Month: January 2025

When you are stuck, you think it will last forever

Post Xmas shopping at Aroma

When you are stuck, you think it will last forever.

It’s natural to think that way, since being stuck is often a negative situation, and such situations make one pessimistic. Pessimistic thinking can make you think that the bad times are permanent and pervasive.

If that describes you, just know that we all live in a stream constantly flowing strongly downstream. Regardless how stuck we may be, the stream will push against you and eventually you will no longer be stuck.

So yes, it may seem like it will last forever, but the never ending change all around you will eventually free you. If you don’t free yourself in the meantime.

A good mediation on fire…

 A good mediation on fire can be found here:  Fire and focus – Austin Kleon.

It can be hard to think about fire as a positive thing if you have been focused on the wild fires in Los Angeles. But it can be, and that comes across in what Kleon writes about it. It reminded me of growing up and the times my father would have a fire pit in the backyard, and we would spend hours around it, tending it, talking, watching it. It also made me think of times later on when I had a house with a fireplace and I’d love the meditative and contemplative aspect of it.

Fire can be a great thing. Read Kleon and see.

(Photo by Hayden Scott on Unsplash)

 

Two rules for dealing with political opposition

Rule #1: accurately assess the strength of your opponent. When you are in control, your opponent is going to try and stop you from doing things, and when then are in control, it is your job to stop them. If you underestimate the strength of your opponent, you will get overrun by them. If you overestimate their strength, you will retreat or surrender too easily. (Seeing a lot of that right now.)

Rule #2: know the difference between an opponent and an enemy.  You can work with your opponent on things you have in common, despite having other things you disagree with. You cannot work with your enemy: they must be defeated. If you don’t defeat them, they will defeat you.

If you believe in democracy and freedom and the person on the other side is a nazi or a fascist, they are your enemy, not your opponent. It’s foolish to think otherwise.

Winter and flowers: two words that should go together

Sure, gardens are great when the weather is warm, but what about when it is not. Well then you want some winter flowers. Indeed, here are 25 Winter Flowers: Cold-Loving Plants to Plant in Winter. I was amazed how many types there are. After seeing them, you may want to order some seeds and plant them too. Like those iceland poppies, shown above.

P.S. For more on cold weather gardening, see: How to garden in the winter | Smart People I Know

(Image from Eden Brothers. They sell those poppy seeds and much more)

 

 

 

 

Libraries are essential digital places too

Libraries provide so many public services, from great books to read to great places to read them. You’d likely be surprised just how much they provide. For example, here’s a list that my library, the Toronto Public Library (TPL), provides. All of that shows just how essential libraries are.

While libraries are great physical places, they are also great digital places. Check out this list to see what I mean. I’m a big user of TPL’s digital services, and I’m not alone is that regard. To see what I mean, check out the Toronto Public Library Dashboard and see in real time what ebooks people are checking out, how many loans happen each day, how many holds happen each day, and more! It’s quite something to see.

P.S. Did you know you that you can donate to the library? Well you can, though the TPL foundation. The link is here.

P.S.S. If you want that T shirt, you can go here. Be sure to pick the right size.

 

Some thoughts on data centres and the environment

325 Front Street West III

People are worried about data centres.

People are worried about data centres and carbon emissions, especially if they read articles like these: Google’s carbon footprint balloons in its Gemini AI era, or Microsoft’s AI obsession is jeopardizing its climate ambitions or Google’s greenhouse gas emissions are soaring thanks to AI or Exxon Plans to Sell Electricity to Data Centers.

People are also worried about data centres and water usage after they read articles about how much water is used for each ChatGPT query.

And when people read pieces like this, Amid Arizona’s data center boom, many Native Americans live without power, they are no doubt worried about what data centres do to the communities where they reside.

My thoughts on this, as someone who has worked in data centres for 40 years, is that there are valid reasons to be concerned, but there are positive aspects to data centre growth and it’s important to keep those in mind.

Data centres are simply places with a concentration of information technology (IT). One time companies had data centres on a floor of their building, or in special buildings in locations like the one pictured about on 325 Front St in Toronto. These days, many companies are moving from hosting their own technology in their own buildings and moving that tech to cloud computing locations, which are just another form of data centre.

I believe that’s this migration to the cloud is a good thing. As this states:

Research published in 2020 found that the computing output of data centers increased 550% between 2010 and 2018. However, energy consumption from those data centers grew just 6%. As of 2018, data centers consumed about 1% of the world’s electricity output.

Moving workloads from on premise infrastructure to cloud infrastructure hosted in big cloud data centres saves on energy consumption.  One of the reason for the savings is this:

…normally IT infrastructure is used on average at 40%. When we move to cloud providers, the rate of efficiency using servers is 85%. So with the same energy, we are managing double or more than double the workloads.

You might think all this data centre growth is being driven by things like AI and crypto, but according to this IEA report:

Demand for digital services is growing rapidly. Since 2010, the number of internet users worldwide has more than doubled, while global internet traffic has expanded 25-fold. Rapid improvements in energy efficiency have, however, helped moderate growth in energy demand from data centres and data transmission networks, which each account for 1-1.5% of global electricity use.

