The New York Times has a good piece exploring the link between mental health and messy homes — as well as and how to deal with it — here, Why Clearing Clutter Can Feel Impossible.
For some people, a chaotic home can lead to more mental health problems which can lead to more chaos. The spiral needs to be broken. That article can help.
Do you like staying up late (or worse, have insomnia)? Do you like to read? Do you not care if you are tired the next day? Then you need this list of20 Short Novels To Stay Up All Night Reading. It is
…a list of novels you can read overnight—compelling enough that you won’t be lured by sleep, but short enough that once you finish, you’ll still have enough time to clock some hours before you have to go to work. If you can sleep, that is.
Fun! Don’t blame me if you are tired the next day. You were warned! 🙂
Travel has changed in the time before, during, and “after” the pandemic. I noticed many differences in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Here’s what I jotted down during my trips in the hopes you and I may find it useful in the future:
(I said “after” the pandemic because it feels like we are through the pandemic in February 2023, even though our problems from COVID-19 are not done.)
P.S. BlogTO recently did a piece on what it’s like to fly on the new planes from Porter Airlines, and the service described was similar to what I experienced for several of the planes, down to this:
Ok, some of the planes had more room than this (thank god), but airlines need to back off a bit. Anyway you can see why I try to get an aisle seat. 🙂
Last week I wrote about the Lisa and the rise of the Macintosh. While I was doing that, I came across this list of iPod models, which included these fun facts:
iPods …were once the largest generator of revenue for Apple Computer. After the introduction of the iPhone, the iOS-based iPod touch was the last remaining model of the product line until it was discontinued on May 10, 2022.
It’s remarkable that something that was once the leading generator of revenue is now dead. Blame the iPhone. More accurately, blame streaming. Whatever the real reason, a once great set of products are now gone.
I loved all the iPods I had, from the smallest Shuffle to an iPod Touch that was all but an iPhone. Of all the technologies that I’ve owned, they were among my favorites. Thanks for the songs and the memories, iPod.
(Image of 1st gen iPod Shuffle in its packaging. Via Wikipedia.)
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Let’s agree: we should all be like Emily and go to Paris. If you nod your head yes but wonder where to go when you get there, then Food & Wine has the answers. Well, answers to your questions about food and wine, such as which Paris wine bars you need to see or what are the best Paris cafes for experiencing the city’s history, or even what are the most iconic Paris restaurants to visit on your next trip. You may have other questions, like where to stay or what to see, but if you are like me, you want to figure out the food first. 🙂
As for poor Emily, many American expatriates in Paris wish Emily Cooper Would Go Home. I say leave that show to those young and outside of Paris who harbour fantasies about living her life. It’s a fairy tale of a show and best watched as one.
Normally I like to give tips for the new year in January, but in some ways you need work tips in February. In January you are still transitioning from the holidays and work may seem fresh: in February you are reminded of the difficulties you have with your job.
If that sounds right to you, I have 13 work tips for the new year. Is there anything radically new there? Not really. But sometimes what we need is a common sense set of reminders. Have you set your goals for the year? Do you know your priorities? Things like that.
Here’s a test for you. If you say, I know that! I know my goals! Great: so write them down. Same for your priorities. How productive you are. Et cetera. If you find you cannot write them down, you know now what to think about and what to work on for a less stressful and more successful work year.
Good luck!
I’ve been interested in the history of the Bible and older religions for some time. That online research led me to a site by an actual Biblical scholar who has a site devoted to Biblical Contradictions. So there’s some good stuff there on specific things I’m interested in, like does Yahweh = El, found here and here. There’s other good pieces there, including some sections based on the Documentary Hypothesis. You can find them here Yahwist Source (J), here Elohist (E), here the Deuteronomist (D) and here Priestly Writer (P).
Like much concerning Biblical study, there are many areas of disagreement, including that of the Documentary hypothesis. Keep that in mind whenever you read anything that sounds too definitive. That said, I found the Contradictions site well done and worth a review.
In reading and writing about The Lisa computer yesterday, I was reminded of the Pascal programming language. As part of the development of the Lisa, one of the engineers (Larry Tesler), who was working on the user interface…
…created an object-oriented variant of Pascal, called “Clascal,” that would be used for the Lisa Toolkit application programming interfaces. Later, by working with Pascal creator Niklaus Wirth, Clascal would evolve into the official Object Pascal.
Likely very few if any devs think about Pascal these days. Even I don’t think about it much. But back in the 70s and 80s it was a big deal. As Wikipedia explains:
Pascal became very successful in the 1970s, notably on the burgeoning minicomputer market. Compilers were also available for many microcomputers as the field emerged in the late 1970s. It was widely used as a teaching language in university-level programming courses in the 1980s, and also used in production settings for writing commercial software during the same period. It was displaced by the C programming language during the late 1980s and early 1990s as UNIX-based systems became popular, and especially with the release of C++.
When I was studying computer science in the early 80s, Pascal was an integral part of the curriculum. Once I started working at IBM, I moved on to develop software in other languages, but I had expected it to become a big deal in the field. Instead, C and then variant languages like C++ and Java went on to dominate computer programming. I’m not sure why. My belief at the time was universities had to pay big bucks for operating systems and Pascal compilers but they did not have to pay anything for Unix and C, and that’s what caused the switch. I can’t believe they switched from Pascal to C because C was a better language.
