What the Federation stands for: cool sex and death

September 04, 2017

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, your weekly window into whatever's on my mind. This issue's "things I made" section is double the length it normally is because, quite frankly, shit got nuts. 

You'll Like This

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

Idea Factory Giveaway

51 - Sandwich Tricorder"Jon (@ferociousj), guest co-host Felicia (@reelfeed), and special guest Patrick (@tintindelocean) discuss weapons for cyclists, a much-needed scanning device, and a very dumb vampire story."Listen to this and then marvel at the Nima sensor, which it turns out you do have to load a sample of your food into for testing.You can subscribe using:iTunesRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/ 

Instant Band Night

In ten days, we'll see whether I've had a great idea or an amazing one: 

  1. There's a stage with one (1) band's worth of equipment on it.

  2. People put their names into hats labeled DRUMS, GUITAR, VOCALS, etc.

  3. Names are pulled from the hats periodically to make Instant Bands, who get 10 minutes in the green room to plan an 8-minute set.

  4. Rinse & repeat.

If you're local to the Bay Area, you should come, whether or not you sing or play any kind of instrument. Failing that, invite any and everybody you know -- do it now!!507 55th St 94609Thursday Sept 148-11p$5 doorBYOB 

The President of Blank, Sucking Nullity

I liked this Baffler piece by David J. Roth so much that I wanted to have it in audio form, and that meant recording it myself (with permission, naturally). It's easily one of the best Trump thinkpieces of the last few months, which in Trump administration time is like a quarter fucking century. But if you're walking around and you haven't yet read it, or you have already and you just want the music of those words to wash over you out loud, just head on over to Soundcloud while it's still a thing. 

Tales From Ten Forward Episode 5: "Yesterday's Enterprise"

I'm almost certainly not alone in having had the notion to combine Drunk History and Star Trek (the idea is explained in depth in episode 31 of the podcast), but I am in a somewhat singular and rarefied cohort of people who've actually gotten down and dirty to help make it -- five episodes of it, in fact, the fifth of which just dropped, under the aegis of my friend Evie. We filmed Ryan North's drunken retelling of "Yesterday's Enterprise" over a year ago; for a variety of reasons that boil down to "nobody gets paid to do this" (which is how we want it, since otherwise we'd be sued into oblivion), it takes a long time to make these -- they are literally a labor of love.This one is special to me for a variety of reasons:

  • Ryan had never before been drunk at that level, but he was a goddamn champion who held on until it was time to call "cut" and saw us graciously out the door before the consequences of his consumption caught up with him.

  • I felt very bad about this and left fresh Gatorades outside the door for his recovery (they always help me afterward), which came the next day.

  • I have a story to tell about how we captured the sound for this retelling so strange that I cannot put it to print; you'll have to get it from me in person sometime.

  • We actually caught the retelling from two angles, but we didn't have a second tripod, so we rested the second camera on a table and I completely fucked up the focus on it, so that's why we only have it from the one. I like to think I did a decent job lighting the scene, at least.

  • After Evie edited the raw footage down to form the video's narrative backbone, I transcribed the resulting audio, but also wrote down some visual gags that made it into the reenactment bits, which is why I got the "writer" credit.

  • I designed and built the Guinan hat from scratch out of a pizza box and some duct tape in essentially one go, to which we then haphazardly stapled fabric.

  • I was also responsible for the recreations of the Santa Suit uniforms the Enterprise-C crew wore (with the exception of Chad Castillo's, which is an actual uniform Harley owns, because Harley is living his best life), based on a picture Evie or Avery dug up somewhere. They did the research and I just monkeyed it together, but I was inordinately pleased at how the outfits came out for such a minimal outlay of materials.

  • The production for this episode saw me take a larger "co-producer" role in the organization and execution of the shoot, at which I think I did a good job, though there's of course always room for improvement. The next one will go PERFECTLY.

