Politics, pizza and the planetarium: my annual update from Toronto, 2026 edition

I’ve decided to do a once a year update on the city I live in. They used to be somewhat random, but once a year seems right.

First up is local politics. In a month Torontonians will go to the polls for the 2026 municipal election. The key thing I’ll be watching is whether or not Olivia Chow gets to be mayor for another term. The mayor and her challengers have already had a debate and perhaps because of that the race has tightened. Whoever wins, two things to pay attention to are, 1) whether or not we see the new mayor using strong-mayor powers 2) whether or not we see new councillors continue / ramp up opting out of initiatives.

Not on the ballot but always in the mix is premier Ford. He all but endorsed Chow in a recent press conference, which must have been unpleasant for her right wing opponents. Let’s see what if any the effect of that is.

Ford looms large in anything to do with Toronto. Some of his Toronto MPPs got into trouble for expenses this year, which led Ford to axe the rule that allowed Toronto MPPs expense hotel stays in city. Then there is the ongoing saga of Ford wanting to take over Billy Bishop airport (which has too many links to insert here). Not to mention the even longer ongoing saga of Ford and the Toronto bike lanes. The man likes to get involved with running the city. It would be interesting if the Premier was from another part of Ontario, say Kingston or London….I wonder if we would see the same involvement?

Moving on from politics to food, lots of dining news has been happening in one particular part of Toronto: Mirvish Village. One of Toronto’s best bakeries, Blackbird,  just opened its biggest location there. Next door to it is Book Bar, which Toronto Life says “is the perfect mix of books, booze and schmooze”. As well, Pizzeria Badiali’s opened a new Mirvish Village location and yes, it is busy with line ups out the door, just like it’s original location. Mirvish Village is still in the process of opening, but it already is a great destination for food.

Not far from Mirvish Village is the very difficult to get into Brasserie Cote. If you can’t get in and perhaps you just need a slice, then head over to Nice Slice Toronto with it’s New York-style za’atar and pickle pizza. Rose’s Pantry is another great spot close by to grab and go some fantastic food. Indeed Harbord Street is packed with great places to dine and sip wine (hello Canary Counter!)

Not only is Toronto a really a great city to dine in, it doesn’t have to be too expensive either. To see what I mean, check out these 10 restaurants with prix-fixe menus for $60 or less or this list of Toronto’s best 100 restaurants under $100. Or maybe you just want to grab a great doughnut? If so, Yonge and Eglinton has what you need.

If you head downtown, you can great tickets to see Toronto’s newest professional sports team: the Toronto Tempos of the WBNA. Here’s a story of their debut game in May. Were there celebs in attendance? Of course!

In other entertainment news this past year was Sneaky Dee’s. There was plenty of fear that it could be demolished for condos. In fact, there still is. But it won a reprieve and it seems it will live to rock on for another day.

Also at risk is the Hot Docs theatre on Bloor near Bathurst. Here’s a piece on “the high-stakes ‘long game’ to bring Toronto’s Hot Docs back from the brink”. Let’s hope that happens. I’d hate to see it demolished, the way Toronto’s abandoned planetarium was torn down this year.

Besides restaurants and entertainment, other things good and noteworthy about Toronto this year were:

Some noteworthy things that were less than good about Toronto:

Finally, here are some links about Toronto I feel are worth a read:

Thanks again for reading these Toronto stories. Come back next September and we will see how the new mayor and other municipal politicians are doing. Will there be stories about restaurants too? Of course there will. 🙂

Computing in the 90s vs now: the fear factor

Were we always fearful of information technology? I was wondering that recently as I considered the current wave of hysteria over A.I. I know in the 80s there was a fear of people losing their jobs due to PCs in the office. In the 90s there was a fear of people using the Internet to easily build bombs in the same way the Oklahoma bombers did. I am sure that in each decade of computing since then, people feared something due to new technology.

It seems that the fears of IT goes hand in hand with the possibilities of the new IT. The 90s was the decade of networking: networking of PCs in offices via LANs connected to each other by a network of networks (a/k/a the Internet). In a short time we had so much more capability and more information than we previously had: much of it good, some of it very bad. While adapting to using the new technology and the information it brought, we adapted to the new fears that arose from some of this information. Fears like bombers everywhere.

Some day there will be a good history of computing in our current era and the fear will be put into context. Personally, I am not fearful because I suspect the A.I. of our current era will suffer the same fate as A.I. did in the early 90s. I posted this on Bluesky recently:

My only thoughts on AI are the ones I’ve had from the beginning: 1) gen AI will experience the “AI effect” 2) no one will talk about gen AI after the next “AI winter” occurs (timing depends on next American recession)

— Bernie Michalik (@berniemichalik.ca) August 21, 2026 at 8:49 PM

The AI effect and AI winter happened back in the 90s to the AI work being done back then. The same thing will happen to gen AI in this time.

 

 

 

 

On A.I. hysteria: what is driving it, the anxiety it can cause, and how to personally deal with that

Many people are succumbing to hysteria(1) when it comes to A.I. I understand why people feel this way. But I think it is important for people to know that some of this hysteria is being whipped up by many of those in the A.I. industry. To see what I mean, I recommend you read this piece by Dave Karpf: The A.I. Industry will never rein itself in. Some of his key points:

  • What A.I. insiders say “isn’t just marketing hype. These guys do believe what they are saying.”
  • “But, also, just because they believe it doesn’t mean we should believe them. Practically the entire AI safety community is also part of the Rationalist community….Rationalism is essentially a cult. They have all talked themselves into the same extreme belief structures and conclusions. These are not impartial scientific experts. They are ideologues, imbued with practically limitless resources.”
  • “And, also, one byproduct of these dire warnings is yet another cycle of marketing hype. As Ryan Broderick puts it, “the AI industry wants us to keep talking about AI like this.”
  • “An important thing to understand about these Rationalist fanatics is that they fundamentally believe they are more gifted and talented than everyone else.”
  • “Sam Altman and Elon Musk and (yes, even) Dario Amodei will say whatever is in their best immediate-term interest to say. And any promises they make will be abandoned as soon as those promises become inconvenient. Each of these companies wants to win the AI race. Each of these individuals has convinced himself that the fate of humanity rests on his company essentially building-digital-god first. (And, certainly, before China builds-digital-god.)”

