you don't want this cold

November 21, 2022

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that maintains the last hour of Rogue One still pretty much rules 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory GiveawayAs we slide into the 2022 holiday season I still hope to recover enough energy to restart some hobbies, and this podcast remains on that list. In the meantime, you can find its 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 podcastInstant Band Night 18: RECHARGEInstant Band Night 17 was a success; not only did we get some truly astounding musical surprises from impromptu bands featuring highly creative band names and beautiful gig posters, I think we've finally nailed the format of the closing "everybody in" song. Musical experience. Whatever it is. It was fucking great and you should come to the next one, which is on January 12 2023 (add it to your calendar by clicking here). Bring your friends.If you missed it or just plain forgot what Instant Band Night is, imagine a great party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot. If you play music, you can be one of 'em, and if you don't, you can just watch. It is, and I'm not exaggerating here, a goddamn inspiration every time.🎼 MUSIC! 🎼🚀 COURAGE! 🚀✨ CREATIVITY! ✨January 12 20236p$10East Bay Community Space507 55th St 94609(Eventbrite) (Facebook)+ +  S E E   Y O U   T H E R E  + + 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.We've got another week where there's nothing much here, this time because my body is being baked into a pile of briquettes in the shape of a man by some sort of non-covid cold that just. won't. leave! #dadthoughts has more details because at least they should go somewhere. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.(This one's going to discuss gross bodily functions so you can skip it if you want to.)So here's a timeline of sorts:Sunday- Felix manifests the stomach bug, Diarrhea Version- We decide to keep him home from daycare- Quentin goes to school as normalMonday- Felix continues to have his diarrhea and the resulting rash is really bad- We're going through a tub (not a tube, a TUB) of max-strength Desitin at a truly impressive rate- Quentin comes home early from school, complaining of a headache that mysteriously vanishes by the time I'm there to pick him up- Felix cannot sleep in Quentin's room because he keeps waking up and crying, so we move him to our room and the screaming continuesTuesday- Felix is still home, evincing a fever that we control with the usual medicines- Quentin goes to school- On the advice of medical professionals, we begin to apply topical antifungals to Felix's rash and it begins to improve, although it also seems to make him uncomfortable- Desitin consumption continues unabated- Quentin comes home after a post-school outing to his grandfather's house and promptly barfs all over the floor- I sleep on the floor of his room just in case he needs something, although by bedtime he's been able to keep fluids down without fuss- Felix sleeps in our room again, still crying- Mavis takes herself downstairs to sleep on the couch at 3a in the hopes that she may find some sort of restWednesday- Felix is still home; the diarrhea seems to be on its way out, but he's just a little feverish- Quentin is home as well, although he's perfectly fine and energetic the entire day, fully recovered- Okay then- Felix once again sleeps in our room and this time I sleep on the couch just so one of us can get some restThursday- Felix is still home; daycare guidelines stipulate 24h symptom-free must pass, which honestly is wise and we do not begrudge it- Felix has a perfectly normal day- Quentin goes to school and has a great time- At lunchtime the parents are invited to a Thanksgiving potluck in his TK classroom that positively overflows with food and cheer- Felix has what we would term a "side blowout" that doesn't seem as chemically nasty as his sickness diarrhea but is still messy- We're still applying the miconazole, btw, and the Desitin tub, new this weekend, is now half empty- Felix sleeps, finally, in Quentin's room again; although he spends the first few hours waking up every 45-60m and crying briefly until he locates a pacifier and his little purple bunny, he eventually settles downFriday- Felix finally goes to daycare- Quentin goes to school- ............... I begin to detect a distinct run-down feeling that morphs into aches, chills, and a loss of appetite- O I am sick but at least I don't have the barfs or the runs- Felix has yet another side blowout that prompts a whole-ass impromptu bath; we decide to move him up a diaper size- I am strongly discouraged from going to Target for new diapers after the children are in bed and am instead adjured to sit and rest- I am, I'm told, "not good at being sick"- Which honestly: fair- I don't want Mavis to catch this from me, so I sleep in the downstairs office on the fold-out couch, under a collection of blankets that kinda looks like a pile of Viking furs if the Vikings were super into knittingSaturday- My night was comfortable and I slept a lot, thanks to Mavis who handled the morning routine- The children have a normal day- My condition seems either unchanged or marginally better than yesterday- Mavis thus far thankfully seems symptom-free- Being thoroughly invested in Mavis not catching whatever this bullshit is, I sleep on the pull-out couch downstairs againSunday- Condition still mostly unchanged- A normal one for the kids- I'm beginning to realize the downstairs fold-out bed is absolute hell on my lower back but I sleep there againMonday (Thanksgiving break starts)- At about 4a Felix wakes up screeeeeeaming but Mavis is able to calm him down and see him back to sleep with aplomb- Felix is at daycare and Quentin is day 1 of 3 of Thanksgiving Camp, an absolute godsend his school aftercare program organizes where he just goes all day and they do fun stuff- I'm still in the grip of this thing, which seems determined to hold me in its jaws and just kind of shake endlessly- There's no cough, no snot, no recognizable symptoms other than the chills and the feeling of all my energy being drained away into some extradimensional sump to which I have no access- Negative covid test, btw- Oh, fun: there's a sore throat that's now been added, and it's horrible- I can grant myself a temporary reprieve and become at least somewhat useful by downing 3 ibuprofen and waiting for The Magic to happen; on this day for some reason it takes a good 3-4h to arrive- Now Mavis is starting to feel it, so there's no reason for me to isolate downstairs anymore sleepwiseTuesday- Felix wakes up again at 4a extremely unhappy, and it takes a while before we think to check his diaper, where he does in fact have a poop- At this point the yelling is such that Quentin decamps to the living room couch for the rest of his sleep- My entire body is still being baked into seething coals by whatever this is- I wonder if some feature of this bug is lower back pain, because it's still not feeling the greatest (maybe it just takes a few nights back in the old bed)- Swallowing is now accompanied by the kind of facial expression and gesture you would probably expect from a Klingon who has just killed a hated enemy- You would not believe how long it took me to eat the slice of toast that accompanied the 3 ibuprofen that have enabled the completion of this newsletterSo that's where we are right now, if you were wondering!! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ed Zitron's got the only take you need to read on Elon's bugfuck meltdown. (Where's Your Ed At) 