Forty years later, if you search for the top 20 programming languages, Pascal is towards the bottom of this list from IEEE, somewhere between Lisp and Fortran. It’s very much a niche language in 2022 and it has been for some time.
For more on Pascal, I recommend the Wikipedia article: it’s extensive. If you want to play around with it, there’s a free version of it you can download.
(Image is an Apple Lisa 2 screenshot. Photo Courtesy of David T. Craig. Computer History Museum Object ID 500004666)
The great Lisa has just turned 40! Apple’s Lisa, that is. To celebrate, the Computer History Museum (CHM) has done two great things. First, they have released the source code to the Lisa software. You can find it here. Second, they have published this extensive history on the ground breaking machine, The Lisa: Apple’s Most Influential Failure.
Like the NeXT computer, the Lisa computer was a machine that tried to do too much too soon. And while it was not the success that Apple had hoped, it did lead to great success later. That definitely comes across in that CHM piece.
It’s fascinating to compare the picture above with the one below (both from CHM). In the one above you can see the original Lisa (1) with “Twiggy” floppy drive that was unreliable and ditched in the later models, seen below. You can also see how the machine on the left (the original Macintosh) would come to take over from the machine on the right (the Lisa 2). It has many of the same features but at a much reduced price.
When you think of Apple computers, you likely think of one of more of those found in this List of Macintosh models. While not a Mac, the Lisa was the precursor of all those machines that came later, starting with the original Mac. It was the birth of a new form of personal computing.
Happy birthday, Lisa! You deserve to be celebrated.
For more on this, see this Hackday piece on Open-Sourcing The Lisa Mac’s Bigger Sister.
If you interested in space as I am, then get out your calendar and mark down 2023’s top astronomical events so you don’t miss any of them. As WaPo says, “With opportunities to wish upon shooting stars, and to see a Super Blue Moon and the Ring of Fire eclipse, 2023 is bursting” with things to keep an eye out for.
One thing in particular is lunar exploration. First up is, NASA’s Artemis mission. As the Verge explains, an Orion spacecraft that is part of that mission has recently returned and safely splashed down into the Pacific Ocean after a recent trip. A good start! And Artemis promises great things in the future. Not only is it part of NASA’s plan to return visits to the Moon, it’s part of NASA’s plan to never leave. The dream of space colonization could become a reality.
And it’s not just the Americans that are interested in going and staying on the moon. The Chinese are too. Who knows what will take place in the next 10-20 years? It’s all very promising.
With all this space travel, this should keep not just government agencies busy, but private companies too. Case in point: After doubling launch record in 2022, can SpaceX take another step up in 2023?
Heck, even you can get involved. Don’t believe me? Then read this: NASA Wants You to Help Study Planets Around Other Stars.
Meanwhile back on Earth, there’s a lot of interest in tracking asteroids coming close to us. NASA and others are getting a handle on tracking the big ones. The smaller ones are much harder. Here’s a piece on one such asteroid 2023bu that recently blew by us. (See the arrow in the photo above pointing to it.)
For my last space piece I want to highlight, this is a worthwhile read on why some people have an issue with the latest space telescope being named after James Webb. You can find many such pieces arguing back and forth on the matter. I think both sides have worthwhile points. I’ll let you make up your own mind.
Not space related, but fun is this piece on how bees actually play — yes play! — with little wooden balls!
Finally, for people interested in physics, this is a good piece discussing where it is headed. One such. direction is the study of dark matter and dark energy. Here’s a good piece on a dark energy experiment that recently won a big prize. We need more such experiments if we are ever to solve the mystery of dark energy and matter.
There’s a great quote in this piece on how the Republicans demand spending cuts to lift the debt limit. They won’t say what to cut. It’s this:
“If you exempted defense, veterans, Social Security and Medicare spending, you’d have to cut everything else by 85%,” said Marc Goldwein, an expert at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a think tank that advocates for reducing red ink. “It’s possible as a mathematical proposition. But the question is: Is it possible as a policy proposition? And the answer is no.”
The crucial fact is this: the US government is an Insurance Company with an Army. (From Paul Krugman’s blog of over 11 years ago,) That leave any one governing with really two choices: cut the insurance or cut military spending if you want to make significant reductions in the budget. If you cut the insurance, good luck getting reelected. And while I think they could easily still dominate the world with a much smaller military, good luck as well persuading many American voters of that.
Some Republican politicians love to imagine they can reduce government spending significantly during these Debt Ceiling discussions. All the best with that. (Even Mitch McConnell is moving on this time.)
We finally closed the book on another pandemic year (2022), and have moved through the first month of 2023. Yay for us! Is 2023 going to be a pandemic year as well? An endemic year perhaps? We don’t know. One thing for sure: compared to last January, this one has been much gentler.
I think in some ways 2023 may be a transition year. We continue to have transitions when it comes to COVID. We still have new variants like the Kraken (XBB.1.5) that has surged to 40.5% of all infections and rises in hospitalizations. But we take that as a matter of course now. Indeed, there is talk of having annual COVID and flu vaccines. COVID may be more serious than the flu in terms of illness and death, but we may end up approaching them in the same way. No one talks much of flu deaths, and perhaps other than places like Nova Scotia, no one will talk about COVID deaths either. For example, in my province of Ontario it is relatively easy to track hospitalizations related to COVID: it’s relatively hard to report on deaths.