I don’t have specific recommendations to the bigger problems that A.I. might cause that can be typed up in a blog post. I do have a recommendation that could help people think more rationally about A.I. which can reduce the fear you might have towards this new technology. That solution is based on what I learned by using cognitive based therapy.

To see what I mean, let’s take some examples of thoughts you might think about A.I.:

  1. All A.I. output is garbage
  2. A.I. is going to take all the jobs
  3. A.I. is going to kill us all
  4. A.I. is going to fill the world with slop (slop music, slop art, slop writing)
  5. Everyone is going to cheat because they have access to A.I.
  6. Everyone is going to stop thinking and just use A.I.
  7. I hate A.I., it makes me sick

In each of these cases there is a form of irrational thinking that can be replaced by more rational thinking. Using this worksheet, you can label such thoughts as: Emotional thinking, Black and white thinking, Catastrophic thinking, Rejecting the positive, Jumping to Conclusions and more. Examining your thinking and adjusting it to be less irrational doesn’t mean you have to like A.I.: it just means you can think about it in such a way that it doesn’t cause you to feel…well, hysterical.

All new technology that is widely adopted is socially and personally transformative. Since we don’t know how we are going to be transformed, it can cause us to feel anxious. And when others fan the flames of our anxiety, it is not difficult to go from feeling a bit anxious to feeling unmanageable fear (i.e. feel hysterical). I would urge you to examine how you are thinking about this new technology and do so in a way that is rational and does not cause you to fear. Because if you can do that, you can better manage how you deal with the transformation (even if that means rejecting the technology all together).

(1: Hysteria in this case takes the textbook definition of “exhibiting overwhelming or unmanageable fear or emotional excess”)

P.S. there is more to CBT than taking a worksheet and applying it. But it is a good first step.

Robots on the rise (what’s new with robots, 2026 edition)

Robots are on the rise!

It felt like the last few years have been a sleepy time for robots. When I wrote about them last year, I felt there were plenty of stories about them, but nothing dramatic. Even the year before that, I wrote “Sorry robots: no one is afraid of YOU any more. Now everyone is freaking out about AI instead“. People used to be afraid of the latest developments from Boston Dynamics, with their walking humanoid and dog robots,  but that attention has died off and it seemed like no one cared about robots anymore, despite developments.

Recently though, attention has been paid again, especially after recent news about how a Chinese robot beat Usain Bolt’s 100-Meter Record. Sure, some of that attention was ridicule, but nonetheless, people were talking about robots again.

It’s easy to mock robots that suddenly collapse or run into walls rather than gracefully stopping like Bolt does, but the recent World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing were a good measure how far robotic development has come. And not surprising, that development seems to be taking place in China. Here’s two stories showing what is happening with the technology in that country:

While China is doing a lot with robotic technology, they are not the only country. For instance, Amazon plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots in the US. And Google Gemini is taking control of humanoid robots on auto factory floors. No doubt there are robots springing to work everywhere there are factories.

Not that recent robots are limited to factories. Here are a slew of new bot buddies to help you at home:

And here’s a few more robots for good measure:

All in all, the robot revolution is rising up. Or is it? As this piece argues, at least when it comes to a certain type, the roboguard revolution is short-circuiting.

Let’s see where the world of robotics is in a year from now.

On the beginning of the end of the baby boom

Dolly Parton and Tim Curry died last week, both 80. While their endings were significant events in their own way, they’re ending also signified something more general, which is the beginning of the end of the Baby Boomers. Both Parton and Curry were born the year when the baby boom occurred, post World War II. Like Curry and Parton, more and more of that demographic is getting up there in terms of age. I suspect that means we will see a lot of news on famous people dying, if only because it is a big demographic. (Not only them, but as the above chart shows, there is still a significant number of the Silent Generation who also have one foot in the grave.)

So if you were sad about the passing of Dolly and Tim this week — I was and so were many others — then brace yourself. There’s likely to be a wave of that happening in the next few years.

 

Women of the 80s and 90s (my annual post of great things from the 80s and 90s)


I keep waiting for pop culture to stop talking about the 80s and the 90s, but every year I easily find a handful of worthwhile articles that touch on that time in different ways.

Recently I watch “Mau”, which was a short documentary on Bruce Mau, who I first encountered in the 80s. In fact I have one of his Zone books, and I’ve often considered buying more of his publications. They are dazzling and dense. Mau went on do work on everything from Coca-Cola to Mecca. He’s a fascinating person and designer, and if you get a chance, I recommend you watch the documentary. Meanwhile, check out this review: Mau Review: A Book as Good as Its Cover – POV Magazine. It has a trailer in it too.

On the topic of 80s design, check out this: Toronto Penthouse by Dvira Interiors Celebrates 1980s Architecture. Very beautiful, and very unlike what you might think 80s architecture is (cough, Memphis).

The 80s has that reputation, though. Consider this piece: Dua Lipa and a new era of Boom Boom fashion. Certainly the 80s could be very…boisterous. But for all that loudness, the 80s could also be understated To make my case, I give you this: Giorgio Armani is reissuing some of its most iconic pieces.

Besides fashion and design, the 80s and 90s gave us some great photography. Consider this photo essay: 16 Photos That Captured the Dawn of Punk in The New York Times. Or this piece in The Guardian: ‘I wanted to capture the range of British culture at the time’: the photographer who documented late nights on the 90s London tube. And I highly recommend you check out this story about how these  80s Headshots of Famous Artists came about. It’s Cindy Sherman like you’ve never seen here (and that’s saying something).

Of course with artists like Madonna still releasing music, we will always be reminded of her hits from the 80s and 90s too. Here’s a recent interview of her in Interview magazine. (A very 80s mag.).

Another band from that time who had hits was EBTG. Here’s the Guardian with Everything But the Girl’s 20 greatest songs – ranked! (I like the exclaimation mark). Another hit maker from then was Cesária Évora. Here’s a story on the efforts to ‘keep her name alive’. I approve of that effort. I’d add Seals and Crofts to that list of musicians whose name should be kept alive, especially after Dash Crofts of Summer Breeze rock duo Seals and Crofts recently passed away. Fine musicians, all.

