Author: smartpeopleiknow

My guide on how to use Michelin Guides to causally dine

You may think of Michelin guides in terms of deciding the best places to dine in a particular city or place. That is one way to think of them. If you aim to eat in the finest of establishments, their guides to 2 and 3 star restaurants can help you there.

On the other hand, if you want have a relaxing meal that doesn’t cost too much, you can still use their guides. Here’s two ways to do that:

  1. Go to restaurants with Bib Gourmand awards. As Michelin says, these are places with good quality, good value cooking. That’s how I ended up eating recently at Bao in London. It was delicious and super inexpensive. Same goes for Brutto, which I stopped at on my previous visit. If you were visiting Toronto, you would do well to eat at such places as Sunny’s Chinese or Bar Raval, all places with Bib Gourmands. Same goes for Russ and Daughters and Katz’s in New York, to name just a few more places.
  2. Go with restaurants with a price point rating of $ or $$. You likely won’t get fancy tablecloths or candlelight, but you will get really good food. Two examples of that in Toronto are PAI and CÀ PHÊ RANG, while in New York you get great meals at place like Via Carota and Momofuku Noodle Bar. Are you in London? Check out Barrafina or the Pig and Butcher.

Now, you can still causally dine in places that don’t meet the criteria above. I had a fantastic meal at Parcelles in Paris, but it is €€€, even though it feels casual there. Likewise I love St. JOHN in London, and it too feels like a casual place, but again, it is £££. But over all my guide holds, especially if you have no idea how to proceed and you don’t want to spend too much while still eating well.

Michelin is not the be all and end of all of where to dine in a city. Anyone who knows a city well can tell you that they pass over places that should be included, and underrate places you should check out. But you would do well to lean into their guides if you are aiming to eat well and eat causally in a city.

Three good lists to help you dine well in Paris (plus some other good sources)


It can be overwhelming trying to decide where to eat in Paris. You need a guide. Here’s some I recently used for a trip to Paris that I found were very helpful.

First up, I highly recommend David Lebovitz’s list of favorite Paris restaurants, not just for the list itself, but for the many tips to dining out in Paris at the end of the list. (He also has this older link, but it’s very old.)

We also took advantage Alison Roman’s list of places she hit up in Paris, although you may need to be a subscriber to see it. She is a big fan of the many great wine bars in Paris, as well as places like Les Enfants du Marché.

If you have to choose one source, then of course you want to go with Michelin, which obviously is a great guide for dining in Paris.  There are literally hundreds of restaurants you can choose from at all price points. There’s really no excuse to dine poorly with so many options.

To all those I would add Laura Calder, who is living in Paris now. Check out her substack to see where she has been in Paris. Years ago I asked her for advice on dining in that city and she pointed me to David Lebovitz. Now I do the same for you.

Before I forget, consider checking out the New York Times: do a search for “Paris”. I heard about Parcelles through this piece on Paris bistros and I knew I had to go.

As for the places we ate on our last trip, here’s my list of places we had good dinners:

The first three were three different sort of bistros, which I love. And the last two were bars with more casual fare.

For lunch we had lovely avocado toast sandwich with egg and watercress at Used Book Cafe in the Marais: highly recommend that spot. Another day we grabbed a jambon beurre from Caractère de Cochon and ate in while sitting in a park. Lovely.

Good desks, great home offices

If you want ideas on desks and home offices, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve written about them a lot over the many years I’ve had my blog. To see what I mean, click here. What can I say: other than your bed, your desk is the piece of furniture you use the most. You might as well have a good one. I felt that way during the pandemic, but it is no less true even as people RTO (return to the office).

If you need more inspiration on good desks and good workstations, check out this piece in the New York Times on their favourite home offices. You’ll find plenty of inspiring places to work with great desks at the center of them.

(Images via links to the New York Times piece.)

How to think about being happy and how to be happier

If you are like many people, you might wonder: am I happy? How can I be happy? Why am I not happy? What does it mean to be happy? It is a problematic term, happiness.

Perhaps we have problems with the idea of happiness because it varies from one person to the next. One person might be happy travelling the world, while another is happiest staying at home.  I could be happy being alone on a porch in a rainstorm: you could be happy at a big noisy party. It truly depends on the individual.

That said, if you are struggling with the uncertainty of knowing how to be happy, consider pursuing feelings associated with happiness. I find it is easier to be certain when it comes to feeling content, satisfied, pleased, delighted, joyful, amused, relaxed, calm or cheerful. Happiness is a rainbow of feelings, are all those positive feelings are a part of that rainbow.

Likewise, you may not know how you are feeling at the moment, but you may be able to firmly say you do not feel sad, angry, hungry, tired, or stressed. The absence of those unhappy feelings means you are closer to happiness than when you are experiencing them.

If your days are filled with hours of  contentment and calm and occasional moments of excitement and euphoria, it’s safe to say your days are also filled with happiness. If that does not describe your life, aim to do things and think thoughts that lead to more of those feelings. You’ll be glad you did. Dare I say, you’ll be happy.

