we bless the rains in the area

March 13, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that was told by Google through its phone to "expect rain at 8p" and is looking out the window expectantly 

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 XInstant Band Night 19 happened last week during a literal goddamn downpour, and we still had a great time!! Having done this 19 times, I should theoretically no longer be surprised by the creativity, skill, and sheer fuck it let's DO THIS energy I see onstage, but you know what: it will always be astonishing and life-giving. If you couldn't make it, I suppose that's understandable, but unless it's pouring rain again you should definitely come to the next one, which will be May 11 (mark your calendar by clicking here now). You owe it to yourself!!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.I think this is a good tradition that I haven't kept up very well: opening the floor here to questions. Do you have any questions you'd like me to answer in this space? Anything you want my take on? Or just want to see me ramble about? [drive-time radio zoo crew voice] Smash that REPLY button and let me know!!! OH yeah!!!!!!!!!!! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Felix's language abilities continue to evolve. His newest thing these days is what I call the Mama Confirmation, which happens whenever Mavis is out of his eyeline.FELIX: Mama.ME: She's here, she's just upstairs.FELIX: (pause for a beat)FELIX: Yeah.He appears fully satisfied with this answer — in fact, his "yeah" sounds almost as if he knew it already and was simply seeking confirmation. This cycle repeats a few times in a row, and may get brought up again a few minutes hence unless he's sufficiently occupied with whatever he's doing. I had to do it a bunch tonight, just because Mavis had an in-office day today and I ran dinner+bedtime solo, so I had to constantly remind Felix that Mama was "out of the house" and "at work," which still received the confirmatory "yeah" but needed to be renewed as current information from time to time. No problem, bud; that's what I'm here for. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • The Silicon Valley Bank meltdown is the biggest but not by any means first sign that we should never have trusted VC culture in the first place: they had ten (10) years to build that Glittering Future they're always yawping about and what did we all get? (Slate) 

  • Imagine me pounding my fists on the table here: agrivoltaics!!! works!!! Let's just get going already!!! (Cornell) 

  • All right, look: there's new new research on whether money correlates with happiness, and you're probably not going to like the results. (Penn) (Paper) 

  • How much work is it actually going to take to make The Machine smart? (Nature) 

  • Atmospheric rivers should have intensity rankings like hurricanes. (AGU) 

  • It is now time to read about this cover shoot Jennifer Coolidge did for W with the Daniels. (W Magazine) 

  • The Scientists have built a machine learning system to seek out biosignatures on Mars that works pretty well in training. (SETI Inst) 

  • Well, fuck: wildfire smoke can fuck up the ozone layer. (MIT) 

  • There's a microbe that can pull hydrogen out of the air and make electricity out of it, and The Scientists have isolated the enzyme responsible and are working on scaling it up so we can one day have devices that will just pull power out of the literal air we breathe, no batteries required. (The Conversation) (Paper) 

  • Twitter has maybe six months left, at least according to this person, who lays out a scenario I have to say sounds at least plausible. (Dave Karpf on Substack) 

  • The High Seas Treaty, which protects marine biodiversity and lays down rules for how research should be conducted in international waters, was finally hammered out last week. (Nature) 

  • On the heels of that effort, The Scientists really think there should be a similar treaty for space junk; it's fucking insane that there isn't one already, frankly. (U of Plymouth) 

  • "MrBeast and Chill? What Lies Beyond Peak Streaming: Creators may never replace traditional streaming services, but they’re coming compellingly close." (Lens) 

  • A spoiled container of beef soup in the back of a microbiologist's fridge turned blue, and because she's one of The Scientists, she's started an ongoing quest to discover what exactly the hell caused it. (Thread from Dr. Elinne Becket on Twitter) 

  • Here's a good read about a small town in Iceland that does their very damn best to save the baby puffins that get lost in the night during breeding season. (Smithsonian) 

  • "On the internet, nobody knows you’re a human: As bots, avatars, and AI get more and more human, how do creators prove they’re the real deal?" (The Verge) 

  • Finding good antifungal compounds is extremely critical because the fungi are out there and many of them are not our friends, so when The Scientists isolated a new one, of course they named it after Keanu. (CNN) 

  • When you're trying to persuade a group of people to contribute to a common goal, should you try laying out the facts or appealing to their feelings? Depends how close you are to the finish line. (American Marketing Assoc) 

  • It's time to announce that The Scientists are looking into where coulrophobia (fear of clowns) comes from. Strong warning for coulrophobes out there that this article is absolutely filthy with photos of scary clowns for some reason. (The Conversation) I do have a related question about the Clown Threshold that I would like you to answer, though. (me on Twitter) 

  • I'm not going to do better than the opener: "Bioelectronics can be made directly inside the brains of live animals by injecting a cocktail of molecules that can transform into electrically conductive gel, a new study finds." (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • Some Engineers ran simulations and it turns out you can cut drag on a big shipping liner by 40% if you put a smooth nose cover on the front. (Shibaura Inst of Tech) 

  • Sure looks like bumblebees are capable of learning, folks! (Queen Mary U of London) (Paper) 

  • When Chernobyl was evacuated, pets got left behind; the Russian govt tried to kill them all for reasons of mercy and also not spreading radiation, but they missed some and now there are tons of dogs living in the hot zone who've spent their whole lives there. What's that like? How are they doing? The Scientists are on it. (Nature) (Paper) 

  • I was inclined to roll my eyes extremely hard at the idea of restaurant subscriptions, but honestly? It kinda makes sense. (AP) 

  • The Scientists have run the numbers and yes, we can achieve a circular plastic economy if we just make some incredible breakthroughs on recycling and get everyone to agree to charge more for it. (ETH Zurich) (Paper) 

  • The people who make shows like Succession work (unsurprisingly) hard to get the little details right. (Robb Report) 

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.