Finally, here’s a story on how Talking Heads and Brian Eno Wrote “Once in a Lifetime”. On the topic of 80s films, here something on the film “Barcelona”: Fated to become a cult classic’: why Barcelona is my feelgood movie. Last but not least, here, a piece I think of often: THE IMPACT OF AIDS ON THE ARTISTIC COMMUNITY – The New York Times.

Somewhat lighter is this piece, Speak, Yuppie.

On Fredkin’s paradox on how to deal with it

You likely have come across Fredkin’s paradox without even knowing it has a name. As wikipedia states

“Fredkin’s paradox reads “The more equally attractive two alternatives seem, the harder it can be to choose between them—no matter that, to the same degree, the choice can only matter less.” Thus, a decision-making agent might spend the most time on the least important decisions.

No doubt once you read that, you will think: oh yeah, that just happened to me!

As for how to deal with it, I do two things:

  •  Flip a coin, knowing both outcomes are equally matched, so it doesn’t matter which one you pick.
  • Write down the choice I made so I can assess later that, yeah, the outcome I picked was fine.

On agentic AI vs chatbot AI

Two things I read last week that reminded me that not all people are not using generative AI and LLMs in the same way.

The first thing that I read was Timonthy Gowers‘s blog about math and LLMs. In the post, What sort of maths are LLMs good at?, he is writing about how AI is becoming very good at solving advanced math problems. However, when he talks about his own experiences with using gen AI, he seems to be talking about using chatbots like chatGPT, not agentic AI, which is what is how the math is being done.

The second thing I read was this: If you haven’t recently used Claude Code*, you might not understand where AI is at. It does a good job of showing how agentic AI is a different beast than the gen AI most people are used to. 

If you are mainly using chatGPT or Gemini or CoPilot and want to know more about agents and agentic AI, then I recommend this primer from my employer, What is Agentic AI? | IBM. Or try this piece. You’ll see that what people like myself and others are doing with agentic AI to analyze documentation, design systems, write code, and much more.

Chatbots are still useful for getting information. But agentic AI is taking the use of AI to a new level. It’s worth learning about.

On ignoring terrible people and things and focusing on what good can be done

I was going to write a post on terrible people and things. It seems like they are everywhere in the news and social media, from the obnoxious Karoline Leavitt to the white supremacist, Richard Hanania Not to mention Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and most of the people from silicon valley. This story about a woman’s mom dying quickly of cancer I also found terrible, though the people in it are good people.

I decided to pivot, and instead write about people taking the terrible and working hard to make it less so. Helen Ouyang writes in the New York Times about such people….doctors in Pittsburg who leave the warmth of the hospital to go outside and treat people who are homeless and living on the streets. It is terrible that people live this way: it is hopeful that people are working to make their lives better.

I highly recommend the piece. You can find it, here.

 

On beaujolais and its many names (crus)

This article: Love red wine but want a more refreshing sip for summer? These 6 reds at the LCBO are delicious served chilled, had me thinking about beaujolais this week, since it was one of the wines featured.

While a big bordeaux fan, I’ve been developing a preference for beaujolais wine when dining out and at home. I like that it is low in tannins. I love that I can chill it and that I can treat it like a white in some cases, pairing it with fish or chicken. I sometimes even prefer it with beef, though some would argue that a cabernet sauvignon or a shiraz is better. Not everything has to pair perfectly.

If you’re in the market and looking for a bottle, it helps immensely to know that beaujolais can be found under different names. While some wines will be labelled beaujolais or beaujolais-villages, you can also find it as:

  • Brouilly
  • Régnié
  • Côte de Brouilly
  • Fleurie
  • Saint-Amour
  • Chénas
  • Juliénas
  • Moulin-à-Vent

once you know that, you’ll discover there’s more selection than you might have thought.

If you want to learn more about it, start here.

It’s summer, you want something chilled and you want something red, perhaps. Beaujolais is what you need.

P.S. Of course if you love beaujolais already but would like to branch out from France, check some of the wines in the article above. Or any wines centered around gamay. Ontario itself has a wide range of products that fit the bill.

 

On the end of Web 2.0 and possibly the Web itself

Reading this piece on The End of Google, I couldn’t help but think this is the end of Web 2.0.

If you are wondering — or have even forgotten — about Web 2.0, a refresher is in order. According to wikipedia: “Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture, and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and devices) for end users.”

Of course Web 2.0 and the ideals associated with it have been declining for some time, ever since the rise and dominance of social media companies like Facebook and Twitter. Despite that dominance, people continued to create user-generated content, not just on those platforms, but on new sites like Bluesky, Substack, and more. People still create content in order to share ideas, influence people, even to get paid.

However with the rise of Google Zero and more, i believe the reasons to keep posting will decline, and the number of posts will decline too. Maybe it won’t decline to zero. Perhaps people like me will continue to post for reasons other than influence or money. But the forces that lead to the rise of Web 2.0 web sites will die, and overall the amount of user generated content will drop dramatically. (Perhaps that’s why companies like Anthropic are already mining old books for content.)

Some time ago there was talk about going from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 or Web 3. I think it’s just as likely we will go from Web 2.0 to Web 0.0. There’ll still be an Internet, and there still will be some small huts of content outside the walled in fortresses of behemoths like Google and Meta and Baidu. But the Web as we once knew it will be no more. And that’s a shame.

Sept 17, 2026: It is interest to me to see that people in Microsoft have the same idea in mind when they talk about how AI could cause a doom loop for the Web.

On work in the era of AI and the pandemic

I can’t say that work is changing more in this decade than other decades. I can say two major forces have hit many workers in this decade and the impact of those forces have made work challenging for workers, to say the least.

The first major force was the pandemic. While many people have returned to office work, there are still many who prefer to work remotely. I am one of them. And while I am still a major proponent of remote work, I found this piece eye opening: We Liked Remote Work. Then We Looked at the Data. I have to agree that without a push, it is too easy to become disconnected from social contact when you work remotely. Employers and employees need to find better solutions to this problem besides dragging everyone in to a loud and crowded office via long commutes.

The second major force is AI. On one hand employers are heavily promoting employees to use AI in their work. On the other hand, employers are talking about how AI is going to result in layoffs. Here’s just three articles on the topic:

I don’t know how that will play out. I do know that workers are going to be struggling with the effect of AI for some time to come.

