Monthly Archives: July 2020

Hey! Good evening (to people in my time zone, GMT -5. :))

Thanks for stopping by.

This is my latest not-a-newsletter of highlights (not so many) and ramblings (many) since the last one at the end of June.

We are still in the era of the pandemic, but we seem to have spin offs of it: in some places, it is getting much worse (e.g. the US, Brazil), in other places it is dying down (e.g. Canada) and then there places it seems to have died down but then flared up again (e.g. Australia). I think the only safe thing to say about this disease in any place is that we are in it for the long haul. Countries and governments that get that will be the ones that do best.

Pandemic: speaking of the pandemic, here are two pieces I found worth highlighting.
First up: As people mostly have to dress up only for work videoconferences, they have adopted some innovative ways of doing this: The Video Call Is Starting. Time to Put on Your Zoom Shirt. – The New York Times Secondly, a reminder: if you are going on a road trip, be prepared for failure and don’t expect things to work the way they did in the past: Canada Reopens, but Little Returns to the Old Ways – The New York Times
Free speech: there’s been lots of chatter about free speech in the US recently. Two things I noticed were the changes at Reddit, followed by the so called Open Letter defending free speech published by Harpers.

My thought on Reddit cancelling the subreddit ‘The Donald’ was: Good. That subreddit had ample opportunity to follow the most basic of rules and they didn’t, as this piece explains: Reddit, Acting Against Hate Speech, Bans ‘The_Donald’ Subreddit – The New York Times

As for the other item, I don’t have much to say about the somewhat controversial Open Letter in Harper’s. I thought it was something of a nothingburger. Others did not: it got plenty of people riled up. For those who think it was somewhat significant, I recommend this piece: Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam | HuffPost Australia.

Also, stop writing Open Letters, people. Get a blog or something. 🙂

Bad thought: There is so much bad thought/writing in the world today, some of which I write myself! Most of it is ignored. But then some of it hits bigger sites, like The Big Think. I like the Big Think. There’s some good stuff there. There’s also some dubious stuff, such as this: End of the world: MIT prediction from 1973 is proving true – Big Think. I was surprised that they would just reference Club of Rome so generally. If you do some research into the predictions of the Club of Rome, there’s many articles debunking them. As always, take anything you read on the Internet with a grain of salt, even if it comes from reputable sources.

Speaking of bad thought,  a twitter cliche is to say “Everything is terrible, but here is something good”. For example:

Everything is terrible, but on the upside, Neil Young has posted a new clip in his Porch series of sessions — just him sitting on a barrel on the deck of his cabin playing songs like “Alabama,” “Ohio,” “Southern Man” and Dylan’s “Times They Are A-Changin” https://t.co/YkuhgiTrYj

— Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) July 1, 2020

Not sure why people just can’t say “here’s something to good”. Everything isn’t terrible, obviously. It’s a distorted world view. If you say, “everything is wonderful”, people would rightly give you the side-eye or worse. But say “everything is terrible” and many just nod in agreement. Bah!

More on the US: I found this accidentally while going through the New York Times site recently. It says something about the US that this barely registers as news anymore: 2 Dead in Shooting at Walmart Distribution Center in California, Including Gunman – The New York Times

Remember that couple who came out brandishing guns when Black Lives Matter protesters crashed their gates? Here’s a good follow up story on them. These people are almost Dickensian in their terribleness: Portland Place couple who confronted protesters have a long history of not backing down | Metro | stltoday.com.

I am not a fan of Kayne’s clothing — I find the designs heavy handed, bulky, and colourless – but I found this interesting: Kanye West and Gap Strike 10-Year Deal for ‘Yeezy Gap’ Apparel Line – The New York Times. I could actually see him doing something interesting with the Gap. He could help lift them up for a bit, and maybe he could find his stride with the line. Fans of West could argue that he has been successful with Adidas, and I’ll grant him that. If he and the Gap paired and succeeded, I would be first in line to applaud them both.

I’m just going to ignore the whole “Kanye running for President” non-event.

Canadians: on Twitter, people often flare up and tweet about how smug Canadians are. I thought this was solely a habit of left wing Canadians, but a search through Google showed me it cuts across the spectrum of politics: smug canadian – Google Search.

I find the idea of smug Canadians quaint, to be honest. Canadians have much to be proud of, but I am not sure they should be excessively proud (i.e. smug). And from my limited perspective, I don’t think I have ever met a smug Canadian. After all, we have many faults. And we are secondary at best when it comes to many other places in the world. So,  lots of  reasons to temper our pride. As for our accusers, I wonder if the people wagging a finger at “smug Canadians”  just don’t care for Canadians or a particular set of Canadians? I find it an odd phenomenon.

The rest of the world: I struggle with how blind we are to what is happening in the world because we focus so much on the US and its problems. We miss tragedies like this one. There is unprecedented violence in Mexico now and it barely registers north of their border: Mexico Police Chief Shot in Possible Assassination Attempt – The New York Times.

Finally, something out of this world: I think, based on this, that our understanding of our Solar System is going to change in a big way soon: Beyond Pluto: the hunt for our solar system’s new ninth planet | Science | The Guardian

Thanks for reading this. I hope you found it interesting and somewhat useful.