Monthly Archives: November 2023

November! A month of cooling off in many ways. Of endings. Here’s what’s happening plus the usual ramblings (i.e. the November 2023 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

Posted on November 30, 2023 | Comments Off on November! A month of cooling off in many ways. Of endings. Here’s what’s happening plus the usual ramblings (i.e. the November 2023 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

November is a month of chills and cooling off. Not just literally but figuratively. So many things have been cooling off, dying off, or just ending this month. Many things, but not all things.

Dying: A year ago crypto exploded in a fireball. Now all that’s left are the embers. Last month the fraud / conspiracy trial of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was underway. How did it go? Well, not great for SBF. He was evasive under cross examination. His lawyers did not do well with their closing arguments. It didn’t help that so many of his coworkers plead guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. In the end it took the jury less than five hours to find him guilty on all charges. No doubt pictures like this couldn’t have helped his case:

What a mess.

If you want to read more about it all, this piece by Zeke Faux is good. Check out his book too. You can read the book Going Infinite by Michael Lewis as well, though this review which discusses how he fell for the antihero (SBF, not Taylor Swift) makes me wonder if I would bother, even though I like Lewis’s other books.

The other big player in crypto is Changpeng Zhao (CZ) of Binance. Is? Was. The SEC has been cleaning the Aegean Stables that is crypto and went after him and forced him to plead guilty and step down from him company.

In the end the only people I felt sorry for in all this  debacle was SBF’s parents. Do I feel bad for crypto investors? Well in April of 2022 the Financial Times sat down with SBF and more or less explained how SBF’s crypto yield farming was a ponzi scheme. If you had major money in crypto after reading that, then you got what was coming to you, I’m sorry to say.

Cooling off: after being heated in all the ways, China is starting to cool off. Last year China and Xi were at their aggressive peak, lecturing Trudeau and others with their wolf warrior diplomacy.

Well that’s gone, and Xi recently adopted a milder manner in this month’s meeting with President Biden. Wolf warrior diplomacy is dying off. No doubt some of that has to do with the many problem that China is suffering, from real estate problems to high youth unemployment to the decline of  their belt road loans program.

That said, while China seems to be backing away from invading Taiwan, they are still being very aggressive in dominating the South China sea, as these two stories here and here show. They are still aggressive at home, too, as this piece on China spies campaign shows.

It’s not all bad news for Xi and his country. This is good news, for instance:  China’s war on pollution has great improved air quality for their citizens. But things could be better. Will they be under Xi is the question. Read The New York Times piece on  Xi’s rule and decide for yourself. Don’t miss this piece by Noah Smith either. Smith thinks the Chinese leader is incompetent and he makes a compelling case.

Dying off: Culturally we may be seeing the dying off of the superhero movies that have dominated screens big and small for so long. The Marvels, the latest film from Marvel Studios just came out and it recorded the worst ever North American opening weekend performance of all those films. The Times put it simply: it floundered.

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This has all led Disney, the owner of Marvel Studios, to do some backtracking.  They are delaying  Deadpool 3 and other such films. TV wise, Disney is not doing great either, as their new series, Ahsoka shows.

Will bringing back the  X men help? Maybe fantastic four will do it? Or maybe it’s the beginning of the end of the superhero movies, as this piece examines.

On death’s door: well, that would be twitter. I mean it’s been dying all year since Musk took over. But his increasingly mismanagement of the site and his own terrible behavior has led to many companies pulling their advertising dollars from it. Not only that, but increasingly people I used to follow regularly have moved to sites like Threads and Bluesky. I am not sure when it will die off: Musk could keep it on life support for a long time. Dan Sinker’s has a good piece on the site known still as Twitter to read while we sit by its deathbed and wait for the inevitable.

Moving on, office work is also waning. A sign of this is wework going bankrupt. Some of the Toronto locations have shut down. That’s too bad: I am a fan of wework. In better news, in New York some financial district offices have been  converted into housing. Here’s to more of that.

Gone but not forgotten: I hadn’t realized that November is JFK season in the US. Or so says Mark Bittman in this piece: JFK season. Perhaps it always will be, until the last of the Baby Boomers in the US has passed away.  Meanwhile we get people still second guessing the JFK assassination. And RFK Jr is hanging around the current election, cashing in on his family name while he spouts his toxic views on disease and race.

The pandemic is not dying, but heating up in many places, including Nova Scotia, which reported 35 covid-19 deaths since august. In China there has been an increase in respiratory diseases in children. The Times has more on where we are in this article.

Wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine continue to burn on as well. Here’s to better days in both places and soon, though right now soon is no where soon enough. In the mean time I am going to the New York Times for news on the latest developments in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine and I recommend you do so too.

Speaking of endlings, that’s the end of this month’s newsletter. Thanks for reading it. May the next one be merry and bright.

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You can’t have it all (a poem and a remembrance)

Posted on November 29, 2023 | 3 comments

In reading this remembrance of a dear friend of Maria Popova, I was struck by  this poem, You Can’t Have It All by Barbara Ras. It starts:

YOU CAN’T HAVE IT ALL

But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.

….

Click on the link and read the poem and the remembrance, too. May we all be remembered so well.

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Here’s 10 fun things to check out on a Monday

Posted on November 27, 2023 | Comments Off on Here’s 10 fun things to check out on a Monday

I get it: it’s Monday and you are busy. Fine. But if you need a break for any reason, then check out these 10 cool /  fun /interesting / useful links:

  1. Need gifts for the holidays? Of course you do. The Wirecutter has a list of the best gifts under $25. Nice.
  2. Not to be outdone, the web site Design Milk also has a list of the best modern gifts under 25 bucks as well. Time to go shopping.
  3. I still use RSS, thanks to the Feedly app. If you do too and are on the lookout for more good feeds, then check out thhe rss feed from the CBC . Long live RSS.
  4. As someone who was a fan of the Whole Earth review, I was happy to see it is all now online. You can check out the whole earth index here.
  5. Want to see Spotify top numbers? Click there and you can.
  6. Eras — not centuries, but eras — from now there will be two Africas. As you read this a major fault line is opening up there and a new ocean is forming in Africa along a 35 mile crack that opened up in ethiopia in 2005. Fascinating.
  7. This is fun. You can use this site to build your own customized pencils.
  8. I thought this story in the Paris Review was great: the sofa.
  9. This is fun: whimsical.club.
  10. Finally, I liked these 10 rules of being human from kottke.org.

Ok get back at it. Happy Monday!

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If you are going for an eye exam in Ontario, ask some questions before you go

Posted on November 25, 2023 | Comments Off on If you are going for an eye exam in Ontario, ask some questions before you go


If you are going for an eye exam in Ontario, ask the staff some questions before you go. Otherwise you might get surprised by charges you were not expecting.

As the Toronto Star reported, the Ford government has cut back on OHIP-covered eye services for some seniors. Specifically….

 Free annual eye exams paid for through the Ontario Health Insurance Plan will no longer be available to all seniors…Only those with “eligible medical conditions affecting their eyes such as macular degeneration, glaucoma or diabetes” will get a yearly checkup. “Seniors without an eligible medical condition will receive one exam every 18 months,” the government said…As well, seniors will be limited to just two minor followup assessments with an optometrist every year. Currently, there’s no limit on such minor assessments. OHIP coverage of eye exams for people of all ages with cataracts will continue.

Additional charges are not limited to seniors. I was surprised at my last visit: I knew I was going to be charged for the visit, but I did not know that the optometrist was going to do additional tests that drove the cost of the visit to over 300. I am lucky to be covered for that: some Ontarians who have stretched finances might find that hard to deal with.

It’s not just limited to Ontarians, either: provinces like Manitoba and Nova Scotia only insure eye exams every 24 months for all seniors.

The next time you go, ask what it will cost.

(This might be mind boggling to any Americans reading this, I know.)

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A magic table you can use for Thanksgiving and other holidays

Posted on November 23, 2023 | Comments Off on A magic table you can use for Thanksgiving and other holidays

Over at Yanko Design is a story on a table that can go from this:

to this:

If not magical then certainly amazing. Sure you need a space to expand into, but anyone who has to host larger gatherings on the regular and has the space should check it out.

And to all my American friends, happy Thanksgiving!

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Cook Out is coming. Get ready!

Posted on November 20, 2023 | Comments Off on Cook Out is coming. Get ready!

If you have not heard of Cook Out, you a) likely have not been to the U.S. South b) have been missing out! Whenever I can get down there I try to make one visit for a burger and chili fries. It’s fantastic. I would eat there all the time if I could.

Well good news: I might be able to. According to Slate, the Cook Out fast-food chain is expanding! Hey if Chick-fil-A can get to Toronto, maybe Cook Out can too. The thought of it is thrilling!

If you do get a chance to go to a Cook Out, I highly recommend it. Until then, read the Slate piece to find out more about this fine fast food place.

