Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's trying out a new workout program for the month and has rediscovered new realms of muscle soreness long forgotten in ages past

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 25: PI DAY 2 (PIE HARDER)

I don't know about you, but I'm ready to either release, create, or harness some energy after the 2024 I've been having. That means it's time for INSTANT BAND NIGHT next week(!!!!!). Come play or just watch; either way, it's going to be an absolute detonation of creative joy and you'll be glad you came. Also I'm going to bring a pie. Come have pie.

March 14 2024
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

New year, new space! Why settle for a boring garden, potted plant, or domicile when you could have a little statue of a crazy-colored tardigrade, a delightful friend to hold your last fruit, a Star Trek buddy in a party hat, or an Ediacaran life form right now. Take a look and consider some clever ceramics for yourself, for family, or for a dear friend far away.

Idea Factory Giveaway

I think it's probably safe to say the podcast is on hiatus after two+ 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.

I'm waiting to see Dune Part 2 (or DUNC II, which is what my brain can't seem to avoid calling it) until I can rewatch the first one. It's not like the story can be spoiled for me; I've read the book. Plus, this way I get to avoid the crowds!

What else is there to be excited about movie-wise this year? Anything? The only other thing I can think of is that new Ghostbusters, which I'm like a 5 out of 10 on, if we're inventing scales of movie excitement from scratch. I still wish they'd made more of the one with Kate McKinnon; it was fun and you know it.

What else? Or is there something I missed recently? Write in with a rec if you've got one, even if you think I already know about it, because I guarantee you I've missed many things!!

#dadthoughts

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

Felix has had a fever since Thursday, although to be fair it hasn't really returned since this morning. Our doctor's reasonably sure it must be some random virus, though she did swab him for strep* even though she thought it unlikely. At least he doesn't seem to have any other symptoms aside from a distinct lack of appetite; it could be far, far worse. He's coughing, too, but then again he's been coughing for literal weeks. So has everyone else in the house. I've been coughing the least by far, although I have to admit I'm not, uh, encouraged by the vague soreness I've felt in my throat all day that doesn't seem to have intensified. This happened to me the last time someone got sick, too (last week? it was probably last goddamn week) — it's like being haunted by the ghost of a cold. Is my immune system really this good, or am I fending off microbial invasion through sheer force of will? It's a medical mystery.

* A process he did not enjoy, though it was over blessedly quickly.

Fascination Corner

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

• Wendy's is walking back that whole surge pricing thing. (Gizmodo)
  

• The Scientists think they've spotted what causes brain fog in people with long covid. (Trinity College Dublin) (Paper)
  

• Some Engineers have created a water-based battery that won't catch fire or explode and should be pretty easy and safe to manufacture at scale. (RMIT) (Paper)
  

• Thomas Zimmer has actually read the MAGA chuds' plans for the country if Trump wins — the plans that they've literally published online for anyone to look at — and once again warns that we really, really don't want that to happen. (Democracy Americana)
  

• A meta analysis of five centuries' worth of studies seems to show that the forces of biological diversification and homogenization are equally balanced, which is weirdly comforting. (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research) (Paper)
  

• "Our Company Is Doing So Well That You're All Fired" (McSweeney's)
  

• If you ask The Machine to act like it's from an episode of Star Trek, it gets better at solving math problems. No, The Scientists don't know why. (Science Alert) (Paper)
  

• The Scientists think they've stumbled across a new class of antibiotic molecule that might even be impossible for bacteria to evolve resistance against. (UC Santa Barbara)
  

• I'm trying to avoid the discourse around the Chaya Raichik [spit] interview mostly because I know I wouldn't be able to watch more than a yoctosecond of the footage without every cell in my body igniting in white-hot rage, but I do agree with the seemingly coalescing opinion that Taylor Lorenz was right to put the entire unedited thing out there. (TPA)
  

• The Scientists have found a new plant we can eat that grows in the Carolinas. (Penn State) (Paper)
  

• It looks like boiling your tap water can get a lot of the microplastics out. (ACS)
  

• Some Engineers have made prototype cyborg jellyfish to help oceanic research. (Caltech) (Paper)
  

• Get your kids their flu shots specifically in October for maximum immune power. (Harvard Medical) (Paper)
  

• A big study in Europe by The Scientists gives the all-clear on graphene in that it doesn't appear to be dangerous to human health or the environment. (Empa) (Paper)
  

• Imagine having Cormac McCarthy be your editor. (Miller's Book Review)
  

• Hats off: "The game magazine that spent two years taunting a Final Fantasy VIII hater" (FF8 Is The Best)
  

• The Scientists have published a roadmap for the future of biomedical engineering and it's ambitious, which to be fair is what you want something like this to be. (U Pitt) (Paper)
  

• Shaq's term on the Papa Johns board is coming to an end, but it sounds like he really turned the place around while he was there. (The Takeout)
  

• A fascinating and sort hilarious experimental setup appears to show that live music really truly does affect us more than recorded music. (U of Zurich) (Paper)
  

• If this is as close as we're going to get to an actual bestiary of Scavengers Reign, I guess I'll take it. (Vulture)
  

• The Scientists have worked out a way to tell the temperature of a planetary subsurface ocean based on the thickness of its ice shell, which has Implications for whether or not there might be life under there. (Cornell) (Paper)
  

• Videogame company executives are so intent on shedding staff that it seems like the logical endpoint should simply be to fire everybody and let the execs make the games themselves, obviously. (The Gamer)
  

• Some Engineers looking at old construction methods realized fly ash makes a great component for cement, which is good news because we're staring down the barrel of a sand shortage. (UBC Okanagan)
  

• You need Spurious Correlations in your life as long as you're not prone to conspiracy thinking. (Spurious Correlations)
  

• It's at least possible that the character of a planet itself — big, watery, permanently cloudy — might have a huge influence on whether or not the aliens living there ever think about (or build tech capable of) leaving the place. (Universe Today)
  

• The Scientists think empathy can be socially transmitted! You just have to be in a place where you can watch other people do it. (U of Würzburg) (Paper)
  

• Let's all read an interview with a genuine sociopath. (NYT gift link)
  

• I didn't read that Elon bio back when it came out, so I'm glad someone else did and summarized it for us. The title probably tells you what you're in for: "Not Even The Patron Stooge Of Fawning Biographies Can Make Elon Musk Look Good" (Defector)
  

• For the first time in history, The Scientists have observed two humpback whales going at it, and as a bonus, they happened to be males! (Pacific Whale Foundation)
  

• Instead of just relying on wealth, The Scientists took a much more granular look at which countries are truly poised to embrace sustainability, and the preliminary answers are interesting. (Anthropocene)
  

• Ever wanted to see the view from inside a space capsule during reentry? Varda's got you. (Universe Today)
  

• Is every undersea mountain range basically its own unique ecosystem? That seems to be the lesson I'm learning based on what The Scientists keep seeing every time they visit one! (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

Photo by Andrea De Santis 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 Mohamed Hamdi on Unsplash

Reader Kyle says Kid Black Belt "was a DC-area local band playing bars for $5 covers in 2001. All originals in the pop-punk space. They got signed to a major label and A Fate Both Gross and Terrible was their sole album with the label before getting dropped and breaking up. Which they predicted happening, hence the title. You might remember their song Right Now from that one Pepsi commercial."

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.