I know because I still have been reporting on COVID hospitalizations every week on twitter for months. My last update was this one:
Ontario COVID Data for 2023-01-26: 1173 currently hospitalized with COVID, 82 are in the ICU, and 28 are being vented (all three numbers are down from last week and on a downward trend)
— Bernie Michalik (@blm849) January 26, 2023
As I tweeted, the numbers have been dropping recently. Even the ICU numbers, which shot up due to the tripledemic, have declined as the tripledemic declined. Thank god: the pediatric ICUs in November were over 100% full for a time.
So we are transitioning in a positive direction. Good. And not just with COVID. Everywhere you see spike graphs, like this one for unemployment:
My expectation is that the annual inflation rate will continue to transition and decline in 2023, and interest rates will follow them. That is not to diminish the impact that inflation has had so far. Things have reached the point where people are stealing food and law firms are promising to defend them for free. That said, many, including the New York Times, expect inflation to cool this year. Perhaps it will drop back to where it used to be (i.e. below 3%). If you are skeptical, I recommend this piece in VOX.
Unlike COVID or inflation, not everything has the prospect of improving in 2023. Guns in the US continue to be a major problem. There is no end in sight for the war in the Ukraine. NATO is still supportive and continues to send weapons, although it seems like Zelenskyy had to clear the decks before that occurred. As for cryptocurrencies, it may not be a year of recovery for them as the trial of SBF and FTX unfolds. But who knows: maybe this rally will be a difference.
I suspect crypto will stay dormant for many reasons. One big reason is that tech is going to change its focus from Web3 to AI. Sorry Web3. (Sorry metaverse for that matter!) Microsoft alone is spending billions on it. AI will be all anyone will talk about this year. (No one knew what to do with crypto, save techies and rich people flogging NFTs. Everyone I know seems to be using ChatGPT and the like. That’s a key difference). I’ll be writing more about AI in standalone posts in 2023, there will be so much going on.
In 2023 I expect a continuation of the trend of people flooding back into cities after having left them, based on data like this: Annual demographic estimates census metropolitan areas and census. While residences have become scarce (and rents have become high) as a result, people have not been flooding back into offices. So much so that places like NYC are looking to convert office spaces to residential spaces. The problem with the pandemic is that the changes it has forced on society are more rapid than social systems can respond. But respond they will.
Then again, a new surge could reoccur in China. If that occurs, all bets are off. For now my bets are staying on the table.
Finally, thanks for reading this and anything else you read on this blog recently. I appreciate it. I am optimistic for 2023 in many ways. I hope you are too.
Keep wearing your masks when advisable. Get vaxxed to the max. Try not to pay attention to Elon Musk or the fate of Twitter: that will all play out in due course. Don’t get too hung up about what AI is going to do: that will all play out as well. Continue to read newsletters. Watch streaming. Listen to podcasts. Most importantly: get out and about whenever you can.
There will always be bad people in the world, and bad acts occurring. Do what you can to prevent that from happening, but don’t rob yourself of your capacity for joy as a result. Be a happy warrior on the side of good. Joy is your armour.
Never forget: you have lived and possibly thrived through some of the most dramatically difficult times in history. You deserve better times ahead.
Enjoy yourself. Live your life robustly. Whenever you feel lethargic, think back to those times of being locked down and unable to even go to a park and sit down. Let’s go and get it. Here’s to a better year ahead. We are counting on you, 2023.
To see what I mean, check out this letter he wrote to To Charles Lyell on October 1st, 1861.. Towards the bottom of it he comments:
But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.
Sounds familiar to anyone having a bad day. If you are having one right now, maybe do what Darwin would do and go for a walk. It can’t hurt!
Over at Yanko Design are 10 of the cabins they chose as the best for 2022. Best for 2022, and 2023…really any year you want to get out of town and into some place nice and rustic.
Whatever the season, wherever the location, these places are the kind of places most people would like to spend some time. I’m more of a city person, but I would be happy to hang out in any of those 10 cabins.
what you see in this post is just two of the places they write about. To see more on these top 10, click here.
One of my favorite cities is Montreal, and one of my favorite websites is Uncrate. Put them together and you have this very fine travel guide to the home of the Habs, Schwartz’s, and so much more.
I have not been to every place on their list, but I have no doubt they are all worthwhile. I would add to their list and recommend other such places as:
If you want a similar guide to one of my other favorite cities, Charleston, you can go here.
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Wait, what, you say? Un apéro dînatoire? Qu’est-ce que c’est?? Well according to Food and Wine, it is a…
…snack dinner: the weeknight meal that offers free license to pull assorted things from the fridge, loosely arrange them on a platter or cutting board, and call it dinner. The French have perfected the art, dubbing it l’apéro dînatoire, and in the process, created a chic way to shift fluidly from cocktail hour to dinner with nary a place setting in sight.
Sounds good, yes? I agree. If you need some ideas, here’s 43 of them. Still stumped? Here’s 80 more. As for me, I would not sweat it. Get some spreads, some dips, maybe some cheese or cold cuts, some veg and bread — and of course drinks — and you are all set to have a chill and relaxing dinner party all can enjoy. For more on it, see the F&W piece, here: A French Aperitif Party Guide.