If anyone young who has just entered the workforce is reading this, I would like to point you to these two pieces:

Finally, I thought this piece was worth a read:  The Elusive Promise of the Four-Day Workweek. Maybe in the era of AI and remote work we will be able to achieve this. 

Blade Runner: 2099 or Blade Runner: 2048?

I see that Amazon Prime is coming out with a TV miniseries based on what is happening in the Blade Runner universe in the year 2099. I have watched the trailers and they seem….fine. You can see details on the upcoming series, here. More here and here.

Personally I would have liked something more like the prequel / short film Blade Runner: 2048 that came out just around the time of the feature film, Blade Runner: 2049. I was hopeful that would get developed into a feature film too. Alas, it was not to be.

I was fearful before “2049” came out and delighted after seeing it. I hope that holds true for the TV series.

For more on “2048” and the other prequels, see this.

For more on my many (too many?) posts on Blade Runner, go here.

M is for Midtown and Manhattan and Mamdani (and much more)

It’s been a year since I wrote about New York City and two years since I’ve visited. Who knows when I will be back. I do know I still love to read about it, which isn’t hard, since it’s often in the news. So here’s my annual post on NYC, brought to you by the letter “M”.

Midtown: First off, shout out to Midtown Manhattan, a much maligned part of the city. As this piece shows, it had quite the year, between the Knicks winning the NBA championship to Taylor Swift getting married. Mind you, it had some bad things happen, like this collapsing high rise,  That said, this quote sums things up: “Midtown is not usually cool, but, right now, it kind of is.” I’ve always had a soft spot for Midtown, so I am glad it is getting some love.

Relatedly, I really liked this piece: “As a child growing up in Midtown Manhattan, I learned to speak apartment very early.”

Mayor Mamdani: Much ink has been spilled on the new mayor of New York, the indefatigable Zohran Mamdani. It seems every day he and his team and promoting a new initiative for the city, from solving the city’s budget crisis to working on bringing cheaper grocery stores to certain boroughs. While he sometimes wanders into topics that don’t seem to make sense to me (e.g., the Koh-i-noor diamond debate) and while some of his goals may not be achievable (e.g., taxing the rich), I am impressed by his drive and his ambition.

I’m also particularly impressed by his communication skills. This interview he did with the New York Times is like a masterclass on how to handle difficult questions. I’ve seen him do this not just with people from the Times but other interviewers as well.

As for the Times, they don’t seem to know what to do with him, is my general thought. Going through this list of articles and op-eds about him in that paper, you get the sense that at best, they are highly doubtful of him. Let’s see how that relationship evolves.

Making do: affordability is a big topic not only in Mamdani’s New York but everywhere. The Times has a good series on how people with every day jobs somehow are making do in the Big Apple. The stories range from a family of 3 living on $500,000 on the Upper West Side to another family of 3 living off $25,000 in Queens. Quite the range financially and geographically.

Minimal living: speaking of affordable, visitors can always stay at these $100 hotels in New York City. Do you want to is the next question.

Maximal living: is this place affordable? No. Is it worth a look? As a fan of maximalism, I’d say yes.

Museum Living: not affordable or maximal is the Manhattan apartment of David Sedaris. In some ways it’s like seeing a museum or a nice art gallery. We should all take up humorous writing and live so well. 🙂
 

Martinis: if you are in New York and you’re looking for a place to get a New York happy meal, here are 13 essential spots according to Wallpaper*. And what is a New York happy meal, you might ask? Well according to the article: it consists of “an ice-cold martini and piping-hot French fries”. Sounds great to me.

Meals at 3 a.m.: I worried during the pandemic that New York might be backing away from being a place that never sleeps.That you might not be able to grab a bite at 3 a.m. like you once could. Well I worried for nothing. According to this piece by, there are still great places you can eat 24 hours a day. (And if want to know of more places to hit up, you’ll want to check out Fortney’s other pieces.)

The Metropolitan Opera: tough times for opera fans in New York (and those like me who come to the city on occasion to see opera, as New York’s Met Opera recently announces ‘necessary’ layoffs and pay cuts.

Massive: when I think of “massive” and “New York” last year, two things come to mind:

 

What to do on a day off

If you are Canadian, chances are you have the day off today. Maybe you have no great plans other than to hang out in a hammock or beach yourself somewhere. And that’s fine.

But if you are someone like me who likes to be productive even with down time**, then perhaps you’d like to not only do some reading but actually finish a book? Sound impossible?

According the The Guardian, you should be able to read these 20 brilliant books in a day. If you have an iPhone, you can download the book above right now and dig in. 

Enjoy!

** I know, it’s a problem. 🙂

On how OpenAI lost control of an AI Model that ended up attacking Hugging Face

On July 21st OpenAI published this piece about how they and Hugging Face partnered to address a security incident during model evaluation. Like many people, I was shocked by the news of how agents at OpenAI broke out of their secure environment and attacked the Hugging Face site.

Later, though, in reading other pieces, I was less focused on how impressive the agents were and how poor a job the OpenAI team did. Reading this piece in TIME, it appears the agentic software was left unmonitored on the weekend. That was bad enough. Worse, the secure environment was not air gapped in any way. Once the agents figured out how to break through any software barriers between them and the Internet, they were free to wreck havoc on the outside world.

As the San Francisco Examiner states: “A recent hacking incident involving a pair of OpenAI’s artificial-intelligence models highlights the cybersecurity risks of the technology — and a serious security lapse by the San Francisco company, computer-security experts say.” Indeed.

For more on how OpenAI screwed up, see the pieces linked to here.

P.S. It gets worse…I just came across this: OpenAI’s rogue models roamed the internet for 4 days and staged a second attack – POLITICO

On fires and bridges: Canada and Trump’s America

It is an odd time to be a Canadian, located north of Trump’s America. As in previous months, Trump has stepped up his attacks on his neighbors to the north. And as before, he’s slamming more tariffs on Canadian goods, this time due to the smoke from the forest fires, he says. Who knows? 

Here’s some links I’ve captured on the state of the disunion between the two countries:

All in all, a sad state of affairs. I am grateful for my good friends and neighbors south of the border. Let’s hope they prevail in upcoming elections. Let’s hope things get back to the way they were under Biden and Obama and Bush.

