we're all stockpiling something

July 06, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that still wants the cops who killed Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain arrested at the goddamn minimum. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayNo new episode this week, but that just means you can check out the extensive and highly entertaining back catalogue if you haven't already; while you're there, consider giving us one of those  ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings wherever you're listening (like, say, Apple Podcasts) and feel confident you've done at least one thing right.Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberIt seems laughable to try to throw Instant Band Night without a proven vaccine in place. Let's see what's up in November 2021.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook* * s t a y   h o m e   / /   s t a y   h e a l t h y * * 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.JESUS CREEPING CHRIST IN THE CORNFIELD, WHY IS JOE BIDEN LIKE THIS 

"Mr. President, the American people didn’t make enormous sacrifices over the past four months so you could waste your time with late night rants and tweets.Step up. Take responsibility. Do your job."

HE CAN'T, JOE, HE LITERALLY DOESN'T KNOW HOW AND COULDN'T BE MADE TO CARE EVEN IF HE DIDYOU SPEAK TO HIM AS IF HE HAS SHAME WHEN NOT A SINGLE NANOGRAM OF SHAME IS PRESENT IN HIS ENTIRE STUPID BODY, HE WOULD HAVE TO ACTUALLY BE SELF-AWARE FOR SHAME TO MANIFEST IN THE ROTTEN PUTRID MUCK OF HIS PERSONALITY, HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS, JOE, HOWWHERE IN THE SCREECHITY SCRATCHITY FUCK HAVE YOU BEEN FOR THE LAST FOUR YEARSWE COULD HAVE DONE SO MUCH BETTER THAN YOU📣 FUCK 📣 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We've got what I can only describe as a backlog of little gifts for Quentin, which we started to accumulate about a month into quar and thought we'd deploy as needed whenever seemed appropriate. It's mostly taken the form of books, but there are also more interesting items: extremely durable paper towel rolls (actually the cores of foil or plastic wrap rolls) and a plate/utensil set gifted to us by an excellent friend with a strong construction theme. We have a lot of quar to get through yet, and I'm confident we'll see these all come out, but the one I'm the most impatient for hasn't been fully assembled.You see, I took a dive into BrickLink on a quest to get Quentin a replacement for a high-use Duplo piece that had broken in a very specific and unfixable way, and ended up getting ............ a few others. Let's just say his construction fascination will be rewarded. Let's also just say that one particular piece did get ordered from literal Russia, and is on its way here even as you read this (did you know USPS tracking can be instantiated from other countries?). It's not a lot of parts -- seven total -- so I want them all to arrive before I give him any. My last order hasn't shipped yet, but I think that seller just moves slowly, and also we're in the middle of a pandemic, so I'm trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. It will be kind of hilarious if the part from Russia arrives before the order from Michigan. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • If the National Traffic Safety Board were to review the White House response to the rona, what would it say? Nothing surprising, honestly, but if you want the full rundown or just need something to stoke your rage fires, you can burn an Atlantic click on it. (~$Atlantic) 

  • UCLA bioengineers have built a glove with cheap conductive sensors wired to it that can translate sign language gestures into speech with a smartphone app. (UCLA) 

  • Stop saying "Karen" when you mean "dangerous white supremacist," because that's what the ones we're seeing lately actually are. (The Root) 

  • The actual features of your neighborhood have surprisingly little to do with how much (or how little) you're satisfied with it. (Michigan State) 

  • The surviving core of a gas giant planet has been observed orbiting a distant star. How about that! (U of Warwick) 

  • What if we just turned abandoned malls into housing? There's a Seattle suburb that's gonna find out relatively soon. (Bloomberg CityLab) 

  • Here's a UK study that indicates fecal bacteria transplants are cheaper and more effective than antibiotics in treating C. diff infections. (U of Birmingham) 

  • Octopuses could theoretically live on 99% of the sea floor -- in other words, there doesn't appear to be a depth limit to their range. How about that! (Hakai) 

  • School lunches should be free. Especially now, but going forward into the future forever also. (Civil Eats) 

  • Constructing artificial tissue with living cells has been a tough prospect for years because it's hard to make the tiny, intricate blood vessel networks needed to nourish them. Then some researchers thought: what if you 3D print them out of sugar? (Rice U) 

  • It may be possible to improve your eyesight by just looking into a red light for a few minutes a day. (University College London) 

  • Here are the things the big social media companies would actually have to do to start earning real trust around racism response. (The Verge) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumThe Outer Mission, But There's No There There 

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.