Of course it doesn’t have to be a weeknight: a weekend meal would be great too.
Bon appétit. Santé!
If you don’t know who Matt Yglesias is, the Washington Post has a good piece on him that includes this summary:
The Washington ur-blogger’s slightly contrarian, mildly annoying, somewhat influential, very lucrative path toward the political center
He is all of those things. He has been all those things since the early days of blogging. Andrew Sullivan, another major blogger from that era, used to give out something called The Matt Yglesias Award to other writers who were annoying and contrarian too.
Why I call him inscrutably odd is that I cannot tell if that annoying contrarianism is for effect or if it is just who he is. I used to think it was for effect, but I thought something different with his recent comments on Uvalde. As the Post describes:
Hours after the May mass killing at a school in Uvalde, Tex., he tweeted: “For all its very real problems, one shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the contemporary United States of America is one of the best places to live in all of human history …”
Technically true. But …
“[W]hat the f— man,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who also got his start at The American Prospect, replied in a tweet.
“Real people are experiencing actual anguish right now,” tweeted Yglesias’s former Slate colleague Dana Stevens, “and don’t need your middle-of-the-road ‘Well, actually’ garbage.”
For a smart guy to make such a comment makes me think there is something lacking within him that would say: time to give the contrarianism a rest. Perhaps it was a knee jerk reaction, a result of years of being that way that caused him to automatically blurt out something terrible like that. I don’t know. Like I said, he’s inscrutable.
When he is not being contrarian he can write really thoughtful pieces on topics like housing and the economy that I get a lot from. He is also good at skewering bad ideas from the left and right. To dismiss him like some do is a bad idea.
But then he writes something daft like a defense of the Austria-Hungary empire, a piece where he takes a contrarian position and like a good debater arranges the facts to support his argument, even if it means overlooking the obvious or assuming the opposite. No wonder he can drive people crazy.
To form your own opinion, if you haven’t already, you can catch up with him with this Washington Post profile, here: Matt Yglesias and his Substack newsletter are thriving in Biden’s Washington. If you want more, this is another piece on him.
(Photo: link to the WAPO piece.)
There’s been plenty of reaction to the above sculpture, “Embrace”. You can get a sample of the it in places like the Washington Post, NBC, and the artistic website hyperallergic.. Not all of it, but a lot of the reaction has been….not good.
If you are unaware, the city of Boston unveiled “Embrace” just this month. The work is based on a photo of Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King and it represents part of that photo. Conceptually that’s a great idea. In reality, it’s not, at least according to many who’ve seen it.
Having read a number of reactions to it, I think the problem can be seen if I ask myself the question: is it a monument or a sculpture? It has elements of a monument: it is a large realistic work in bronze of a famous and celebrated couple. It also has elements of a work of art: it is symbolic and abstract in a way. As a result, it falls somewhere in the middle between monuments and sculptures. And in falling in the middle, people get unsure of how to process it, I believe.
Of course, monuments can be abstract and non-representational: take the Washington monument in D.C. And sculpture can be bronze and representational: think of anything by Rodin. Even monuments that are abstract and non-representational can be controversial, as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial showed when it was first unveiled. There is no formula for what works that will guarantee that a monument or sculpture will win acceptance.
I do believe, though, that if the Embrace was realistic like the Martin Luther King memorial in Washington, it would be more liked. Likewise, if it were made of something other than bronze and made more abstract, people might be confused but less vitriolic about it. Alas, it is what it is.
I feel in the long run this work will come to be accepted and even loved. Works like this weave into the lives of people, and as they do, they become parts of the best of them. I also hope we see more sculptures and monuments of great African American leaders such as the Kings. That’s an idea we should all embrace.
Do you have bad habits? Of course you do: we all do. And January is likely the month we are most likely to want to break those bad habits. Which may be why you are reading this.
If you’re thinking it’s too hard, I’ve have this good piece in: Wired on how you can effectively do that. They talk to neuroscientists and psychologists to show how you can get on the right track to better habits. Specifically, there are two areas they think you should focus on:
That’s pretty classic stuff, by the way. Logging and planning are the two fundamental things you need to do if you are going to chance.
Read it for yourself and decide. Good luck with those upcoming changes.
The four words are Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. It’s why things used to come with the label “New and Improved”. It’s why Spotify creates playlists with songs you know and songs you don’t. It describes what keeps you coming back to old restaurants (today’s specials). As this piece states:
…to sell something surprising, make it familiar; and to sell something familiar, make it surprising.
That’s really it: people want novelty within their comfort zone. If want to influence people to do Something, that’s how you need to describe the Something.
I recommend you read the entire piece: The Four-Letter Code to Selling Just About Anything. It’s fascinating.
When I think of minimalist decor, I often think of rooms like this:
It’s beautiful, but it has a show room quality to me. It looks like a room one passes through, instead of lives in.
So I was pleased that in this list of top 10 minimalist projects for 2022 from Design-Milk.com, there were also rooms like this one:
And an addition like this one:
Indeed there were a number of projects that still had the qualities I associate with minimalism but also felt like places you would want to reside in, instead of look at and admire. It showed me that you can still aspire to a more pared back living space, but still have it livable.