That’s the key point: the demand for digital services is driving the growth of data centres. Every time you watch a video on your phone or pay your bills on your computer, you are using a data centre. Even things like the smart meter on your house or the computer in your car or the digital signs you see interact with a data centre. You use data centres pretty much all day, sometimes without knowing it.

The good news is that there are innovations to make them greener are happening with them, like this new method for liquid-cooling data centres that could make the waste heat useful. And it’s good that IT professionals are moving towards green cloud computing.  But it’s not good that with the rise of technologies like generative AI, IT companies are having a difficult time keeping up with the demand and sticking to their green targets.

Speaking of gen AI, I think energy costs associated with AI will peak and come down from the initial estimates. Indeed, when I read this article Data centres & networks – IEA, and in particular this…

Early studies focused on the energy and carbon emissions associated with training large ML models, but recent data from Meta and Google indicate that the training phase only accounts for around 20–40% of overall ML-related energy use, with 60–70% for inference (the application or use of AI models) and up to 10% for model development (experimentation). Google estimates that ML accounted for 10-15% of its total energy use in 2019-2021, growing at a rate comparable with overall energy growth (+20-25% per year over the same period).

… then I am optimistic that energy costs will not be as bad as initially estimated when it comes to AI. I am not optimistic that we will not decrease our demand for digital services any time soon. Because of that demand, we need not just more data centres, but better ones. It’s up to companies to build them, and it’s up to citizens to keep the companies accountable. The best way to keep them accountable is to better understand how data centres work. I hope this post went some small way to doing that.

P.S. All the opinions expressed here are my own and do not represent the views of my employer.

(Photo by Jack Landau on Flickr)

If you have a hard time searching for something, blog about it later

If you are trying to search for an answer to something and after much effort find an answer, write a blog post about it. Chances are many others are having the same difficulty, and they may not have the tenacity to keep looking the way you did. By writing about it, you increase the chances other people will get their answer via your post.

The other good reason to do this is that you might forget what you did. That’s fine unless later you want to recreate what you did. That blog post will save you.

Getting ready to start a new blog

In writing about my old posterous blog, I started thinking about how I loved to post via email. I thought I would like to do that again. Maybe not for this blog but another blog. A blog not so much about links but about thoughts and ideas.

So I’m going to give this a little test and see how it goes.

PS going to get started with blm849.wordpress.com for now.

Not making progress on your resolution to declutter? Start with your fridge!

a clutter fridge.

I came across this advice and I highly recommend it: Don’t Try to Declutter Your Whole Life. Start With Your Fridge. | Wirecutter.

Let’s face it: decluttering can be a hard thing to do, and an easy thing to avoid. To get over that avoidance, start the practice of decluttering by tackling your fridge.

There’s some good reasons to do so. One: the amount of decluttering you have to do is limited, so it doesn’t end up feeling like a never ending chore. Two: you are less attached to items in your fridge than you are old clothes or books or photo albums, so tossing old food that you will not eat is less emotionally difficult (I hope). Three: you will see benefits right away and that good feeling should help you move on to your next item.

So get a move on that decluttering resolution this weekend and clear out your fridge!

P.S. If your fridge is in good shape, then start with your pantry. Or where you store your dry goods. If all that is in great shape, then pick one closet.

How will you know it is a day when your whole world is about to change?


How will you know it is a day when your whole world is about to change? I thought about that often since I read this BBC piece, the life changing day World War Two began for the English. Some at the time knew their world was about to change dramatically. For many, the day seemed like any other.

Something similar is related in the first chapter of the book Stalingrad, by Antony Beevor. Germans in Berlin hearing about the start of their war with Russia likely knew their world was going to change for the worse, though the day of the announcement was a pleasant one.

Did the Viennese at the Funeral of Franz Joseph above know their world was ending on that day? After all, the Emperor considered himself “the last ruler of the old world”, and with his death, the old world and Vienna’s place in it was to go as well? I don’t know.

Maybe our world is changing dramatically now and we are still living like it hasn’t. We are good at that. The Great Recession occurred and governments took drastic action and then went back about our business like it never happened. The same occurred with great COVID-19 pandemic: we all took great steps to deal with it, like a car swerving around a big pothole before regaining its place on the road. Perhaps that will be the case with climate change.

Aftermath of LA fire, 2025.

Or perhaps the world is different now, the way it was different on that September 3rd day in England, 1939. Pick your climate change disaster day, be it the Los Angeles fires of January, 2025, or some other day recent day. When you are older, you may look back on that day and think: that’s the day the world changed, and we didn’t really feel it.

(Bottom photo of LA during the fires of January 2025 by Mark Abramson for The New York Times)

Are you fit? This post can help you find out (with lots of good fitness and health links)

It’s January, a time folks resolve to get in shape. But where to start? First off, start by getting some advice. This page is full of it! So let’s go.