P.S. No, the burgers do not come with googly eyes. Slate did that. 🙂

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Raiding the Beaton Institute archives for my past

Posted on November 19, 2023 | Comments Off on Raiding the Beaton Institute archives for my past

If you have an interest in Cape Breton, you owe it to yourself to check out the The Beaton Institute’s website. It is filled with great images of Cape Breton. That’s what I was doing earlier this year.

One of the things I found there that reminded me of my life in Glace Bay is the hospital in this picture:

I lived not too far from the Glace Bay General Hospital (above) and I used to cut through the grounds of it to get to high school or go to play hockey at the Miners Forum. I remember playing soccer with friends on the grass in the front of the hospital. I remember going to get inhalation treatments in the basement for my sinuses. It was a cool old place.


One of the jobs I had when I was younger was going into Sydney and cleaning the Nova Scotia Power Trucks (shown above). It was a cool job I did with some friends of mine. We would drive the trucks out (somewhat like this), wash them, then return them to the parking lot. It was hard work, but good and memorable.


Finally, I love this photo of Marconi in the Marconi Station in Glace Bay. Here he is making communications history!

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Let’s get sauced! (Friday food links for food lovers, November 2023)

Posted on November 17, 2023 | Comments Off on Let’s get sauced! (Friday food links for food lovers, November 2023)

Sauces are the way to take a simple and maybe even boring dish and transform it into a great one. If you agree, here’s dozens of sauce recipes I’ve been collecting that can help with that. Grab a pan and let’s start in.

Pan sauces are a great way to sauce up your dish. Here’s something on the perfect pan sauce. If you want to make restaurant quality pan sauce, read this. Maybe you want to know how to make an easy pan sauce in minutes? That can help.

Do you eat a lot of chicken? Here’s 3 variations on pan sauce for weeknight chicken. Want something lighter? Here’s 3 Great (and Easy) Pan Sauces for Chicken from Cooking Light. Finally here’s one more pan sauce recipe for chicken to add to your repertoire.

if you’re cooking beef or pork, here’s how to make a basic red wine reduction sauce to go with it. Or make one of my favorite sauces: Supreme. I am a fan of veloute, too.

Bechamel is a useful sauce. Here’s how to make a perfect bechamel according to the chefs of Food & Wine. More on that. sauce here and  here and  here.

Here’s how to make a roux and use it right. Relatedly: this is a basic white sauce recipe.

More on the French mother sauces here and here: month and daughter sauces. Speaking of that, here’s how to make mayonnaise. Last, this is supposedly essential sauces for the home cook.

Not even meal needs a sauce from France. For instance, here’s some great sauce recipes for guacamole,  sofrito, aioli, pine nut free pesto, Peruvian-Style Green Sauce, more peruvian style green sauce, homemade ketchup, and fresh chili harissa.

I would be remiss if I didn’t include some tomato sauces. Here’s a good marinara sauce recipe. Though this one from the New York Times is my all time favorite.

This piece argues this heidi swanson 5 minute tomato sauce is genius. Who am I to argue?

Speaking of genius, check out this piece: Adding Oyster Sauce to My Spaghetti Was Probably the Best Thing I’ve Ever Done. The folks at Bon Appetit like to be dramatic. Speaking of dramatic, the Guardian argues that this sauce will change your life.

Let’s dial it back and take a look at these marinades from Food and Wine. Not sauces, but related.

Happy Cooking!

 

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We need more eco-friendly design

Posted on November 15, 2023 | Comments Off on We need more eco-friendly design

In my mind, there is not enough eco-friendly design out there, and there should be. It can be a great way to recycle and reuse.

Case in point, the stools above, which are made of plastic and fiber-based waste. Or these concept shoes below that are made of sugar derived from plant waste and microbes which is then turned into nanocellulose as a material.

For more on the topic, I owe it to myself to go through all these Eco-Friendly designs over at Yanko Design. I recommend you do too.

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Race to the moon! (What I find interesting in math and science, November 2023)

Posted on November 13, 2023 | Comments Off on Race to the moon! (What I find interesting in math and science, November 2023)

Space: Well there has been plenty of space missions in the last while.

India has made great progress with their space missions, including successfully landing on the moon. The New Times has a piece on their moon launch here. It’s an exciting development! You can read more on it here and here. And India is not just going to the moon: they have mission going to the center of the solar system. Great to see all this activity.

Unlike India, Russia has been less successful, with their spaceship crashing on the moon. More on that, here. Space is hard.

Meanwhile,  Japan is aspiring to be doing work on the moon, too. More on the all the participants in the moon race here.