To see the entire list, click here. Minimalism can be good!
Over at Food & Wine, they have a good set of tips on: How to Be a Better Instacart Customer. Some of them are blatantly obvious (“Don’t Weaponize Your Tips”…yeah, no kidding) and others are good reminders (“If you don’t communicate clearly, shoppers can’t do their job.”)
I’ve been using it for awhile, and I like it. Here’s some tips from me that I find make my shopping experience better:
Kudos to all of you succeeding this long into your dry January this year. I hope you are crushing it. If you are not, or if you are curious about this and want tips on how to do it well, then check this out.
Dry January does not mean you can’t be social. No sir. If you want to have a party and keep it dry, there’s plenty of ways to do that. One way is with mocktails. For instance, here’s 6 Mocktail Recipes you can use. You can find a ton of such concoctions on the Web these days.
After some consideration, perhaps you want not so much a dry January and more of a…damp January? Yes, it’s a thing. Read this and see what I mean.
If you need more guidance: How to Drink Less Alcohol: 9 Tips for Drinking Less and Enjoying It More this Also this: How to Be Sober and Work in a Bar . And this recovering rule follower sobriety.
For people wanting to get on this healthy bandwagon, don’t wait until next year. As I have argued, February is the best month to do resolutions. Why not have a dry February? The best month to change is the one you’re in on the day you decide to change.
I’ve long contended that gray is one of the best colours a person can wear. Especially a man. Just like black or navy, gray can fit in anywhere. High quality gray clothing stands out, and low cost gray clothing does not. If you dress in monochrome gray, the many shades of gray can make it interesting. You can pair it easily with any color, from hot pink to coal black. No other clothing color is as versatile.
For more on the greatness of gray, read this piece in Vogue.
If you need more ideas, Uncreate has you here:
That’s a good reminder that you can dress gray up or you can dress it down.
Now that we are in the bleak midwinter in the Northern hemisphere, it’s time to dress warmly. That doesn’t mean dressing badly. For instance, this selection of clothes has a great palette of dark blues, carmel browns, and even some red for a bit of pop:
And if you need ideas for when it is exceptionally cold, why not go with this:
If you have to shovel, do it well.
Some men know this, but it bears repeating: men have lots of options when it comes to clothing and style. Which is why when I read this: Menswear easiest look, I thought I dunno…I guess? Never mind this: the dad ification of fashion in 2022. Try harder, is all I’m saying.
For something on fashion that is very smart, I recommend this: The Fabric of Women. It’s a fascinating study of the relationship between woman, fabric, and linens. If that makes you want to get some new fabric to put over yourself, check out these options:best white t shirts for women.
(P.S. All images from the Garb section of Uncrate.com, except one from Wikipedia)
TIME recently surveyed a range of happiness experts to discover their happiness habits. Here’s the list of habits they mostly did daily and weekly:
Simple, yes? Not easy, though. The not easy part comes in because one of the common themes for each habit is Spend Time. How you choose to allocate your time makes a key difference in how happy we are. Sometimes you don’t even have a choice. Responsibilities and obligations can rob you of choices. Such theft, leaves you with little time to buy your happiness.
Try and guard your time as best as you can. Then spend it on yourself and your happiness. You deserve it.
P.S. Here is the TIME piece: The Daily Habits of Happiness Experts, It provides more detail.
P.S.S. Will doing all these things guarantee your happiness? No, of course not. Good happiness habits are to happiness what good exercise habits are to fitness: they will work for many people, but not all. Like with any advice on the Internet, if it’s not working for you, see a professional or an expert and get the help you need.
Last week a small report leaked and set off an explosion of culture war nonsense, with people on the left advocating for getting rid of gas stoves and people on the right insisting they’ll never give them up. That the report had nothing to do with banning gas stoves was besides the point.
Regardless of how you feel about the matter, a gas stove ban could help climate and health problems. But it won’t happen because…well, for many reasons. One is the natural gas industry is fighting back with influencers and many things. I don’t know if this will be enough for them. In time they could end up looking like Big Oil or Big Tobacco. Maybe. As for me, I think the switch will happen if there is enough incentives for it to happen.
In the meantime, here’s a reminder that there’s nothing inherently good about “natural” gas. Indeed, natural gas is a dangerous name for a climate pollutant.
Speaking of incentives, governments everywhere are doing what they can to change. Here in Canada the government has put out a climate action incentive payment. The U.S. has also provided incentives. All good. One problem though: the contractors needed to do it, so says VOX.
When it comes to climate change and global warming, how well are we doing overall? There are a few encouraging signs. For example, US greenhouse gas emissions rose in 2022 but GDP grew faster. But there are also the usual discouraging signs, such as this: The last eight years have been the warmest on record researchers found.
It’s easy to get discouraged, it’s better to take action. For example, Smile Plastics Turns Yogurt Pots Into Terrazzo-Like Surface Panels. Smart. Also smart: companies are turning to alternative construction materials, like wood. Not smart is the fact that we could be using garbage dumps and landfill for solar farms but we aren’t. We need to strive to be smart and do more.
As for the rest of us, let’s pledge to waste less this year. This can help: New Year Less Waste. Remember and act on the three Rs.
