what does the bunny say

April 01, 2019

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that could probably live on orange pound cake for the rest of its life and be perfectly content. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway103 - Dr. Jon's Miracle Sausage"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Mike Doom explore splendid notions for new political terminology, foodstuffs, a Doctor Who AU, and lots and lots of videogames."There really, truly is probably an entire studio's worth of games in one of the ideas we discuss in the back half of this episode!If you haven't yet, subscribe by searching "Idea Factory Giveaway" in your podcatcher of choice (and let me know if it doesn't pop up). If you're already there, feel free to leave a 5-star rating and a nice review (it helps; algorithms, etc, you know the deal).Instant Band Night 10Where the elite meet to play music from a sheet! That they just wrote! Details are all here:http://bit.ly/instantbandnight10This time around, we're also going to experiment with smaller bands every now and then. We might slap together a drummer, keyboard, and singer, and call it good. Or just a drummer, guitar, and singer. ALSO: I've taken a stab at assembling some tools that should help bands kickstart their creativity and write something themselves: should I go the extra mile and officially outlaw covers altogether? Having everyone be in the same basket together might feel paradoxically freeing; this is just a thought I'm having. What are yours? 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.If you had to sort the population into two halves: 

  1. People who like summer weather better

  2. People who like winter weather better

Which half would be bigger? My guess is that everyone likes to think they're a summer person, but then when summer hits, they remember that being hot is gross as hell, and there's no real way to remedy it other than to strip down -- but you can get right down to being buck-ass naked and still be uncomfortably hot, so then it's down to finding a fan to stand in front of or an air-conditioned room to seal yourself inside. Winter weather, by contrast, can be defeated with the application of sufficient cozy layers. I think this means I'm a winter person. Huh. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin's favorite stuffed animal right now is a soft beige bunny. For a while, he used to say "money!" when we presented it to him, which I suspected to be a corruption of "bunny" as previously discussed. Now, his favorite thing to say when he sees the bunny is "mao!" -- which he also says when he sees a cat, so I think it's a corruption of "meow." As far as I can tell, this means one of four things: 

  • Quentin is currently unable to distinguish between cats and bunnies

  • Quentin can make the distinction, but chooses not to because he believes it to be irrelevant

  • Quentin thinks bunnies say "meow"

  • Quentin has named his bunny Meow

As of this writing, I am unable to determine which of these apply. More on this to come as events unfold! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Will anyone at the companies he addresses listen to Mike Monteiro? As a white guy, maybe he stands a chance of being heard. It'd be nice to think about, anyway. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Grim but accurate: The Sharing Economy Is Going To Innovate Us Into The Victorian Era. (The Outline) 

  • Women: don't be too hot at work, or else you might be perceived as an untrustworthy "femme fatale," <John Mulaney singsong voice> because thiiis is the patriaaaarchy, and liiife is a fucking nightmaaare! </John Mulaney singsong voice> (Washington State via EurekAlert) 

  • Snacking late at night might be linked with just plain not getting enough sleep. (Vox) 

  • I had no idea about this 30yo French Garfield beach mystery until it was solved. (Yahoo News) 

  • A survey of 8.2M of The Teens seems to show that they're spending less time hanging out in person, and feel substantially lonelier. (The Conversation) 

  • There's no need to kill animals that bother your crops if you can scare the shit out of them instead, and it turns out you can make a drone terrifying by adding taxidermy to it. It's too bad we can't figure out a way to scare bugs. (Anthropocene) 

  • What's the least useful body part? (Gizmodo) 

  • I regret to inform you all that this article about a Supreme Court ruling allowing a dude in Alaska to fire up his homemade hovercraft to hunt moose fails to provide a picture of said hovercraft. I know we have other journalism woes to worry about, but what the fuck, Associated Press? 

  • Put a guy under sedation for three weeks to recover from surgery: what are his dreams like? Hear from the source, why not. (Kotaku) 

  • There are big, dumb blind spots in our urban climate change research. (Anthropocene) 

  • Bacteria at sites thousands of miles apart share genetic material, and the easiest explanation is that they must be getting there through the air. Great. I thought I covered something related to this in a recent issue, but I couldn't find it, so there you go. (Rutgers via EurekAlert) 

  • What happens when you grab an electric scooter and just ride it out of town until it dies? Something surprisingly peaceful-sounding, honestly. (Gizmodo) 

  • The rent being too damn high just about everywhere has actual health implications that aren't good. (Fast Company) Which is just one reason why The Crushing Cost Of Rent Should Be 2020’s Big Issue; hard to argue with, honestly. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • 95% of all Bitcoin trades are bullshit. You don't say. (The Download) 

  • Here's a couple more food-for-thought "AI wipes us out" scenarios worth reading. (Vox) 

  • Why is it so hard to build a profitable robotics company? Lots of talk, not a lot of walk. (IEEE Spectrum) 

  • It might not sound like a big deal, but discovering a possible way to make heat move at the speed of sound would actually be extremely neat. (Scientific American) 

  • Hallucinogen Therapy Is Coming. (Nautilus)

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumDumbhole, Where The Fault Lies 

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.