vital cleaning advice

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that apparently requires an irresponsible amount of McDonald's nuggets every month or two in order to function 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI haven't lost hope that I'll recover enough energy to kick the side of the podcast machinery and get it rumbling to life in early 2023. In the meantime, you can find the show's 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 podcastInstant Band Night 20: DOUBLE XSpring will be in full swing when the next Instant Band Night comes around, and that means it's probably going to be a very good time. Tickets have already been sold (seriously!). Don't risk missing out; just mark your calendar for May 11 and make sure your dancing shoes are shiny.May 11 2023 (click to add to your Gcal)6p$10East Bay Community Space507 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  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.My kids love to eat steamed beets, which is great because hey, vegetables! But I can tell you there is one down side, which is that you might forget that your steaming pot needs a fair bit of water in it,* which results in your pot boiling through all of its water and burning the beet juice residue to its sides to form a crispy and pungent blackened crust. The cleaning effort was ....... substantial, but I eventually got it back to a presentable state before getting distracted for a few hours. Then it occurred to me to see what the internet had to say about this problem, and I have knowledge to pass to you: this article is right. Just get a scrunched-up piece of foil and some baking soda. A little scrubbing action restored it all the way to its pre-burnt state. Now I just need to figure out why the house still smells a little like the burnt-on beet juice despite cleaning the pot and opening all the windows. Maybe I need to cook something and just replace the current odor with a new one. That'll work, right?* I steam the beets whole for 20m so I can scrape off their skins in the sink, then cut them into sticks and just steam the living fuck out of them for what seems like at least 40m to achieve the texture I want — integral but soft, a little firmer than a cooked carrot. Quentin and Felix gobble 'em right up. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix returned to daycare on Friday! We never found out what the culprit was, although his doctor was at least able to confirm it wasn't hand+foot+mouth or chickenpox. Just a random virus, one of a countless plethora, a mystery pantheon whose members come to visit at random for fully half the year. At least all it gave him was a fever (and its attendant mystery spots)!*Perhaps as a result of being home for day upon day upon day, Felix's world of fascinations here in the house is rapidly expanding. He's discovered he loves 🤾 Tossing balls down the very small upstairs hallway ⚽ Rolling balls down the stairs🪜 Trying to toss balls back up the stairs🔭 Watching me do any of those things🔁 Often cycling through them in rapid succession"Hallway," he says insistently all the time. "Hallway, hallway."Felix has also found the bin where Quentin keeps the wooden toy parts longtime readers may remember providing some frustration; he's neither aware nor skilled enough to want to put them together, but he does like to get the longer stick/bar parts and wave them around. Go right ahead, buddy!We've gotten to the point where Felix is able to make his culinary wishes known with a reasonably high degree of accuracy, except when he can't. His default word for something whose name he doesn't know is "deece," which I think might be his interpretation of "these," plus pointing. "Deece, deece," he'll say, pointing off toward the fridge. Bud, I'm sorry I have no idea what you're asking for. Usually it turns out to be something for which he isn't cleared for choking or spice-level reasons. Any day now we're going to let him in on the secret of graham crackers; the secret is that they're amazing.* As of the time of this writing on Monday, Quentin has now had it for about 36h, but thankfully all it seems to have done is give him a fever, too. He's been home all day but his mood is good, his appetite hasn't been totally obliterated, etc. As viruses go, this one is a reasonable if still unwelcome guest. 

Fascination Corner

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

• The new IPCC report basically says we're fucked unless we start making big moves immediately. (BBC) Unrelatedly, did you know oil CEOs are still having public conferences? Funny how that puts them all in one place, huh. (Axios) 

• This week's read from Ed Zitron is just very good, as usual. (Where's Your Ed At) 

• I get the feeling we're all gonna need to remember that election stress can degrade our health; this technique for combating it only seems applicable in certain narrow cases, but I guess it's better than nothing? (NC State) 

• As if there weren't enough reasons to get your blood boiling about the state of our healthcare system, why not read about how Cigna deliberately makes it easy to mass-deny medical insurance claims! (ProPublica) 

• The world of plant science actually has interesting problems to tackle! (Los Alamos Natl Lab) (Paper) 

• "Which Succession Character Are You?" Even if (like me) you don't watch the show, click anyway. (McSweeney's) 

• Tardigrades are nature's greatest little unkillable weirdos, and now The Scientists have figured out how to use one of their proteins to stabilize crucial drugs without refrigeration. (U of Wyoming) 

• It's been rainy enough this winter here in California that mycoenthusiasts say we're experiencing what they're calling a "super shroom." I love this for them/us. (Afar) 

• The Scientists have looked into whether cans or bottles are better for preserving the taste of beer, and discovered that it sort of depends on the beer. Amber ales seem to age more in cans, while IPAs are container-agnostic, since they stay tasting nasty no matter what you put 'em in. 🔥🔥🔥 Just drink cider instead, folks, honestly. (American Chemical Society) (Paper) 

• A friend of mine did a tarot reading for me once a while ago and it was fascinating. Now there's a way to do it remotely! (Moonlight) 

• San Francisco's homelessness solvers have admitted their own plan is unworkable: leaving money aside for a second, they also don't have the people, the skills, or (crucially) the community support to make it happen. (SF Standard) 

• We all know the problems with lithium-ion batteries, which is why The Scientists have hit upon a design for an oxygen-ion battery that isn't quite as energy-dense but won't catch fire and can be regenerated to avoid losing efficacy over time. (Technical U of Vienna) (Paper) 

• Some Engineers are working on 3D printing for food because why not!! (Columbia U) (Paper) 

• All right, so Stonehenge wasn't a calendar, but we still don't know what it was really for. Did it have to be "for" something, though? What if it was just because the ancient people thought it'd be cool? (Science Alert) 

• The Scientists have put together an insane-sounding "gigapixel microscope" that gives observers godlike powers of observation over a surprising amount of surface area. (Duke) 

• Do plants have cognition? Put another way: are neurons required for cognition to happen? No, really. (Nautilus) 

• Using enzymes, The Scientists have managed to separate cotton from polyester in a way that makes both components recyclable. (NC State) (Paper) 

• One of the main reasons a bunch of people thought ‘Oumuamua was a spaceship was because of its weird in-system acceleration; turns out that can be explained by hydrogen outgassing as it melted in the sunlight. (UC Berkeley) 

• Credit where it's due: The Scientists ran a review of predictions on the pandemic and society at large from experts in the social sciences and discovered that in general, they did no better than the public. At least they told us. (The Conversation) (Society paper) (Pandemic paper) 

• Uh. Dark matter ........... planets? Are, uh ....... theoretically ........ possible??? (Science Alert) 

• The Scientists have come up with a pretty good way to remove PFAS "forever chemicals" from water. (U of British Columbia) 

• Fatty, sugary snacks rewire our brains to make us prefer them, which makes sense, but is also unfair goddammit. (Max Planck Inst for Metabolism Research) (Paper) 

• What's going on over at NC State? This robot caterpillar thing is the third item I've logged from them this week. (NC State) (Paper) 

• Touchscreens in cars are a bad, stupid, dangerous idea, and I'm glad at least one automaker is dead set against them (it's Hyundai). (The Drive) 

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 on Flickr and then applying your best Graphic Design Skills to the result; let me know if you like this better or worse than when I just wrote them out and/or if you want to tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because your answers are always incredible) 

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.