Last but not least, here’s a mix of stories on climate change and the environment I thought were worth getting into:
If you feel stuck, just a small change in your environment can make a difference in freeing you up mentally. Changing your desktop wallpaper is just such a change.
If you agree, I recommend you go to Design Milk and see what they have to offer in wallpapers. Each month they have a designer publish a new image for you to download and out upon your background. Needless to say, they are very well done.
Maybe new wallpaper won’t inspire you to do great things in 2023. But it can’t hurt! Give it a shot.
According to BlogTO, there’s some chatter over on…
…a recent Reddit thread that has amassed hundreds of comments, one user wrote, “Union Station has the most depressing, unsettling art. No part of it sparks joy. Will they ever change this?”
I understand why would you would think the work is bad if you think it is trying to spark joy or some positive feeling. If you think that, I’d like to give you a different viewpoint.
My view of the work changed when I started thinking about it in comparison to what I typically see in the subway. What I typically see is…advertising. This work is everything ads are not. Ads promise a better life: this work shows life as it is. Ads are often unrealistic: this work is grounded. Ads are often polished and simple images: this work is rough and complex. To me it is refreshing to see this art in comparison to the overwhelming commercial imagery everywhere else in transit.
Art can spark joy, but it can do much more than that. This work, called Zones of Immersion by Stuart Reid, may seem depressing to some people. For me it causes reflection and it gives me some perspective of my time underground. And because of that, I think it’s great. I look forward to see it when I’m at Union Station. I hope someday more people feel that way.
Welcome to another piece on getting fit.
If you are looking to get fit and wonder if you need to take 10000 steps a day then read that. (Answer: nope). 10000 steps a day is good though. But so are exercise snacks, those bite sized workouts spread throughout your day. If you feel like something more sustained, something more than a snack, why not this nine minute workout?
One of the best things to do is take advantage of exercise you can’t avoid. Case in point: pushing a young one around in a stroller. Make the most of whatever opportunities you have to get fit. Remember: exercise is not just good for the body, but also for the mind. To see what a run does for your brain, read this. To see more on the mental health benefits, read this.
Finally, if you find that even with sustained exercise you still aren’t looking like a superhero, fret not. As this piece shows, some of that extreme fitness is the result of steroid use. You don’t want that.
Wait, what is sophisti-pop, you ask? Let me let Wikipedia explain:
Sophisti-pop is a subgenre of pop music which developed out of the new wave movement in the UK during the mid 1980s. The term has been applied retrospectively to describe acts who blended elements of jazz, soul, and pop with lavish production. Music so classified often made extensive use of electronic keyboards, synthesizers and polished arrangements. Artists also utilized cutting-edge studio technology and perfectionist recording methods.The genre has been described as mellow, romantic, and atmospheric.
Sounds right. Sophisti-pop was made by artists like ABC, Aztec Camera, Bryan Ferry, Haircut One Hundred, Joe Jackson, Prefab Sprout, Simply Red and Spandau Ballet. Add to that list three of my favorite: The Style Council, Sade and Everything but the Girl (EBTG).
EBTG captured the genre recently when they wrote: “We were a band who listened to Chet Baker but also Buzzcocks, who loved Getz-Gilberto but also The Doors, whose lyrics were intimate but also political”. The same could be said for many of the bands listed above.
If you want to know what was some of the best of it, check out the 10 of the Best Sophisti-Pop albums. If you’re a Spotify user, they have an entire section devoted to that sound. Also EBTG put together their Complete Discography 1982-2005 on Spotify. They have a new album coming out soon: meanwhile go back in time and listen to what you may have missed.
Finally, here’s a song I’ve listened to a million billion times since it came out. A great song for walking alone at night in the rain:
In mid November the Twitter account Canadian Paintings posted the above work by artist Chris Flodberg. At the time I said: “I see some people don’t like this painting but I think it’s fantastic. Just like the Gare St Lazare paintings of Monet are fantastic. They reflect our lives. I even like the palette of this one – it’s a muted palette that goes well with the subject matter. Good composition too.” That tweet led to a good discussion on the work and to aesthetics in general.
I really do think it is a great painting. For one thing, I love the idea of it. The viewer is on the precipice of entering the painting in their car. If you have ever driven on such a road, you can easily imagine going down the hill and merging with the traffic and then heading over the horizon. Flodberg has positioned the viewer so that the go down and to the left, then up and under (a bridge) and then to the right, giving the painting a dynamic feeling.
There’s almost a danger too, with the concrete walls everywhere. Plus the fact you are about to enter a high speed highway. The dynamic and the danger make the painting exciting to me.
It’s interesting to me what he has put in the painting: the office buildings to the right and a jumble of stores to the left. The objects that make up the painting could be anywhere in a big suburb in Canada (or the US). It has a universality in that regard. I thought it was of a part of the 401 near me: turns out it’s near Calgary. (Fun exercise: compare the painting with the images in that link…how does it make you think differently about the painting.)
Flodberg is not the only Canadian to paint a highway. If you do a search like this on Christopher Pratt or this on Jack Bishop, you can easily see that. Canadian landscapes contain many things, including highways: it makes sense good painters want to paint them.