The odd bun flight about The Odyssey, the Sea People, and the Bronze Age Collapse


It’s an odd thing, what Emily Wilson did in writing this piece, An Uncomplicated Man, for the London Review of Books. Suddenly the discussion of Christopher Nolan’s new film turned into a debate on whether or not Nolan gets the history right. I want to delve into the second part for a bit.

It’s a tricky thing to criticize such things as the film’s portrayal of ancient Greece, since almost everyone concedes that you can’t really be accurate about history when it comes to Homer’s epic work, since it is not historically accurate in itself. So I was especially struck by the strong dismissal of Nolan’s references to the Sea People.  Such dismissal came at the end of the Wilson piece,  as well as this piece by a Historian of Ancient Greek (which is very good otherwise).

While not an expert, I would give Nolan a break on that, for a few reasons. One reason, as this piece explores, Did Odysseus Cause the Bronze Age Collapse?, is that it is hard to get a good gauge on who the Sea People were, so I am inclined to cut him some slack. A second and more important reason, to me, is that Nolan is using artistic license here. He is no more being historical when it comes to the Sea People than he is with certain costumes, and he sacrifices historicity for the sake of artistry. That’s how I believe he uses the reference.

That bun fight aside, I think it’s great that Nolan’s “The Odyssey” has fired up people’s opinions.  And it’s great that subject matter experts are weighing in on the film, the history, and the literature behind Homer’s work. More films should do that.

P.S. For more on the Sea People and the Bronze Age collapse, I highly recommend this book, “1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed” by Eric H. Cline. It’s a fascinating story.

From Prada Space Suits to Mamdani’s kurta (Fashion links I am interested in, July 2026)

Fashion can be many things, from frivolous to functional, with stops in between. Here’s a dozen plus fashion links that center on the functional, the famous, the frivolous and more.

Functional
Famous
Frivolous?
Finally

A mouse, a house, and an inflatable chair (what I am interested in when it comes to design and interior design, 2026)

Thanks to the good folks at Yanko Design (and some others), I’ve pulled together a list of interesting links over the last year that touch on the topic of design (e.g., smart phones) and interior design (e.g. chairs).

Devices: Let me start off with devices. Some IT based, some not….

IKEA: Ikea is continually doing interesting work, year after year. I think these links show that:
Furniture: IKEA is not the only furniture maker with well designed furniture. For example…
Living Space: finally…

On the high cost of Canadian beef in the summer of 2026


Like many Canadians, I’ve been wondering why the price of beef is so expensive. This article from the CBC explains why.

To summarize the article: supply is low, demand remains strong, production costs are soaring, and the processing network is highly concentrated with inter‑provincial regulatory.

Canadian farmers need to growth their herd sizes, but it can’t happen quickly enough. Even as they are doing that, the demand for beef is not declining, despite costs. So who knows if larger herds will make a difference. Does it help that the price of fertilizer is going up due to a war? It does not. Do other factors uniquely Canadian make a difference? Yes they do.

Perhaps beef prices will decline in the long term. In the short term, you might have to be like me and turn more to pork or chicken or even go meatless.

On using game theory to better understand and resolve DevOps issues (with help from LLMs)

I have seen a consistent set of issues when it comes to DevOps implementations.  The issues are:

  • Clients say they are emploing a DevOps lifecycle, but it’s more the case they are simply doing continuous integration and deployment (CI-CD) supported by an associated tool chain.
  • Many times the Dev (development) teams are separate from the Test teams and the Ops (operations/support) teams. Sometimes they are even in different silos in the organization. As a result, communication and collaboration — an critical part of a successful DevOps implementation — may be limited and weak.
  • As a result of that separation, the incentives may differ by team. In some cases they can end up almost competing against each other. (For example, I have seen Dev teams take time away from the Test teams in order to complete their assigned development tasks. The Devs “win” and the Testers “lose”.)
  • Quality standards held by the Test and Ops teams may not shift left to the Dev teams. As a result, quality responsibilities may lie mostly with Test/Ops, or there is a significant imbalance. (The Devs may do some limited unit or regression testing, but not enough to prevent bugs from being passed downstream in the DevOps lifecycle.)
  • Delivered functionality on time may become the primary driver for a project in order to meet the needs of key stakeholders, while the non-functional / quality of the system (e.g., performance, observability) may become secondary or even considered a Day Two problem.
  • As a result of all this, it’s not surprising to see Dev teams become focused and measured on delivering functionality at increasing velocities, while the Testers and to some degree the Operators have to maintain that focus / those measurements, while also being responsible for and measured on software quality.
  • In the end, you can get a situation where Devs are measured in terms of speed and functionality, while the Testers / Ops are measured on speed, functionality plus software quality. If delivering software is like a game, the Testers and the Operators are playing the game with a handicap due to quality metrics.

I have thought about these issues for some time and I wanted a framework to apply to them so I communicate in a more concrete way not only the issues but how to address them. I thought that one such framework to use could be supplied by game theory.

To apply game theory to DevOps, I started by considering the Devs as one set of players and Testers/Ops as another. To quickly work through some scenarios to see if such an approach was even valid, I decided to use LLM models. First I used GPT-OSS-20B to get my initial results. While it seemed promising, I noticed some errors creep into its analysis with regards to Nash equilibriums. I swapped out that model and used a larger LLM (provided by IBM Bob) to analyze and correct the initial results and produce a final analysis. You can read that final analysis, here.

I learned a few things from this exercise:

  • when the Devs are not bound by quality, a Nash Equilibrium is achieved, but it is one where they get a bigger payoff for going as fast as possible and the Testers/Ops have to settle for a situation where they suffer and get a worse payoff.
  • If the Devs are bound by quality, they get a lesser payoff but the Testers/Ops  get a better payoff and overall software quality can be increased. It seems obvious to do this, but working out a pay-off matrix helps with this.
  • Under certain conditions the Nash equilibrium can become weak for the Devs and that may result in them being less quality focused in order to succeed. Again, not surprising.
  • Game theory can show why Developers rationally can decide to forgo quality, but it may not be the best way to practically analyze your project. I’d simply recommend you continually work to spread quality measures throughout your DevOps lifecycle and to continually work to improve quality as the software matures.
  • LLMs can speed up the production of documentation just like it can speed up the production of code, but you don’t want to solely depend on it to get the documentation correct. Based on my understanding of game theory, I think its output is correct. If someone with a better understanding wants to correct me, I’d be happy to hear about it and I’ll be happy to amend this post.
  • For a more important project I would heavily modify the LLM documentation and take more ownership of it. This is more of a side project / exercise for me, so I decided to leave it as it is and move on to bigger things with bigger payoffs, to use the language of game theory. I hope you can still find it useful. I’d suspect the number of people who read it can be measured in one hand.