Exercise: let’s warm up with some exercise links.


Gear: here’s some good links on gear, mainly Nike.

  • Nike has been making the pegasus running shoe for decades. Here’s something on the latest, the nike pegasus 41.
  • If you are more of a trail running, you might want to check out the nike pegasus trail 4.
  • Speaking of Nike, I have always been a fan of their mission.
  • The nike run club app might help you get running again.
  • What to look for in a  running shoes, be they Nike or otherwise.

Diet: for a lot of folks, you may not need so much to exercise as to eat better and lose weight. These could help.

Health in general: finally, these are a mix of good links.

On restoring my posterous blog. (RIP posterous, a great service)

From 2008 to 2013, there was a great service called posterous that would allow you to easily blog from your mobile device. You could simply email your blog posts from your phone, and many a late night I would lie down with my Blackberry and blog to berniemichalik.posterous.com. (There are many ways to deal with insomnia: this was mine.)

All those posterous blogs are gone now, but at least I was able to export mine. And from time to time I would post excerpts from it here on this blog under the tag, oldposterous. That was ok, but I wanted a better solution.

My solution was to post the entire posterous blog on AWS. You can find it here at berniemichalik.com/posterous. It goes from newest to oldest post. Not all of them are great, but some are.

This blog, smartpeopleiknow, is mainly a link blog, an approach I adopted a long time ago from people like Jason Kottke. What I liked about that posterous blog was it was more a journal/ideas blog. I might start such a journal/ideas blog again. In the meantime, I can go back and see what I was thinking from 2009-2012, thanks to posterous.

Thanks for read that blog, and as always, thanks for reading this one.

 

On Yacht Rock and the Yacht Rock “dockumentary”

I’m a fan of yacht rock, so I was keen to watch “Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary”. I’m happy to say it does a great job not only of reviewing the music being made at that time, but also in analyzing how a term (yacht rock) got applied to this music (since the term didn’t exist at that time).

that said, like some of the musicians involved, I have issues with the term. For one thing, I can also see why some of the musicians hate it, since it seems pejorative. For another, it’s also arbitrary and limited. For example, you can say Michael McDonald was Yacht Rock and Hall and Oates is not, but to me they’re all part of that soft rock era of the 70s. Likewise, Quincy Jones may have used Yacht Rock musicians on Thriller, but I just can’t think of it belonging to the same genre of music as Christopher Cross.

So enjoy the documentary…or Dockumentary. And if you find yourself liking what you hear, check out any of your favorite stream services: you’ll be bound to find a number of playlists serving up that easy listening sound.

P.S. How for to watch it online and stream from anywhere, see Tom’s Guide. Also my older post on Yacht Rock is here.

(Image from Tom’s Guide.)

From Bouguereau to Cattelan (what I find interesting in art, Jan 2024)

From Bouguereau to Cattelan, here’s a baker’s dozen pieces on artists new and old thought worthy of my attention and yours.

First up a good article on the young artist Lee Bul and their work, The Four Mysterious Guardians.  Also this Colossal piece on how  Dabin Ahn Balances Hope and Melancholy in His Sculptural Paintings  As for other newer (to me) artists, I think it’s good to remember that the  art market giveth and the art market taketh, as this piece shows: Young Artists Rode a $712 Million Boom. Then Came the Bust.

Some good exhibits that recently showed were:


As for older artists, this is a good introduction to Hans Haacke  Why Are Museums So Afraid of This Artist? The great artist Frank Auerbach died not too long ago. The Guardian has a piece on him here: Frank auerbach a life in pictures. Sadly John Little, whose paintings showed the raw side of Montreal, recently died at 96 (one of his painting is at the end).

Some artists are good at getting attention. Even people who don’t know or follow art know about the conceptual artwork by Maurizio Cattelan, “Comedian,” which consists of a fruit-stand banana taped on the wall. In the end the art market did the very thing Cattelan was mocking, with 7 bidders biting before it went to …you might have guessed before hand…a crypto entrepreneur.

Another artist who gets lots of attention is David Shrigley. I admire what he is doing here:  David Shrigley urges schools to prioritise arts with aid of giant mantis. Will it be successful? I don’t know.

Finally I went down a rabbit hole on 19th century painting after I came across someone ripping into Basquiat and Twombly and extolling the work of William Adolphe Bouguereau, and I dunno. I’d take the first two over the third any day.

On how to assess political leadership reviews

Not too long ago Danielle Smith in Alberta had a leadership review in which she won with 91.5% approval. 91.5 certainly sounds like a win. But what if she got 80%? Or 70%? Is that still a win? What about 55%?

If you are wondering that, then I highly recommend this piece by Jason Markusoff: Danielle Smith’s UCP leadership test: here’s what history says about how safe she is. He analyzes her win in the context of other leadership reviews where leaders scored that result or less and then summarizes what happened next.

Something to keep in mind in Canadian politics for 2025 and years to come.