to boycott. (HuffPo)

• Plastic production is expected to triple over the next few decades, so The Scientists are working hard on alternatives and just plain reducing our use somehow. (U of Arkansas System Divison of Ag)

• How do you break through climate apathy? (UCLA)

• In order to demonstrate a newly invented microfabrication technique for biomaterials, Some Engineers literally tattooed a tardigrade. (ACS)

• There's our robot: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took a picture of Curiosity from space and you can even see the tracks it's left behind. (Science Alert)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.

A band and their album

(I remembered a formula for making fake album covers that involves searching for a random appropriately licensed photo and then applying your best Graphic Design Skills to the result; let me know what you think this band/album sounds like, because your answers are always incredible)

New Music Roundup

Last week's band/album was:

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think is a collection of red velvet lounge jazz-type songs from a very talented singer, but in a language that literally nobody on Earth has ever heard before.

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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!