(P.S. The opinions expressed in this post are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.)

On the decline and fall OpenAI?

Is this the beginning of the decline and fall of OpenAI and their leader Sam Altman? I thought that recently, when I read how Apple was suing OpenAI for supposedly stealing its secrets.  And that’s not the only lawsuit against them: the New York Times and other media companies are also suing them for theft. (Elon Musk also sued OpenAI  but lost. A good run down on that lawsuit is here.)

Now I am thinking differently. I wanted to say the decline started with staff breaking away and forming Anthropic in 2021, though even that isn’t straightforward.  This loss of former staff has been mitigated by other things, like large investments from Microsoft. Those investments, the growing user base and the lack of scrutiny from the press gave the impression that all was well at the powerful company. (As recently as 2023 publications like the Times and the Wall St Journal were providing highly positive coverage about Sam Altman and his company and he and OpenAI were the darlings of the tech world.)

I am still inclined to think that competition from Anthropic which will lead to losses for OpenAI. It’s still difficult to tell, but observers like Motley Fool are saying Anthropic is pulling into the lead and a gap is opening. I believe that gap is only going to widen.

In addition to Anthropic, there is other competition coming from China and elsewhere. That increasing competition and the declining Microsoft support will also put a squeeze on OpenAI. (You can see from this piece, which notes that Microsoft is moving towards their own models, while others are looking to Chinese models for business use.)

Losses or not, perhaps OpenAI will not suffer a decline but a displacement from the top spot. Perhaps OpenAI can become profitable and grow despite having to share the AI marketplace with others. (It works for Apple: they own 1/5 of the smartphone market and they are doing fine).

Beside competition, another thing that could cause their decline is the leadership of Sam Altman. No one is providing positive coverage about him now, as you can see from this and this and this and this and more. Even if all that is true, it would not be the first time a terrible leader has lead a successful IT company. So perhaps OpenAI can succeed despite being lead by the current CEO.

I started writing this piece thinking: OpenAI is going to fall, and I wanted to put a marker in this blog to note that. By the end, I am undecided. I’ll put this here for now and revisit things in a year.

P.S. Thanks for reading this. I wrote this so I could learn what I thought. Even though I changed my mind in the writing, I still think it is worth putting down this marker for now.

On parenting, getting older, torture, and being useless (i.e., interesting things I wanted to write about and maybe will some day, 2026 edition)

Every year I like to let go of these links I wanted to write about but never found a way to and likely never will. They’re interesting still. Last year it was 60 or so. This year it’s a little less.

A few travel stories I liked were this, 21 US airports that let you walk to a gate without a ticket, and this, The longest train journey in the EU.

I enjoyed several historical pieces, such as this 13th-Century Cookbook Featuring 475 Recipes from Moorish Spain that recently was Published in a New Translated Edition, and this Historical Photos Taken Just Before The Iconic Moment. I found this piece from February 1970 in the Vassar Newspaper & Magazine that was critical of IBM during the Vietnam war to be worth a read.

Lloyd Alter shares interesting ideas on his Substack. For example, this one on how it’s time to dump Railway Time and War Time and go Local Time, and this one on why we need deposits on everything.

Cincerning matters of privacy, I thought this collection of Dark Patterns and Unethical Designpatterns were Ring Cameras, with the Ring company dark patterns is this: ICE, Secret Service, Navy All Had Access to Flock’s Nationwide Network of Cameras and this Zenni’s Anti-Facial Recognition Glasses are Eyewear for Our Paranoid Age. No doubt such abuses lead people to ask Hackaday: How Do You Detect Hidden Cameras?

I started to collect articles on getting older, like this one, When You’re ‘Fired From Retirement’. It was a bit grim. Less grim and easier to read is this post about a 72 year old woman who graduated medical school and was starting  residency.  This was also positive: I’d Like to Stay 85 Forever.

Parenting is a difficult job, to say the least. Some might say impossible at times. I thought that when I read this, consider the parents caring for adult children not in work or education, and also this, This could happen to us: Parents who see themselves in the Reiner case

I don’t imagine too many will want to read about Lee Geun-an, Infamous ‘Torture Master’ Under South Korean Dictator who recently died at 88. I like to remember things like that. Likewise, I like to remember what Michael Ignatieff said about torture in Macleans: here. Never forget.

Finally,

I liked this, on Nudge theory. Also…

 

On the Cagots


By accident I came across this article in Jstor on the Cagots, the forgotten untouchables of France. They suffered discrimination  for many centuries, but no one knows seems to know why, although there are many theories. They were erased as a group from France through assimilation, even though up until the beginning of the 20th century it was shameful for a non-Cagot person to marry a Cagot.  You can still see evidence of the discrimination they felt in churches in France, where the Cagots had a separate entrance and separate fonts.

All in all, a fascinating story of a mysterious people. I find them especially fascinating because this shows how a group can suffer discrimination and persecution, even though there is nothing different about them, other than the fact they can be labelled and considered worthy of such poor treatment.

For more on the Cagots, see wikipedia. For a story on someone who claimed Cagot ancestry, see this.

Friday Night Cocktail: the Lower-Alcohol Dirty Martini

I have not published a Friday Night cocktail post in some time. Possibly because I have been drinking much fewer cocktails than I did a few years ago, especially during the pandemic. While I have enjoyed many different cocktails in that time, my preference tends to be a martini, which I have often posted about here.

Ley me add one more post of a recipe for a particular form of martini because it captures the zeitgeist: it has a low A.B.V. and it is not just A martini but A DIRTY martini. If you are like many others, those two things will appeal to you. To be honest, I am curious about this myself!  Now I still wouldn’t start making them on a school night, but YMMV.

Whenever you have one, I hope you enjoy it. Cheers!