Speaking of Pratt and Bishop, I get why some people don’t like Flodberg’s painting: his colors are dull and dark in comparison. But I think they perfectly capture many a day I’ve driven along stretches of the 401. Some of those days were mundane, and some were magical. They all get stirred up in my imagination when I take time to look at the work above. A great work, I believe.
I don’t think I would have come across this work if it wasn’t for twitter. Nor would have thought about it deeply if it weren’t for the comments people tweeted. Twitter has many flaws, but there are times when it does things no other site does. I am grateful for that
For more on the work of Flodberg, you can check out his site, here: Chris Flodberg – artist
I walked along Queen West and West Queen West recently. The bones of the neighborhood that I first walked around in the 80s remain. Places like The Queen Mother, Peter Pan, the Rex, and the Horseshoe are still going strong. The Rivoli is there too, if anything fancier than ever. Same for Cameron House. It was comforting to see them all, like old friends at a reunion.
Of course many other places have long gone. The Bamboo Club for instance. It’s location is occupied with some other business, though what occupies it is not as great as it was. Also long gone is Pages. It was a must visit on those trips to Queen West long ago. Now nothing exists in its former spot, just a vacant store.
I don’t want to weep and wail too much about changes to Queen West of my youth. People have been complaining about the its transformation “into the brand-saturated retail corridor it is today” since at least 2010, if not earlier. I do want to note something ironic though. The same brands that transformed Queen West, brands like “The Gap, GUESS, Le Chateau, RYU, EB Games, NYX, several major fast food joints” have all left in the past five years because of rent. Perhaps in five more years it will just be banks and dentists offices there.
As for me, I prefer West Queen West to Queen West now. I’m happiest taking a streetcar past Bathurst and heading over to Type Books, the Spice Trader, Cocktail Emporium, the Swan and Trinity Bellwoods Park. When you combine that strip with Ossington and parts of Dundas West, you really have some of the best of Toronto, I think, and the places I most frequent lately.
Queen West will always be a destination for many and I will no doubt head there from time to time. But there are so many other great places to head to, even on Queen, and that’s great too.
P.S. The quotes above were from this piece on the closing of H&M on Queen West. The photo of the Queen Mother is from that piece, which is a good review of the place and its history. Also a good review is the Wikipedia entry for Queen West, which includes the entire street, but has a special section on Queen West.
Finally, here’s a great snapshot of Queen West in 1986, as captured in this video of the song “I’m an Adult Now” by The Pursuit of Happiness. Needless to say, it’s a very different street!
Michael Snow died last week. It’s hard to think of an artist whose work is as well known and as well photographed as his. Even people who know nothing about art have likely seen his sculpture at the Skydome, not to mention his Canadian Geese sculpture at the Eaton Center. His work is spread throughout the city of Toronto, and the city would lose some of its luster without his creations.
Of course you can read about his life and career in wikipedia, but I also recommend taking some time and read this: Michael Snow, Prolific and Playful Artistic Polymath, Is Dead at 94 in The New York Times. The Times piece has more on his role as a filmmaker and how influential he was there.
R.I.P. Michael Snow.
(Top image is from Wikipedia: bottom image is from the New York Times. Attribution for the Wikipedia image here)
It seems weird to think there are trends when it comes to fearing technology. But thinking about it, there seems to be. For awhile my sources of information kept providing me stories of how fearful robots were. Recently that has shifted, and the focus moved to how fearful AI is. Fearing robots is no longer trendy.
Well, trendy or not, here are some stories about robots that have had people concerned. If you have any energy left from being fearful of AI, I recommend them. 🙂
The fact that a city is even contemplating this is worrying: San Francisco Supervisors Vote To Allow Killer Robots. Relatedly, Boston Dynamics pledges not to weaponize its robots.
Not that robots need weapons to be dangerous, as this showed: chess robot breaks childs finger russia tournament. I mean who worries about a “chess robot”??
Robots can harm in other ways, as this story on training robots to be racist and sexist showed.
Ok, not all the robot stories were frightening. These three are more just of interest:
This was a good story on sewer pipe inspection that uses cable-tethered robots. I approve this use of robots, though there are some limitations.
I am not quite a fan of this development: Your Next Airport Meal May Be Delivered By Robot. I can just see these getting in the way and making airports that much harder to get around.
Finally, here’s a 327 Square Foot Apartment With 5 Rooms Thanks to Robot Furniture. Robot furniture: what will they think of next?
(Image is of the sewer pipe inspection robot.)
According to CreativeReview.co.uk…
the best movie posters of the year once again demonstrates a wonderful array of traditional techniques and styles – photography, painting, collage – and a refusal to homogenise into any singular form. One pleasing commonality: as yet, the world of film poster design has resisted any incursion from AI-generated art. Whether their creation was through physical or digital means, by one hand or many, each of them is a product of human creativity.
I thought the AI reference was noteworthy. More noteworthy are the posters themselves. You can find them, here: Movie posters of the year 2022.
Long ago, twitter was interesting for many reasons. One reason was people trying to be creative within the 140 character limit. Or to link things seemingly unrelated with hashtags. Weird twitter, as some called it, was good twitter.
Between 2013 and 2015 I did this for awhile. I created a series of tweets based on an imaginary dialog between two people that stuck to a certain format and came with the hashtab #hssr (he said, she replied).
