welcome to octopus mystery hour

August 28, 2023

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that wishes the quinoa would just make itself sometimes 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayI know I say this every week, but the possibility that we may return to podcasting cannot be mathematically excluded! 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 22: WILDOnly a little over two weeks remain until Instant Band Night returns to make your Thursday the very best it can possibly be; come play or come watch; you are guaranteed an excellent time either way! Bring a handful of your coolest friends and bear witness to the most intensely joyful evening of creativity to be had in the entire Bay area!!Sept 14 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  + +Surprising and Unique Ceramics For YOUI've decided to experiment a little with the pricing in the shop, so if you haven't stopped by, or if you know someone with excellent taste who needs something that literally can't be bought anywhere else, maybe take a look right now and consider some clever ceramics! Brilliant little statues for your garden or home! A place to put your fruit! A little buddy to hold your garlic! I'm working (slowly) on even more delightful little weirdos and I hope to show you soon. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.We need to talk about the (solved) mystery of the Octopus Garden, or as I've taken to calling it with my friends, Octopus Fuck Mountain, because there's still something I want to know that has not been answered to my satisfaction.So. The Scientists have determined that thousands of Muusoctopus robustus gather here at this undersea mountain because it's got a low-intensity geothermal vent thing happening that makes the water warmer, so their eggs gestate faster (MBARI) (Paper). Hence Octopus Fuck Mountain. That's all they show up to do, is fuck and lay eggs. It works out great for them.Except: octopuses die after they lay their eggs. This is known. Has in fact been observed at this site at scale. So how do octopuses know to come to Octopus Fuck Mountain? If they never leave afterward? How do new ones keep showing up? Octopuses don't have Yelp. How is the word about this place getting out?Nowhere have I read that octopuses have some kind of salmon or eel-like instinct to return to their birthplace en masse. I am therefore discounting this as a possible answer. Octopuses are in fact generally supposed to be solitary animals. That's what makes Octopus Fuck Mountain so weird: there's thousands of them gathered there. And it's just the one species! What the fuck is going on?? Someone put me in touch with a marine invertebrate biologist! I just want to talk!! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Weirdly, not a lot to talk about this week: Quentin's good at school, Felix is good at daycare, and nobody's gotten a cold yet. Hopefully that doesn't mean it's going to happen this week as soon as I hit SEND, but if it does, I won't be surprised. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Fuck: a dismaying percentage of carbon credits might actually just be bullshit. (U of Cambridge) (Paper) 

  • This one is old but relevant: a brain scan study seems to show that holding power renders you neurologically incapable of seeing things from other peoples' POV. (~$Atlantic) 

  • "Climate change is redrawing the disaster map: From tropical storms to wildfires, climate disasters aren’t confined to the places we’re used to seeing them." (The Verge) 

  • The Vikram lander from India's Chandrayaan-3 mission became the first human craft to successfully touch down on the south pole of the moon. (CNBC) 

  • Here's a very good deconstruction of that David Brooks thing I keep seeing pop up all over the place. (Democracy Americana) 

  • The Scientists have run the numbers and it sure looks like the top 10% of US households are responsible for 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions. Huh! Huh. (UMass Amherst) (Paper) 

  • An unsurprisingly huge percentage of surveyed Americans are in favor of a four-day work week. Who wouldn't be?? (Morning Consult) 

  • "People forgot how to act in public: Why concertgoers keep throwing things at celebrities and no one can shut up at the movies." (Vox) 

  • Hamilton Nolan's got yet another banger for us on the perfectly understandable truth that nobody really knows how the government and all its agencies really work and the weakness that creates for our side. (How Things Work) 

  • Social factors like housing insecurity can genuinely affect peoples' health, but doctors' notes are hard to comb for the relevant info, unlike a medical condition with technical keywords that are easy to search for. The Machine turns out to be pretty good at scanning notes for social factors, though, which can help tailor treatments to the patient. (Regenstrief Inst) 

  • "The case for reimagining the nuclear family: You can learn a lot from utopias, even though you (probably) don’t live in one." I'm probably going to pick up this book at some point. (Vox) 

