your chance for a producer credit

August 13, 2018

Welcome to Corgi-Class Starship, the newsletter that's putting this into MailChimp to the sound of Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, which inexplicably it had almost forgotten about. 

You'll Like This

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway77 - Hashtag TrueWineKnowledge"Jon (@ferociousj), Besha (@besha), and special guest Jenna reveal the inner workings of wineries in the course of discussing ideas for booze, games, and an animal-based business."I seriously want to get some people together to play the game we discussed here, or failing that, just some good-ass Paperback Game time. If you haven't played the Paperback Game, you haven't truly lived.If you haven't yet, subscribe by searching "Idea Factory Giveaway" in your podcast app of choice (and let me know if it doesn't pop up). If you're already there, feel free to leave a 5-star rating and a nice review (it helps; algorithms, etc, you know the deal).More Tales From Ten ForwardI don't know if you know about this or not: I'm part of the group responsible for Tales From Ten Forward, which is essentially Drunk History but for Star Trek episodes. We'd love to make more, but the costs involved in shooting are surprisingly significant, and thus we've turned to a one-time crowdfund. Rest assured we're not going to try to build a movie studio or print merch or run away to the Caribbean or some other such nonsense -- we just want to feed our cast/crew and buy the props we inevitably turn out to need. If you can, help or signal boost as you see fit! As rewards, we're offering highly esoteric producer credits that you'll have to click the link to get a look at; I promise they're worth it.More Tales From Ten ForwardAlternatively: this is also covered in the GoFundMe text, but if you've got a bunch of Star Trek junk you don't need and think we could find a use for it, get @ me. Note that you will not be getting it back, but it'll be put to good use!Instant Band Night VI: The Undiscovered CountryThe sixth Instant Band Night is happening in almost exactly a month.Thursday September 13507 55th St 946098p$5/personBYOBIn case you've forgotten, Instant Band Night is a party where musicians who've just met form bands on the spot.(1)The first rule of Instant Band Night is: 👏 YOU 👏 DON'T 👏 HAVE 👏 TO 👏 PLAY 👏 AN 👏 INSTRUMENT 👏 TO 👏 ATTEND 👏 (2)The second rule of Instant Band Night is: We guarantee you (the audience) an astonishingly excellent time.(3)The third rule of Instant Band Night is: Invite your friends!!!!!!!The Nitty Gritty™:1. The stage has a drum kit, guitar, bass, keyboard, and mics.2. We draw names out of hats to make instant bands that get 10 minutes in the green room to plan an 8-minute set.3. A hat-drawn artist will also take the stage alongside each band to draw their gig poster on a meeting room easel pad.Come play or come watch; you'll have fun either way! Bring your people, crack a beverage: let's do this. Here are convenient links to Facebook and Eventbrite; invite your pals! Forward this email! Make fliers and contract a skywriting service??? I'm not here to tell you what to do. I AM here to say: if you like a good time, or know someone in the SF Bay who does, you know where to send 'em. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.I want to use this space today to thank everybody who sent in ideas or the seeds of ideas for adventures my nascent D&D group could be sent on, and just want to say that my inbox is essentially always open to those, so if you think of more, you know where to send 'em. Just in case it sparks a notion, my party consists of: 

  • A dragon-man sorceror who enjoys lightning

  • A demon who collects swords

  • A semi-disgraced former soldier

  • A bird-man who really likes his ranged weapons

  • A human from the sticks who wants to see the wider world

  • A magical robot battle healer

  • A half-orc who quit the army

Thanks again, you beautiful nerds. 

#dadthoughts

Also skippable if you're in a hurry or don't care. No judgment.Lately we've been able to sit Quentin on the living room rug with an assortment of toys (and a buffer array of pillows in case he takes a dive in any direction) while we sit on the couch. It's quite good, especially during the workday -- he's able to amuse himself for long stretches at a time while I get stuff done on my computer (I work from home -- from the couch, technically, which I'll be the first to admit is an incredibly cushy arrangement). This also gives me reasonable access to snacks, which includes sticks of dried papaya that are bright orange and about the diameter of a cigar, with maybe 3/4 the length.Quentin apparently finds the sight of me with a stick of dried papaya poking out the corner of my mouth to be the funniest thing he's ever seen. Soon after I started munching on one, he started to crack up, and whenever I made eye contact, he lost his shit. You can see it for yourself; I saved it as a story on my Instagram profile. It was amazing, but what's slightly tragic is that I'll never be able to ask him what was so funny -- by the time he can meaningfully communicate, he'll have forgotten. But I won't! And neither will Instagram, I guess. Fine by me! 

Fascination Corner

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

  • If you've been reading for a while, you know high-profile first-time convention failures are a thing around here, but first-time successes are equally interesting, especially something like Wakandacon. 

  • Huh; there's a company that seems to have made a working lithium-metal battery, which is twice as energy-dense as lithium-ion. 

  • Vox has a goddamn fascinating breakdown on who's actually participating in the QAnon nonsense on Reddit, and it turns out there aren't as many of them as we thought. 

  • Beyond the obvious "everything is too expensive and nobody has any money," here are some answers to the eternal "Why aren't The Millenials buying homes????" question that might actually make sense to a Boomer. 

  • I want someone (or a team of someones) to print copies of this out and leave them everywhere Jack Dorsey goes. Put them in his office. In his car. Under the door of his house. When he pulls the sheets back to go to sleep, there better be a pile of these in his bed. 

  • Here's some quite frankly amazing data on indictments, convictions, and prison sentences of presidential administrations striped by party and who was in office. One guess as to who the most corrupt party is. 

  • For anyone else out there who watched all of Nailed It and hoped the hosts were having as much fun as it looked like, please rest assured. 

  • A neuroscientist who studies rage says we’re all capable of doing something terrible. Deep down, I knew this already. 

  • Holy living fuck, Amazon, please let me and my college friends improv some Away Mode conversations for you. 

  • The Guardian takes a long look at compassion fatigue and what, if anything, can be done about it. 

  • Here's a longread that absolutely 100% is not fucking around at all even a little bit and that I would probably like to see as a book just for form-factor purposes: Ten Years After the Crash, We Are Still Living in the World It Brutally Remade. 

  • Well, fuck: YIMBYism Doesn't Work. 

  • The name and idea for this DARPA program for insect-scale robotics is admittedly adorable, but I have to wonder what mischief a swarm of them might get up to. 

  • What would a factory look like that was full of robots that just tossed crap at each other and caught it instead of bulky-ass conveyor belts or frail, clumsy humans? What's an acceptable error rate for that sort of thing? 

  • I really, really like the notion of engineering houseplants that'll tell you if something is off with your home environment.

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.A band and their albumVisible Actor, A Holiday For Old People 

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.