You can still find them on twitter, here. I just came across them in a folder I had in Evernote. (I had a service (IFTTT) save them.)
Who knows if they will be still on twitter a year from now? So here are most of them, as a backup. It was good to be on twitter then and I enjoyed contributing to it. I rarely feel that way now, and I hardly act creatively any more when I tweet.
That aside, here are my “he said, she replied” tweets:
I believe drawing is underrated. One of my favorite painters, Francis Bacon, was one of many who was dismissive of it. If you are one of those people, I have some links for you.
First off, Modern Met has this: 10 Artists Who Were Masters of Drawing, From Leonardo da Vinci to Pablo Picasso. While they are known for more than their drawings, their works of pen and pencil are inspiring.
More great drawing (to me) can be found here: Moore drawings of coal miners during wartime. You can see one of them above.
Finally, here’s a fine drawing by Van Gogh to serve as an inspiration and a reminder of how great drawing can be: Landscape in Stormy Weather 1885.
Seeing all these images makes me want to draw again. (This was an especially good link, as I have been enjoying drawing with charcoal: everything You Need to Know About Drawing (a nude/figure drawing) With Charcoal.) I hope you are inspired as well.
If something cost $1 in the 1980s — or the 1990s, or 2000, etc — what does it cost now?
I used to use a calculate this by using a rough 1:3 ratio in terms of 1980s dollars:today’s dollars, but there is a better way. You can go to the site in2013dollars.com and enter your information and it will spit out an answer. For example, what cost $1 in 1980 would cost $3.62 today, according to this: $1 in 1980 → 2023 | Inflation Calculator
I used that site because I was reading that in the early 80s Jim Jarmusch had an apartment in Manhattan that cost $170 a month. I wondered: what would that cost now? Well according to the site above, in 2023 that same place should cost $615. Of course the idea that ANYPLACE in Manhattan cost $615/month is hilarious. But you get the idea. 🙂
Sure, you could go out and get a new puffer coat. I get it: they’re warm, they’re lightweight, everyone else has one, you like looking like a marshmellow…:)
Seriously, puffer coats are….fine. But if you want to get a warm winter coat, you want to listen to me and Jeremy Scott. If your problem is lacking a winter coat…
The solution, said Jeremy Scott, creative director of Moschino, is “a sleek ankle-length greatcoat” — most notably the sort once favored by the military, looking to keep the cold out during periods of long exposure. The key to trapping in heat, he added, is choosing a double-breasted style.
There you have it. Get a great coat. You’ll be warm and stylish and sleek and timeless. You’ll look — dare I say it? — great.
For more on this, see this piece in the nytimes.com. For more on the great coat, see wikipedia. (Image above is also wikipedia: Stalin wears a great coat, while Churchill wears a British warm coat which is shorter than a great coat and not to be confused with a pea coat which is shorter still).
P.S. If you must get a puffer coat, consider this one: the Vollebak Indestructible Puffer. According to Uncrate:
Vollebak has taken the puffer jacket — traditionally one of the weakest and most delicate pieces of clothing you can buy – and rebuilt it from the strongest fibre known today. Dyneema Black is 15x stronger than steel, which is why it’s used in body armour and anti-ballistic vehicle armour.
If you are going to wear a puffer, be cool. And warm.
I was reviewing my logs and journals for 2022 just now. I was happily reminded of the good times I had as well as the difficult moments I had to deal with last year. I’m glad I took the time to record all that.
If you can, I recommend you do the same. Reading about your good times can make you feel good about your life. And reading about the difficulties you had to deal with can make you appreciate how well you deal with things.
Writing about good times is fairly easy. Writing about difficult times is not. To log my difficult moments, I phrase them in the way of praise. So instead of writing something like:
Absolute disaster at work this week. I hate my project!
I’ll write:
kudos for dealing well with the difficulties at work this week by persevering and staying calm
I find phrasing it that way helps to read about it later. (This is my approach: you may be fine with going with the first approach.) It also reminds my brain that I can deal with similar difficulties in the future.
Be prolific if you can. Note simple observations. Consider all your senses. Write down many good memories and good feelings you had throughout the year. It’s easy to forget about them, but like snapshots, just reading them will bring back vividly thoughts and emotions you want to recall years from now.
Log them using the media best suited for you. You might covet one of those One Line a Day journals. You might like scribbling in a plain notebook. Some people might default to their smartphone and social media to log things. (I find Instagram is good with that….Twitter…not so much.)
I depend on a little program I wrote called easylog that I use to record things. It stores the information both in a local XLSX spreadsheet and a Google spreadsheet. Of course there are countless ways you can log or journal, but that suits me. It takes me a few minutes every day…no time at all, really.
Good luck. I wish you fond memories of 2023.
P.S. This post was inspired by posts from bloggers I admire:
Austin Kleon in particular is a master at logging things. You might not want to do it to the extent he does (at first), so start with just a line or two. You’ll be glad in 6 months, a year, two years from now when you get to re-read them.
I was almost inspired to write my own wonderful things in 2022 in a blog post, but I am trying to focus my social media content to things that benefit people vs things about myself. My goal is to have a ratio closer to 80:20 or even 90:10 (posts benefitting people: posts about myself). Let’s see.
Smart People I Know 