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.So there've been 51 episodes of the podcast, if you count this week's, and why wouldn't you. How much of the idea pile have we actually gone through? As of the time of this writing, and if the spreadsheet is to be trusted, 298 ideas have been discussed out of 747 total, which means we're 40% done (39.89% to be precise). On average, each guest goes through 11 ideas over the course of 2 episodes. If I stopped adding to the pile immediately, there'd still be enough material for about 40 guests' worth of shows (80 episodes). As it happens, I've also been logging new ideas to the spreadsheet at a rate of about 11 every month or two. The model for this is probably simple, but I freely admit my mathbrain has failed me; all I can tell is that the show isn't ending anytime soon, and that's good enough for now! 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Rules? Are there going to be rules? What kind of rules? In a weird moment of #dadthoughts and #momthoughts synchronicity, Mavis asked me just a few days ago if I'd had any notions about house rules.The thing I've been mulling over specifically is the list of rules I saw once written on the wall at a friend's house (they've got a chalkboard wall) (actually, I think they're moving soon; I wonder if they'll reproduce it in the new place or write up an entirely new list): 

  1. NO MURDERING YOUR FAMILY

  2. [FAMILY NAME]S NEVER SAY "QUIT"

  3. NO THREATENING TO MURDER YOUR FAMILY EITHER

  4. YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE NICE BUT YOU MUST BE KIND

  5. MOM HATES WHINING

  6. DAD HATES SPITTING

  7. NO CRACKERS ON THE DANCE FLOOR

They're pretty good. Are there any rules you'd suggest or discourage? 

Fascination Corner

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

  • What if life derives naturally from the laws of physics? And suppose the basic units of life can be built from different materials than the ones we're used to? Doesn't that imply a multiplication effect on the Fermi Paradox? Like seriously, where the fuck is everybody, even if their cells are made of vinyl cyanide or whatever?

  • Here's a fascinating article about not just using big data to detect gentrification before it happens, but potentially what to do if you see it start.

  • Another startup with a total nerd name is out there, this time a blood-testing startup that actually works calling itself Athelas. Not gonna lie: I kind of want to start a brandy distillery with really weird-shaped bottles and name it Miruvor. Who's with me.

  • Somewhere on my list of "batshit crazy group living situations we all find ourselves contemplating with our pals in our 20s" is living in an abandoned office park, of which there seemed to be a fair amount for a while in the Bay Area. It looks like I'm not the only crazy one out there!

  • You goddamn know you want to read the goddamn history of goddamn tater tots. I'm glad I could provide this service, or technically link you to an article someone else wrote that could provide this service.

  • Something I'm not likely to tire of any time soon are accounts of how Kushner and Ivanka's life in DC is terrible for them.

  • If companies use blockchain technology for food tracking, does that not present a danger of creating super giant unwieldy blockchains, like unwieldy to the point of uselessness given the number of individual units and updates involved, or am I vastly misunderstanding how the tech works? How could that be possible?????

  • Let's all read about Jewish gangsters who beat the living shit out of Nazis in the 1930s.

  • Shit, we did not think about the fact that autonomous cars need to be able to hear things.

  • Rather than battle it out in court, the Trump administration settled on the first lawsuit brought to bear against their bullshit Muslim ban. Assuming we could get him past the Secret Service, how much would it cost to hire Matt Damon to do a "how d'you like them apples?" with a printout of the settlement on the Oval Office window?

  • It costs an absurd amount to read the actual article, so don't, but just take a look at the abstract of this one. They taught a neural network to evaluate instances of gravitational lensing effects -- check out how much faster it was able to do it.

  • We can ... simulate plants now? That's a thing? What does that mean for efforts to optimize photosynthesis? Will we see the creation of THE ULTIMATE PLANT within our lifetimes? What would that even be?

  • Surely my brother and I weren't the only people who played with Zaks as kids? This looks cool as fuuuuuck, not least because I mostly ended up using Zaks to build Borg armor for my stuffed animals. Shit, I need to look for Zaks to buy. 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumGrannypuncher, No Prisoners This Time 

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.