On the problem of popular restaurants not taking reservations


I get why popular restaurants don’t want to take reservations. Case in point, the very popular Chubby Fish restaurant in Charleston, S.C. According to this piece:

Chubby Fish doesn’t accept reservations because London (James London, Chubby Fish chef and co-owner) doesn’t want the restaurant to be exclusive. The goal is for people to be able to show up at 4 p.m. and be able to eat dinner the same night.

In some way that makes sense: you don’t have empty tables ever and the people who really want to go will line up.

Alas there is a problem:

Now that some people are paying extra for line waiters to arrive early and claim desirable dining times, others in line aren’t getting the same opportunity they once had. As a result, they’re having to arrive earlier and earlier, London said.

“We never wanted that for our guests. It’s not the hospitality we wanted to display,” he said.

Recently, London spoke with the line-waiting businesses…about limiting the number of reservations they’re allowed to procure at a time, he said. But he worries about what could happen if the businesses continue to grow.

“I don’t want to be forced into having to take reservations to eliminate the professional line-waiting services, but what does it look like three years down the road?” he said.

And how much are these line-waiting services charging?

Ella Ward, a senior at the College of Charleston, realized that made for a good business opportunity….Ward has turned waiting in line at Chubby Fish into a thriving side hustle. She charges $60 on weekdays and $80 on weekends to wait out the line and snag seating times on behalf of others. She recruited other CofC students to help her manage requests, and the team is booked through June.

This is just a form of line jumping and is not unlike someone slipping FOH some money to get a good table. And not for a small amount either. If everyone is paying $60 or more to get a seat in your restaurant, you are an exclusive restaurant, whether you like it or not.

No reservations (i.e., supply) is fine for restaurants that have roughly the same demand. But if demand vastly outstrips supply, you are going to have problems like line-waiting services. You are going to be transformed into an exclusive restaurant by the marketplace. In the era of social media and vast tourism where the marketplace is gigantic, this is going to become more of a problem for some restaurants like Chubby Fish.

 

Pressing pause on the newsletter (i.e. what would have been the June 2026 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

The first half of 2026 is done. I was planning to write a recap over what has been happening since December, when I posted my last newsletter. Today I decided to change that plan.

I’ve been posting newsletters regularly since my first one in March 2020. Back then, they were monthly: lately they’ve become biannual. Back then, they gave me something to do in lockdown and they gave me a way to track the pandemic. Lately they have turned to the Trump administration, since like COVID-19, it has a big impact on the world.

Unlike the pandemic, however, I don’t feel like tracking or writing about Trump and his administration any more. Perhaps I will at year end, after the midterms, when hopefully elections do to Trump what vaccines did for COVID-19. Perhaps things will feel different then and I will feel different and want to write about what he has done to America and the world. Until then, I think I’ll focus on other things on this blog.

I’m glad I posted about the pandemic. I’m glad I stuck with posting my newsletter here on this blog and not on a separate Substack newsletter. I find it interesting to go over back over them from time to time to see how things have changed. For anyone interested, you can find them all here.

It’s good to persist in an activity. It’s good to know when to change direction too.

 

 

Things are tough? You need Halls as a coach!

I realized recently that Halls cough drops do more than assist with a cold. They also assist with your mental health! These are some of the phrases I’ve captured on the wrappers than come with each lozenge:

  • You’ve survived tougher
  • Nothing you can’t handle
  • Go for it
  • Be unstoppable
  • Get back in there champ!
  • You can do it and you know it
  • Don’t try harder. Do harder!
  • Get through it
  • Don’t wait to get started

Lots of good encouragement there. And the exhortations are in English and French. Formidable! 🙂

Kidding aside, I think this form of message is not bad. Any little thing to help you feel less miserable is a good little thing.

How to win the New York Times Crossplay game against the computer in hard mode (June 2026)

I have been playing the New York Times Crossplay game against the computer in hard mode and most of the times I win. Here’s what I’ve discovered:

  • In hard mode the computer “likes” to play longer words whenever possible. Many times these are uncommon words.
  • The computer will try and play the 2W and 3W tiles, but it seems to “prefer” to play longer words over shorter words, even if a shorter word on a 2W or 3W might gives more points.
  • The computer will stack shorter words but it tends to do that later in the game when it is harder to play longer words. It will stack longer words if it can.

These have been my observations. Give that, to increase my chances of beating the computer, I will:

  • hold back letters with higher values unless I can score at least 20 with them on my current turn.
  • wait for the computer to set me up for 2W and 3W tiles and then play the higher value tiles. I find it will play a long word to maximize it’s length, even if it is easy for me to stack on top of its word and get the 2W or 3W tile. It doesn’t seem to play defensively.
  • My expectation is the computer will do this at least 2 or 3 times a game, so being patient even when I am down is key to beating the computer.
  • if I can’t do anything good with an open 2W or 3W, I will take it if there is a chance the computer can reach it in 5 tiles.
  • I will set myself up for a 2W or 3W in the next move by holding back a tile. Let’s say I can end a word in S, but it means it is possible for the computer to use that S to play a word and to get to a 2W or 3W tile. If I was playing a person, I might be worried they were going to get that in the next round. But if there are open spots on the board where the computer can play a longer word, chance are it will go for the longer word instead, so in the next turn I can lay down the S and hopefully spell out a word to get the 2W or 3W tile.

I say most of the time I will beat the computer in hard mode. Crossplay is a game of chance as much as anything, and some games I will get a bad assortment of letters and the computer will get a great assortment of letters and I will lose. But by adopting the approach I described above, I can frequently beat the computer in hard mode, even though it knows more words than I do.

P.S. My overall general approach is to always aim for the highest score for each play. Often this means stacking words — even small words like “LI” and “OR” — on top of other words to maximize my score rather than playing long words, the way the computer prefers to do. Stacking words gives less openings for my opponent, which is especially effective against the computer, which will often open up the board by playing a long word.

How not to clean your house

While I have written a fair bit about cleaning on this blog — a chore I do not like — today I want to share something different, how not to clean. Specifically, 7 TikTok cleaning hacks to avoid according to The Washington Post. Some of the hacks are a waste of time, others could potentially kill you.

The hacks to avoid are:

  1. mixing cleaning products together – potentially lethal
  2. Mopping floors with laundry detergent
  3. Cleaning upholstery with a detergent pod and boiling water
  4. Boiling Pine-Sol – also potentially dangerous
  5. Vacuuming with laundry scent beads
  6. Putting laundry products such as detergent pods and scent beads into decorative jars for aesthetic reasons.
  7. Fabuloso in the toilet tank

For more detail, head over to the Washington Post.