As for private space exploration, the Times has a piece on an alternative group to SpaceX that are making progress here. Good: we need an alternative to Musk’s company. Speaking of alternatives, here’s more on  Virgin Galatic’s recent progress. And this asks the question: How long will Jeff Bezos continue to subsidize his New Shepard rocket? Maybe if NASA goes with this new way of doing  moon missions with his Blue Origin organization. 

In other space news, here’s something on the new crew for the space station. This is a new theory on galaxy mergers that could shed light on how galaxies evolve.

Other things on space that I loved was this piece:  Our Galaxy Is Home to Trillions of Worlds Gone Rogue. Also this dazzling view of the Milky Way from southern Africa. I love this too:  Microsoft has an introduction to Python programming by taking on assignments inspired by NASA scientists to prepare you for a career in space exploration. A great collaboration.

Here’s some less than loveable space story I read. For instance, this is bad:  Space junk is on the rise, and no one is in charge of cleaning it up. More on that, here. Also not good: what a long term mission in space does to the human body.

Physics: this is a good explainer on quantum entanglement. Relatedly, if you thought quantum mechanics was weird , check out entangled time.

Here’s something on a study combining continuum mechanics with Einstein’s field equations. Worthwhile.

last but not least, if you want to learn or relearn physics, then head over to Susan Rigetti (nee Fowler)’s great site, here.

Math: three good math pieces: 1) a good introduction on lagrangian-mechanics 2) something I liked on Multivariate calculus 3) Also this on mutlivarable calculus.

Biology: I thought this, on our golden age of medicine was good. As was this piece on newly detailed nerve links between brain and other organs  and how it shapes thoughts and memories.

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A dozen or so good pieces on good artists, from Michelangelo to Tracey Emin

Posted on November 12, 2023 | Comments Off on A dozen or so good pieces on good artists, from Michelangelo to Tracey Emin

width

(Top image: Richter. Bottom image: Day)

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Starck + Perrier: two good things that go together well

Posted on November 10, 2023 | Comments Off on Starck + Perrier: two good things that go together well

Glad to see that Perrier has come out with a new and cool bottle done by my favorite designer, Philippe Starck. Vive la France!

Sadly this will not be in Canada. I need to find a way to get a bottle. Perrier, if you are listening… (Just kidding, this is 2023. Now if it was 2009…. :))

You can read more about it here at UnCrate and the Perrier site.

 

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Family meals are a good thing, but they are not the only good thing

Posted on November 8, 2023 | Comments Off on Family meals are a good thing, but they are not the only good thing

From time to time articles will appear promoting the importance of families eating together. If you search on “how important is the family dinner table”, the first piece that you might see is an article from Stanford Medicine on Why the Family Meal Is Important.

I don’t deny that there is value in good family meals. But I was also heartend by this article, Bad Cook, Great Mom from Cup of Jo, where she writes:

 Before having kids, I envisioned sitting down for dinner, Norman Rockwell style, and sharing our hopes and dreams while breaking bread. But honestly? We didn’t have regular sit-down family dinners until Toby was around 10, and we still eat at the table together only a few times a week. And yet. I’m a terrible cook, but I crush it at being a mom.

When I think about my children leaving the nest and looking back on their childhoods, I know they won’t picture epic homemade meals because I did not serve many. We eat simply, and pizza is regularly ordered. But there are SO MANY BEAUTIFUL THINGS they will remember….

I think this is right. I also think this comment someone posted in response is also right (I added the bold):

Well I will say this: I am a good cook. I’m French and my English husband delights in my cooking. But last year, our 6yo French-British daughter gave me her Mother’s Day card, on which she had written “I love my mummy because… she’s a great soup maker”
To this day I am still laughing every time I see the card. Soup is what I make with all the tired veg from the bottom of the fridge when I am totally uninspired. And yet, I got the highest praise for it.
You never know what your children will remember fondly, really…

You never can know what your kids will remember fondly. The things important to you may not be important to them. And the things that other people think are important in their family (family meals) may be less so in your family. All you can do is try your best with the skills you have. There are many ways to be a good parent. Never forget that.

P.S. I’ve recently started having Sunday suppers with my adult kids and I really enjoy it. But I also have more time these days to do that. When they were smaller they weren’t into eating at the table and I was just happy when they were eating good food, regardless of where they ate it.

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On bullshit jobs and how to overcome them

Posted on November 6, 2023 | 2 comments

Do you feel like your job is socially useless? If so, you may have a bullshit job. As this piece shows, many people feel they work in pointless, meaningless jobs.  Just look at the graph above, taken from the article. People in all sorts of occupations feel like their job is a waste of time. People in office jobs especially so.