  • I don't speak fluent Finance, but Matt Levine's writeup on the haunted disaster that is the FTX balance sheet is essential for either entertainment or gaining an understanding of what the fuck everyone's talking about. Have a non-paywall version someone put up! (archive.today) The FTX collapse is so bad that the guy they brought in to clean it up — who helped pick up the pieces after Enron, btw — is vociferously amazed at how fucked it is. (Vice) 

  • So is the tech boom ........... over? (Recode) 

  • Meta tried to roll out a new writing AI for science called Galactica. It lasted ............ three days. (~$MIT Technology Review) 

  • The FDA has approved a lab-grown meat for the first time! (CNBC) 

  • A couple centuries late but hey: Congress is making moves on deciding whether to give the Cherokee Nation a (non-voting) seat. (NPR) 

  • An interesting study seems to show social media users could theoretically fight misinfo by themselves collectively given the right toolset. (MIT) (PDF of paper) 

  • I haven't tried to buy tickets to a major concert in forever, but it sure sounds like a living goddamn nightmare. (Defector) 

  • The Scientists have found a fungus that can remove mercury from soil, which is incredible but also sort of spooky. What ............... what does it ....... do? with the mercury? where does the mercury go??? (U of Maryland) 

  • Deprivation really does seem to correlate to impulsivity. (Aston U) (Paper) 

  • The oldest evidence of human cooking — 780,000y ago — has been discovered. (Tel Aviv U via Science Daily) 

  • The Scientists tell us what we want out of our relationships changes as we age, which might explain why lots of us are feeling lonelier despite still having lots of social connections. (Duke) (Paper) 

  • Thanks to the FTX collapse, effective altruism is having a Moment right now, and not in a good way. (Vox) 

  • My alma mater's been working on cheap robots with legs that can get moving more or less right away. (CMU) 

  • A clam that went extinct 30,000y ago has been rediscovered chillin' in SoCal. (Science Alert) 

  • Brexit thoroughly fucked the UK and I bet you a dollar the percentage of "Leave" voters who understand what they did is not significantly greater than zero. (BBC) 

  • The Scientists think sewage plant wastewater could be converted into fertilizer, which would help reduce the footprint of the fertilizer industry and also make money for sewage treatment plants. (Drexel) 

  • What if alien life is hiding in caves? The Scientists have been trying to narrow down the questions that need to be answered, and they're interesting! (Northern Arizona U) (Paper) 

  • Well, it looks like there are 8 billion of us now. (UN) 

  • The Scientists have discovered that Earth has a mechanism for self-regulating its temperature, but it takes hundreds of millennia to do its thing, so let's not get too excited. (MIT) 

  • Wh-what: artificial neural networks might need to "sleep" occasionally to make their results better. You know, just like .......... human ........... brains?? (UCSD) (Paper) 

  • Some Engineers have been working on a brain-controlled wheelchair for paralyzed people, and the initial results are promising. (Cell Press via Science Daily) 

  • The notion of community feedback is thoroughly broken and needs to be sent to live on a nice farm somewhere upstate. (Vice) 

  • Broadly speaking, it looks like planting trees in a neighborhood correlates with less death? Which is ........... huh. (Barcelona Institute for Global Health) (Paper) 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumDickbanana, Let's Get This Over With(If you've made it this far, feel free to hit REPLY and tell me what you think this band/album sounds like, because now I'm curious) 

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.