what my mask signifies now

May 17, 2021

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's going to get the Legendary edition of Mass Effect in anticipation of some glorious day when long stretches of uninterrupted free time are possible 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway154 - A Measure of Absolute Flakiness"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Will (@will_sargent) discover a dizzying array of concepts guaranteed to advance dating, not to mention society at large, in brilliant and unexpected ways."A truly astonishing set of circumstances prevented us from recording these episodes with Will, but because we believed in ourselves, we persevered: behold the fruits of our delayed but no less invigorated labor!!!!!This time I'm not going to harangue you to visit our Apple Podcasts zone and make with the ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ because you know what? You don't need it this week.Instant Band Night 15: Gone Til NovemberHalf of America's adult population has been vaccinated. Pencil 11/11/2021 into your schedule and if we're all very good and lucky, we'll see you all at the next Instant Band Night.Facebook event's still there in case you (like me) can't yet escape the vortex of Facebook+ + g e t   y o u r   s h o t   / /   l e t ' s   d o   t h i s + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.So the CDC says people who are fully vaxxed can go maskless outside and yadda yadda.* This is good, but: I'm still gonna wear mine for a while. Because there's no way to tell the difference at a glance between me, a fully vaxxed person, and a fucking anti-mask asshole. Those people are out there, and I don't want to be counted among them. This is just going to be a goddamn mess.I understand that eventually there'll be enough of us that the assumption can shift from "That person's not wearing a mask; what a fucking asshole" to "That person must also be fully vaxxed like me!" It has to happen at some point, right? But that point is not now. At least not for me. Something I am noticing is that my assumption shifts very slightly if I see an older person out without a mask, because the vaccines were available to the elderly first. But it's not a total shift; my first gut reaction is still "where's your damn mask" annoyance. At what point do I start to trust other people, I guess is the question, which hahahaha if there's heheheheh anything the American reaction to the eeheeheeheeheehahaha pandemic has taught me, it's hahahaHAHAHAHAAAAA [gentle sobbing]* Here's something interesting, at least, which is that the CDC changed its guidelines because the data increasingly says fully-vaxxed people not only can't catch the rona (obviously) but also they can't transmit it to others. ($NYT) 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.We're now counting the number of emergences Quentin makes from his room post-bedtime; it seems to fluctuate between 1-6 and the last one can be as far out as 45m from the close of the ritual. We're still careful to make our re-tuck-ins as unexciting as possible, so hopefully he'll get the hint and stay in bed (he said, crossing his fingers)? The most interesting emergences are the false ones: we can hear him opening the door, and then after a few moments we hear him close the door without ever actually leaving the room. Our current theory is that he's just checking to make sure we're still here, or just to see what we're up to, which is nothing exciting: there's always one of us in the armchairs of the front room within sight of the staircase so we can get to him in a reasonably timely manner. I don't have any kind of point to make here, I'm just cataloging life with a toddler as I experience it. Thank you for reading this part! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Globally speaking, it looks like we're just going to have to live with the rona from here on out. ($NYT) This is especially galling in light of the WHO-commissioned report that it could've been prevented had an admittedly absurd number of things gone right (mostly it imagines a world where governments actually acted in both a timely and responsible manner). (Nature) 

  • There's an absolutely huge amount of data in here for anyone interested in what happened in 2020, electorally speaking. (Catalist) 

  • You know what, speaking of data, here are some numbers on the startup funding scene striped by gender and racial diversity. (DocSend) 

  • Scientists captured video footage of an actual giant squid -- as in Architeuthis dux, not one of the off-brand species -- on the hunt. (Science Alert) 

  • Just a dozen people and their orgs are responsible for up to 65% of all the anti-vax content on platforms like Facebook, according to a report released by the Center for Countering Digital Hate in March. And since the release of that report, nothing's been done. (March report PDF) (The sequel PDF) 

  • MDMA did shockingly well in a Phase 3 study for PTSD treatment. (Science Alert) (Paper) 

  • Having blown past the heliopause, Voyager 1 is out there sending us a constant stream of information about the density of interstellar plasma. (Cornell) 

  • Everybody shut the FUCK up about the eagles in Lord of the Rings (Polygon) 

  • Scientists have demonstrated a wireless device for optogenetic experiments on mice, previous efforts having been hampered by the presence of wires. (Northwestern) 

  • Ceteris paribus, pink drinks appear to increase your exercise performance over clear ones. You heard me. (U of Westminster) 

  • Let's all read a little bit about polar madness. (GQ) 

  • AMERICAN EUROVISION IS COMING IN JUNE THIS IS NOT A DRILL (AV Club) 

  • "The myths that hint at past disasters" (BBC Future) 

  • How about a system for filtering wastewater that also produces electricity? (Washington U in St Louis) 

  • One study seems to indicate that view numbers don't influence what we think about online videos so much as the actual content of the videos themselves, which I guess is good news. (Ohio State) 

  • Here, let's all learn about oblique detonation wave engines. (Science Alert) 

  • Holy creeping Christ in the cornfield, ProPublica has an in-depth profile including a jailhouse letter from a Capitol insurrectionist, and you can hear the Fox News brainworms squirming through his fucking skull. (ProPublica) 

  • The British Ecological Society has put together a big report on nature-based solutions for climate change and biodiversity preservation; it's almost 200 pages, so I haven't read the whole thing yet, but give me time. (British Ecological Society) 

  • Petting therapy dogs really truly seems to have a measurable and lasting impact on stressed-out college kids' ability to think and plan. (Washington State U) 

  • I am once again asking you to read an economic analysis that indicates millennials are actually fucked, not a bunch of entitled spoiled brats or whatever it is the boomers are saying. (~$Atlantic) 

  • 3D-printed wood! 3D-printed wood!! (Fast Company) 

  • I'm just going to let the headline do the talking, as it were: "Using Just His Thoughts, Paralyzed Man Texts at a Record-Breaking 16 Words a Minute" (Gizmodo) 

  • That ancient seed experiment we read about a little while ago? Some of 'em are sprouting. ($NYT) 

  • Here are some small home upgrades you could actually do. (NYMag Strategist) 

  • Maybe I'm just going to make it a tradition to put a little comic at the end here. (False Knees) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some bandsCraft Project ManagerThe HarkenersSCAPULA 

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.