On nominal amounts

I became interested in the topic of peppercorn rent when I read how the English Royals use it. That lead me to reading these two pieces (Peppercorn Rent: A Comprehensive Overview and What Is Peppercorn Rent – and why is it in the news?) I recommend them both.

That topic lead me to think of other such forms of nominal fees or payments. A good example of which is the One-dollar salary. Very nominal indeed.

 

A small note on Musk and SpaceX and the Mongolian Horde Approach

Just wanted to add a small note on SpaceX and the insanity around it all. Paul Krugman and others have been dismissive of the value of SpaceX. Is it a meme stock? Is it a scam? I can’t say.

I can say this. The value of SpaceX allows Musk to deploy his Mongolian Horde approach (something I wrote about here). In short, Musk solves problems by throwing massive resources at a problem until he achieves his objectives. So if he wants xAI to be successful, he can buy Cursor or whatever else he needs for it to be successful. If that doesn’t work, he can keep burning through money and acquire what he needs to get to where he wants to go.

I can’t say he is going to be able to do this indefinitely, but I think he can do it a lot longer than people thing he can. If indeed he is a Ponzi scheme, I do not believe he is one in danger of collapsing any time soon. But let’s see!

On Ponzi Schemes

Charles Ponzi

Over on his Substack, Paul Krugman makes the case for Elon Musk being a Ponzi Scheme. He says: “We have a term for enterprises that look successful because they keep drawing in new investors and keep drawing in new investors because they look successful. They’re called Ponzi schemes. And Elon Musk is basically a human Ponzi scheme.”

I don’t know. Musk is many bad things, but I think he is more than a Ponzi scheme, based on this entry in Wikipedia. Now Bernie Madoff: his enterprise was a Ponzi scheme. But I think there is still some substance behind the enterprises that Musk is running.

Paul Krugman obviously know economics, but I think he is stretching things to insult Musk. Check out these linked pieces and decide for yourself.

P.S. Elon Musk and his companies may not be a Ponzi scheme, but this piece in Techdirt makes the case for how they are a scam, in particular SpaceX.

(Image of Charles Ponzi from Wikipedia)

Bernie’s rule of business predictions of 5 years (or more)

If someone makes the following business prediction: event X will happen in 5 (or more years) think to yourself: they absolutely have no idea.

 

As I said in an earlier post:

For any business prediction, the time frame determines the probability. If they say in a year, they either are doing it themselves or someone they know is. If it is 1-2 years, it won’t happen this year, but someone is working on it. If they say 3-5 years, then it’s likely not in progress, but there is talk of working on it.

The only prediction that is useless is 5-10 years. If someone says 5-10 years, they are saying something like “I don’t want to say it will NEVER happen, but it is not even close to coming to fruition, so I will predict 5-10 because who is even going to come back and ask me about it in a decade from now?” 🙂

Books for reading when you’re going through hard times

The New York Times asked experts to “share the literature that has helped them cope with death, illness and despair” and the result was this article: 5 Books to Lift You Up During Life’s Hardest Times (gift link). You may have these or have heard of them already:

  1. ‘Being Mortal,’ by Atul Gawande
  2. ‘Meaty,’ by Samantha Irby
  3. ‘Gilead,’ by Marilynne Robinson
  4. ‘Blindsided,’ by Richard M. Cohen
  5. ‘Vigil,’ by George Saunders

If not, check out that gift link and find out more about the books, including why and how they can lift you up.

What’s better than 150 Extra Engineers? This blog post! (What I find interesting in tech, June, 2026 edition)

Ok, technically the IBM 604 Electronic Calculating Punch was better than 150 extra engineers. I can’t provide you with one of those, but I can provide you with this list of links on what I find interesting in tech lately (besides AI, which I have posted on separately since it is a big topic in itself).

Hardware

Software:

Raspberry Pi :

Miscellany:

(Credit for the top image: File:IBM 150 Extra Engineers 1951.jpg – Wikimedia Commons)

AI: what people are doing and what people are saying (June, 2026)


When it comes to AI, there are 1) lots of people doing practical things with AI and 2) lots of people writing about AI. They rarely overlap. 🙂 

But overlap they do in this post! For those of you not doing practical things with AI, skip to the second section.

1) Here’s a bunch of links for people who are doing practical things with AI:

2) Here’s a bunch of links for people who like to read about AI:

How to be an artist, how to do art, and what art can do for you

 

As a frustrated artist, I not only gather links about artists, but I also gather links about art. Here are just some of the ones I’ve picked up recently:

If you want to be an artist, it might be good to ask established artists what their thoughts are. Artsy.net did a series on this, and I put together a list of just some of them:

Also helpful, swissmiss has a good piece to help you determine the type of artist you are / want to be:Artist vs Creator

If you decide you want to be a painter, here’s some things to get you started. Sometimes all you need to do is to start. (These are taken from the book Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 More Small Paintings: Pick Up the Skills, Put on the Paint, Hang Up Your Art. I recommend it and Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings: Pick up the skills * Put on the paint * Hang up your art):

Maybe collage is your thing. If so, check out:

I am a big fan of trois crayons drawings, so I liked this: Chalk it up to three colors: bring together color, form and design by using the trois-crayons technique–traditionally only red, black and white chalk

I’m also a fan of zines, so I thought this was good: Gen Zine: DIY publications find new life as a form of resistance against Trump | US news | The Guardian

Conceptual art isn’t for everyone, though it is for me. Perhaps you might want to consider that route: Conceptual Art 101: A Beginner’s Guide | DailyArt Magazine – www.dailyartmagazine.com

Finally, kintsugi is more than just a way of repairing things. To see what I mean, check this out: Trevor Noah Explains How Kintsugi, the Japanese Art of Repairing Pottery, Helped Him Overcome Life’s Tragedies | Open Culture – www.openculture.com

From the todo lists of Haring to the cutouts of Matisse as well as some stairwell drawings by Byrne (the arts on Wednesday, June 2026 edition)

Here’s the latest edition of #theartsonwednesday, a mini-newsletter within my blog highlighting recent stories on visual artists new and old that I’ve found interesting: