what even is there to say at this point

September 21, 2020

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that spent much of this week wishing it had the ability to kill with its mind, and not just because of the very large spider up in the corner that eventually had to be dealt with hand-to-hand. 

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 hopefully we'll have the next one ready in time; there's been a lot going on around here lately (see below).Listen, I love a nice repeating number as much as you do, but 33 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ ratings in Apple Podcasts is ever so close to 35; if you want to cast a tiny light in someone's life this week (mine), why not give that rating star button thingy a push, a tap, a whisper??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.Due to several factors including but not limited to

  • Mavis's workplace dissolving their San Francisco office permanently

  • Having a tiny child

  • The problem of existing in physical space

  • Some friends of ours moving out of the house they were renting to accept new jobs down in SoCal

We've moved to a house a few miles north; it's an increase in rent, but also a major space upgrade that we're gonna need in the new world of More Work From Home Than Ever While Also Raising A Kid. In order to figure out where we were going to put the furniture (and where we need new stuff), I took a bunch of measurements of every room in centimeters: wall lengths, horizontal distance to windows, vertical distance to bottoms of windows, etc. Then I opened up an Illustrator file and set the units to picas, and created a bunch of boxes whose measurements in picas just happened to coincide with those of the various rooms (the whole "click once and type two numbers in" thing really works to my advantage) and locked them in place. Then I just had to get measurements for the footprints of the relevant bits of furniture and make some more boxes that we could slide around and rotate and whatnot. I don't claim it to be perfect -- since I was taking the measurements myself with a floppy-ass tape measure, I figure there's a fair bit of slop in my numbers -- but even so, I think it's a good way to get at least an initial idea of where to put everything. The plan more or less lines up with the reality, too; maybe this is the best way to do furniture layouts??We moved our stuff on Friday. It is now Monday night, and it's been basically a non-stop welter of activity, and there's still furniture in boxes awaiting assembly, mostly chairs; we got a big dining table and we need dining chairs, plus there are a couple of easy chairs we got for ourselves because we could. It turns out that living in a house with way more room means you need more stuff to go in them!! You should see this home office setup we're working on, though; the shelving looks really good, even if it did take me basically all day to assemble and secure to the wall because earthquakes. Something I'm noticing is that I'm having more trouble than usual winding down after an entire day of non-stop task execution. I should probably be sitting down with a book or something, but being in Get Things Done Mode means putting this newsletter together for sending!!!!!!!Something I resolved to do a few days ago was to email at least one (1) person I haven't talked to in a while every few days. Someone hold me to this, please. Even if it's just in your mind. You could also email me if you want instead; rest assured I'm definitely thinking about you even if I don't show it. Did that sound more sinister than intended? Probably! Am I too lazy to go back and reword it? Almost certainly! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Quentin has adapted to living in the new house pretty well. We took a tip from a friend to take him over here at least once while it was empty to get a feel for it, which we did, but since this place belonged to friends of ours with a kid Quentin's age, he's already been here before (on the side of a cabinet they left us a picture of the two kids having fun wrecking a cardboard box; it may stay there for the duration of our tenancy). Further updates as events warrant; I am, as stated previously, tired as fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Who would like a sobering extremely long read on what the future climate migration might have in store for America? ($NYT) 

  • Changing peoples' minds about Trump seems to be possible, but I need it to work faster and bigger in order to sleep 100% soundly, people. (~$Atlantic) 

  • Somewhat relatedly: if you change your mind to become a more empathetic person, your political views shift, too. (Michigan State) 

  • In case you didn't hear (because somehow this news escaped me for a full 24h after it was first announced) there is new Bake Off coming our way THIS WEEK (BuzzFeed) 

  • Tree research is actually a lot more interesting than you probably thought. (Guardian) 

  • Why everything is sold out. (~$Atlantic) 

  • Dr. Aisha Ahmad has some advice for us on facing the winter here at the 6-month mark. (Thread from @ProfAishaAhmad) 

  • And if you're wondering what "shore leave" looks like, here's some more actually useful tips from Vice, of all places, about concrete steps you can take to make a staycation truly enjoyable. (Vice) 

  • Friends and family of QAnon believers are watching helplessly as the people they used to know surrender entirely to madness. (BuzzFeed News) 

  • Let's all learn a new word: there's a new theory that some animals who can apparently sense the planet's magnetic field are doing it with the help of magnetotactic bacteria. Okay! (U of Central Florida) 

  • Looks like breadfruit could become the next big thing in food. Have you had it? Is it good? (U of British Columbia Okanagan) 

  • Prepper vendors are doing a disturbing amount of business right now. (~$Atlantic) 

  • This would be hilarious if it weren't so utterly depressing: get a look at the international community's opinion of Trump/America sliced and diced a few different ways. (Pew Research) 

  • There's a convincing data-backed argument to be made that instead of enrolling people in job training programs, you could just give them the money you would've spent on it instead, and they'll do just the same if not better at improving their lives. (Vox) 

  • Our early ancestors might've been boiling their food long before they figured out how to make fire. (MIT) 

  • Speaking of which, there's a shocking amount about what goes on inside fire itself that we still don't really understand on a molecular level. (Chemistry World) 

  • Feral hogs actually are potentially a huge problem; maybe don't go for a full-auto burst on your AK just yet, though. (Undark) 

  • Louisville is paying Breonna Taylor's family $12M and promising reforms, which is a noteworthy settlement, but the cops that actually killed her are still walking around free, so, you know. Forward one step, backward another, etc. (~$Louisville Courier Journal) 

  • On the one hand, polar bears ripping off their tracking collars can be disappointing for researchers, but on the other, the data from those collars is actually super useful for tracking how the ice itself drifts. (Scientific American) 

  • This article about the effectiveness of pressuring companies to quit deforesting the Amazon for palm oil plantations is meant to be optimistic, but gradual, market-based solutions to companies ruining the planet are still gradual, market-based solutions. (Yale Environment 360) 

  • Group TikTok houses and whatnot are just communes by another name -- which isn't a bad thing. (Vice) 

  • "New research from UBC finds that after a night of shorter sleep, people react more emotionally to stressful events the next day—and they don’t find as much joy in the good things." (U of British Columbia) 

  • There is at least one (1) good billionaire. (Forbes) 

  • Some astronomers are going to use the James Webb to see if they can detect signs of life on rocky planets orbiting white dwarf stars. But don't stars tend to go through big ol' giant phases before they become dwarfs? Can life survive that business?? (Cornell) 

  • Here's an examination of TikTok teen girl fame. (~$Atlantic) 

  • Coconut harvesting is actually kind of risky and not something you can automate -- you basically have to shimmy up a tree and hack at fronds with a machete. But some engineers are working on a pretty neat-lookin' robot that'll do the job for you at no risk to your life! (IEEE Spectrum) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumClassical Trouble, All My Drowning Foes 

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.