What I would like to focus on is the jobs at the bottom of that chart. Many of those jobs center around helping others, be it trainers, librarians, healthcare practitioners, and social service workers. There are also jobs where people make things, be it in construction or engineering and architecture. When you are making something like a building or a road, you know you are doing something useful. Likewise, you know what you are doing is useful if you are helping to educate someone or helping them get healthier. I suspect that is why people in those professions they don’t find their jobs useless.

If you have a job that you feel is useless, see if there are aspects of it that are helpful to someone. Or try and find activities where you make something that others can take and do something with. Or do both. It might feel like you currently don’t do any such things, but if you track what you do in a week or a month, you may find you were doing those things and you just weren’t aware of it.

You can also try and insert more of those activities into your job. Share the things you know with your coworkers. Mentor new people on the job. Create material that others can use to make their own job easier, even if it’s simply a spreadsheet or a Powerpoint template. Look for ways to be useful to others on your job. You may find yourself enjoying your job more in the process of being useful.

Good luck!

 

 

 

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On there being two types of freedom

Posted on November 4, 2023 | Comments Off on On there being two types of freedom

There are two ways to be free:

  1. to be in a higher state of being
  2. to be in a different state of being

The first way of being free requires a continual effort to remain that way. If you do not expend this effort, you will slip back down and no longer be free.

When political people say “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”, they are talking about this type of freedom. It’s also true for people that get into shape, or quit a bad habit, or make improvements in other aspects of their life. Indeed, any type of freedom that has to battle decay and entropy is a type of freedom that needs continual effort.

The second way of being free does not require continual effort. When you graduate from school, quit a job, end a relationship, or move away from someplace, you become free of those things. You have transitioned to a different state of being.

You might argue that some people have to work hard to not go back to that old job, that old relationship, or that old home town. I’d counter that even if one does, they are a different person than when they left and what they return to has changed too Additionally I think most people do not go back. People move on. They move away.

It is easy to get discouraged if you think all forms of freedom require continual effort. Many do, but many do not. Sometimes you just need to push to get to the other side to be free, and once you do, you are free once and for all.

P.S. For more on this, see: It takes a daily effort to be free by Austin Kleon. His piece got me thinking along these lines.

P.S.S. If you think of life as being cyclical, you are likely to see freedom as being something you constantly have to work with. If you see life as linear, you are likely to see it as something you can achieve once and be done.

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Friday Night Music: One Week – Barenaked Ladies (Vintage ‘40s Jazz Cover) feat. Emma Smith and PostmodernJukebox

Posted on November 3, 2023 | Comments Off on Friday Night Music: One Week – Barenaked Ladies (Vintage ‘40s Jazz Cover) feat. Emma Smith and PostmodernJukebox

Well this is fun:

Go check out the YouTube channel for PostmodernJukebox for more such goodness.

 

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If you can’t write to your USB drive on your Mac and you want to fix that, read this

Posted on November 2, 2023 | Comments Off on If you can’t write to your USB drive on your Mac and you want to fix that, read this

If you are reading this, chances are you cannot write to your USB drive on your Mac.

To force a USB drive to be both read and writable, I did the following (note, I had a Kingston drive, so my Mac identified it as KINGSTON and I went with that. If you buy a USB drive that is not from Kingston, you may see something different):

  1. In Finder, go under Applications > Utilities and start Disk Utility
  2. Click on your USB disk on the left (E.g. KINGSTON) and then click on Erase (top right)
  3. You can change the name if you want (I left it at KINGSTON) and make Format: ExFAT
  4. Once you do that, click the Erase button to format the disk
  5. Click on Unmount (top right) to unmount the disk
  6. Open a terminal window (Open Finder. Go to Applications > Utilities > Terminal) Enter the following diskutil list command in the Terminal window and note the results:
    diskutil list
    /dev/disk2 (external, physical):
    #: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
    0: FDisk_partition_scheme *62.0 GB disk2
    1: Windows_NTFS KINGSTON 62.0 GB disk2s1

    Note it my case the KINGSTON drive is associated with disk2s1. (you see that on the line “1: Windows_NTFS KINGSTON 62.0 GB disk2s1”. It may be different for you. Regardless, you want the drive name that comes after the 62.0 GB.)
  7. While in the terminal window, make a corresponding directory in the /Volumes area of your machine that has the name of your drive (in my case, KINGSTON)
    sudo mkdir /Volumes/KINGSTON
  8. Also in the terminal window, you can  mount your disk as writable and attach it to the mount point sudo mount -w -t ExFAT /dev/disk2s1 /Volumes/KINGSTON

You should now be able to write to your drive as well as read it.

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