Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that would still love to know where these mystery scratches all over its body are coming from

You'll Like This

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

Instant Band Night 31: FLAVOR

ONE MONTH AWAY!! It's becoming increasingly clear as the year wears on (especially over this past week) that we need an excuse to experience and/or create surprise and joy that we can see and feel or else we're going to mcfuckin' lose it. That's where Instant Band Night comes in, friends: clear your calendar for the next one on May 8. Mark it now and tell everyone you know: whether you choose to play in one of the bands or just watch it all unfold, it's an almost unbelievably ecstatic celebration of spontaneous creativity that we all need at the cellular level. Let’s do this; bring your people!!

✨🪩✨
May 8 2025
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

If you've been looking for a weird little guy to put in your garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then I have the perfect place to start your search. If you know someone else who needs a weird little guy for their garden, potted plant, or kitchen, then you're also in luck!!!!

Idea Factory Giveaway

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

The test now is to see if anybody else is going to carry that Cory Booker energy forward and disrupt Senate business regularly to the point where nothing gets done. My main suggestion right now is to just take the podium and start reading the McSweeney's chronicle of Trump's innumerable crimes, starting at the top. It's long enough on its own, but you could also eat up a lot of time going off on extemporaneous tangents about what a piece of shit Trump is. The longest I've ever been awake at a stretch is 41 hours; I could probably rant for at least that long, using this article as a springboard, fueled entirely by spite and hatred alone. I can't be the only one, right??

#dadthoughts

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

There's no way to avoid this coming across as bragging at least a little, but it is what it is: I'm thoroughly grateful that whatever else I've done as a dad, I've at least managed to cultivate a relationship with Quentin where he feels comfortable telling me about his feelings. For instance! Did you know:

• A crush is where you really love someone a whole lot

• Quentin's biggest crush right now is a girl in his grade who I'll call Zadie

• Fascinatingly, Zadie has also told Quentin she has a big crush on him too

I don't think this means something especially romantic — they're 7 — but I'm fascinated by whatever the story must be here. How'd the idea of crushes in general osmose into their brains? When did they all start talking about it? How did these two specifically decide to tell each other?? I guess I have some questions to ask!!

Fascination Corner

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

• New modeling suggests global warming could obliterate 40% of the world's economy, which you'd think would make the capitalists nervous. (The Conversation)

• Coincidentally, here's "Six roadblocks to net zero — and how to get around them: Overcoming these obstacles in carbon markets can speed up decarbonization." (Nature)

• Ooooooooooo here's a deep dive on the prop design for the Lumon Industries WoeMeter L-Series Model 2-70. (make3)

• It's not anybody's imagination: racial minorities get more tickets. Because of racism. (Ars Technica)

• Tesla's having a lot of trouble selling new Cybertrucks hahahahahahahahahahaaaa (ElecTrek)

• Maybe ............... maybe don't use The Machine (Generative Flavor) to code your recipe-making app??? (404 Media)

• Have an interesting longread on those little silica gel packets you see everywhere. (Scope of Work)

• The Scientists ran a fascinating study on 4:3 fasting as opposed to regular dieting and the results, while not eye-poppingly dramatic, are measurably better and likely much easier to achieve. (U of Colorado)

• Bullying Elon while he silently streams videogames is a good start but I think we can do better. (Polygon)

• Some Biomedical Engineers have cooked up a starfish-shaped heart monitor that delivers way better results and presumably could be dressed up to look like a piece of wacky alien tech for public use. (U of Missouri) (Paper)

• A nontrivial portion of the support for Trumpworld is coming from sad right-wing men who think impoverishing women will help them get laid. (Cartoons Hate Her)

• What if we could just chew an antiviral gum that would stop the transmission of viruses like herpes simplex and the flu???? (UPenn) (Paper)

• Target's foot traffic has been declining ever since they publicly caved in to the MAGA chuds on their DEI efforts, while Costco (who've done the exact opposite) are still seeing gains. Ha! (Retail Brew)

• What do Americans think money can buy? You'll be relieved to see where "intelligence" and "good morals" fall on this list. (YouGov)

• The Scientists are waving their arms and ringing bells and pointing at some cheap, scalable materials for carbon capture we should be testing en masse. (Northwestern)

• Wind turbine blades are fucking enormous and hard to recycle, so it's a good thing The Scientists have figured out a great way to do it. (Washington State)

• No more animal testing: The Scientists are making good progress on 3D-printed living skin that we can run tests on instead of, you know, the alternative. (TU Graz) (Paper)

• Some Biomedical Engineers have built a device that can move cells around on a plate without touching them; they even started a company around it. Good for them. (U of Bristol)

• A small town in Japan made trading cards of some of the literal old dudes in the community; obviously I hope the expansion includes some women, but the main question I'm now forced to consider is: what would my card be? (Tokyo Weekender)

• Bats rely on echolocation to get around, right? So how come they don't crash into each other when they emerge from their caves by the literal thousands — wouldn't all their signals jam in such an enormous crowd? The Scientists think they've finally figured it out. (Max Planck Inst of Animal Behavior) (Paper)

• "What if we find nothing in our search for life beyond Earth?" (SETI Inst) (Paper)

• The Scientists and Some Engineers collaborated to figure out an effective and efficient way to get industrially useful chemicals out of literal manure, bringing us that one step closer to a true circular economy. (U of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) (Paper)

• Simulations show the weather's going to get a lot rainier for east Asia and the west coast of the US once the Southern Ocean starts warming up. (Cornell) (Paper)

• A "weekend warrior" approach to exercise — getting 2.5h of pretty vigorous activity in over just two days — still significantly improves your health, according to a new study run in the UK. (AHA) (Paper)

• Some Engineers have been running the numbers and they think we should look into the possibility of using the ground underneath buildings to store heat (or cool) and reduce their energy usage significantly. (KTU) (Paper)

• "Are People Bad At Their Jobs....or Are The Jobs Just Bad? A Bed Assembly Drama" (Culture Study)

• Giant almond car. Giant almond car! Giant almond car!!!!! (Atlas Obscura)

• The Scientists have done some preliminary surveys and it really does look like playing the wrong background music at your workplace can have measurable negative effects, which seems obvious but is still nice to have some numbers confirm. (Ohio State)

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 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:

No reader interpretations came in for this one, which looks to me like it has a sound similar to really early Mountain Goats; this was, however, their only album.

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. If you received this as a forward and would like to subscribe yourself, you can do it at the bottom of this page right here (which also has the archive)!