  • Does this new rule from the NLRB kick as much ass as I think it does? (Reuters) 

  • So you're a fish who can change color to blend in with your surroundings; great. But you're a fish. You've got no fucking neck. How do you see yourself? How do you know you're the right fucking color? The Scientists think they've cracked it with the hogfish, at least. (Scientific American) 

  • Some Engineers demonstrated a method for turning used coffee grounds into biochar and mixing them into concrete, strengthening it by 30%. (RMIT) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists have created a new antibiotic from "microbial dark matter," better known as "the huge percentage of naturally-occuring guys that we can't grow in a lab." (Utrecht U) (Paper) 

  • Physical equations describing mechanical systems developed literal centuries ago turn out to be pretty damn good for explaining the behavior of light waves. (Stevens Inst of Tech) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists pulled plant DNA out of a 2900-yr-old brick. (U of Oxford) (Paper) 

  • Some Engineers built a device that can harvest and condense water from the air in fucking Death Valley using nothing but sunlight. (Pohang U of Sci & Tech) 

  • I don't have anywhere close to the physics knowledge needed to really tackle this, but all the same: aren't physical constants supposed to be constant?? What's this nonsense about "tuning" them? What in the hell is going on, I demand an apology from management THIS INSTANT (Queen Mary U of London) (Paper) This doesn't help either!!! "Do measurements produce the reality they show us?" What is GOING ON IN HERE (Hiroshima U) (Paper) 

  • The Scientists say they're getting close to developing a whole new way to make and deliver vaccines that sounds rad as hell. (Griffith U) (Paper) 

  • If you want to boost kids' resilience and problem-solving skills, try teaching them creativity! (Ohio State) (Paper) 

  • It sure looks to The Scientists like city coyotes have more stress in their lives than country coyotes, but the why of it is looking more complicated than they thought, too. (Ohio State) (Paper) 

  • Speaking of coyotes, The Scientists set up some camera traps on an undeveloped stretch of California coastline, and it turned out to host some unexpectedly frequent visitors. (Hakai) (Paper) 

  • Stop to think about it for a second and you realize knowledge of childhood adversity has a weird warping effect on our judgment of people depending on whether they're nice or an asshole. But why, though? (U of Missouri) (Paper) 

  • Sure, going to stores where all the merch is locked behind those stupid doors is a hassle, but do not forget: "Despite what companies may want you to think, nearly every issue you encounter while shopping is a result of bad working conditions for retail employees." (Vox) 

  • Remember that Malaysian airliner that disappeared? The Scientists think it might be possible to reconstruct its whereabouts based on the shells of the barnacles on the wreckage that drifted ashore. (U of South Florida) (Paper) 

  • Brain scans seem to show that anxious people use a different, less-effective part of their brain to control emotions than people without anxiety, which is Officially Intriguing if you're going to try to design treatments for anxiety. (Radboud U) (Paper) 

  • A cargo ship with sails actually made the first leg of its maiden voyage. (Canary Media) 

  • Do symbols beat words in a contest of memory? (U of Waterloo) 

  • The Scientists think the atlatl may have helped the inclusion of women in prehistoric hunting parties, to the point where it's possible that women invented it in the first dang place. (Kent State) (Paper) 

  • Oof: the extent to which the generative AI porn genie has left the bottle is sobering, to say the least, but this quote is darkly hilarious: "Each of these reads like an extremely horny and angry man yelling their basest desires at Pornhub’s search function." (404 Media) 

  • The Scientists have built a technology framework that allows people sitting at home to explore the deep ocean with the help of submersible ROVs and VR. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Inst) 

  • Did we fuck the emperor penguins? 'Cause it kinda sounds like they're fucked, and it's our fault. (British Antarctic Survey) (Paper) 

  • Teaching kids about the structural basis for inequality helps reduce inbuilt bias, but only if you point the finger correctly, according to a new study. (NYU) (Paper) 

A Fictional Thing

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

Photo by Yuebirds on Unsplash(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:

Photo by Kevin Snow on UnsplashNo reader interpretations came in for this one, which I think is probably an instrumental free jazz album that was only available in one record shop in Fresno from about 2002-2007. 

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.