 

 

New analog cameras in a digital world

It feels odd to write about analog cameras these days. They seem old fashioned and out of date to someone like me. Perhaps that’s why young people embrace them. If you too would like to embrace them (or at least know more about them), Yanko Design has two recent articles you might want to check out:

  1. a translucent analog camera (very 90s)
  2. a tiny retro camera from Kodak

Kodak even has a translucent one in their mix, because why not.

Do they take good photos? I guess “good” is in the eye of the beholder/photographer. Still, worth a look.

When Vienna was the center of the world, and Cafe Central was the center of Vienna

Every so often someone discovers the significance of Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. It happened recently when Jason Kottke reposted this link of a map that showed many key figures of the century all living in one place at one time. Not only did they all live in the same city from 1913 to 1914, many of them went to the same place: Cafe Central. As wikipedia notes, at one time the regulars of the cafe included: “Peter Altenberg, Theodor Herzl, Alfred Adler, Egon Friedell, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Anton Kuh, Adolf Loos, Leo Perutz, Robert Musil, Stefan Zweig, Alfred Polgar, Adolf Hitler and Leon Trotsky. In January 1913 alone, Josip Broz Tito, Sigmund Freud, and Stalin were patrons of the establishment.” Not many places can claim such a world changing clientele.

Wikipedia also has my favorite anecdote about the cafe: “A well known story is that when Victor Adler objected to Count Berchtold, foreign minister of Austria-Hungary, that war would provoke revolution in Russia, even if not in the Habsburg monarchy, he replied: “And who will lead this revolution? Perhaps Mr. Bronstein (Leon Trotsky) sitting over there at the Cafe Central?”

While neither Vienna or the Cafe has maintained the same prominence since, both are still great places to visit now.  Go grab a kaffee mit schlag there when you can.

No one is safe from eviction, not even the rich and famous

Nothing is permanent in life. Ask Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten Windsor). Not only has he been stripped of his titles, but he has also been evicted from his residence, Royal Lodge. At least he has a place to go: who knows what will happen to his former wife, Sarah Ferguson, who also lived at the Lodge.

This reminds me of a recent story I read about other rich and famous people living at the grand Pierre Hotel in New York City. They too could soon be forced to move out due to the machinations of Howard Lutnick, no less.

There’s a cautionary tale for us all in these stories of the rich and famous: no matter how long or how settled you are in where you reside, you too could be forced to move under the right or wrong conditions. Not even wealth or fame can prevent it. Best to choose to live lightly. (Easier said than done, I know.)

P.S. For more on Andrew, see this. For a long and detailed story of the shenanigans happening at the Pierre, read this.

Is there any cocktail abused more than the martini?

It must be the glass, because no cocktail is abused more than the martini. If you make up a cocktail and put it in an old fashioned/whisky glass or even a Nick and Nora glass, it will only get so much attention. But that changes when you put it in a martini glass. Suddenly you have the drink du jour.

I thought of that when I read this in the New York Times: How Much Dirtier Can the Dirty Martini Get? I am not a fan of a dirty martini or really any drink with “-tini” added to the end of it. Ugh. I’ve had enough dirty martinis to know that they are a terrible drink. I honestly am happy to let people drink whatever concoction a bartender can make, but I draw the line at those.

As for me, I’d recommend a straightforward wet martini. Other slight variations of that are fine, including the 50/50 martini  and even a freezer martini. But dirty martinis? No thanks.

A simple trick to keep up with pop music culture as you get older

A simple trick to keep up with pop music culture as you get older is to use Spotify Stats. Simply go to Spotify’s Top 100 artists and look for this: their monthly listener stats equals their peak listener stats. If you see that and you don’t recognize who they are, chances are they are an upcoming band/performer. Go learn about them: you are now cool again! 🙂

There is a chance that you will see a well known artist will also have their monthly listener stats equal to their peak listener stats. For example I recently saw Michael Jackson and Lana del Rey do this. I googled them both and found out that Lana del Rey has lots going on (new record, maybe doing James Bond), so it’s not surprising that her numbers are spiking. As for Michael Jackson? Think Halloween.

P.S. This is not serious advice, but it is not totally wrong either. 🙂

On Churchill’s Daily Alcohol Consumption

It’s no secret that Churchill drank a lot of alcohol, both daily and in his lifetime. Based on recent social media videos where young men try to drink like Churchill for a day, I think the latest generation is learning about it.

Despite some Churchill supporters downplaying his consumption, he was an epic drinker. He drank continually throughout the day, from watery scotches in the morning to snifters of cognac at night. A typical day looked like this (according to his supporters no less):

(1) Several whisky and sodas (less than an ounce of whisky) around 11am, teatime and bedtime and occasionally one other during the evening. (He never drank whisky neat.)

(2) An imperial pint (20 oz.) of champagne or wine at a 1pm lunch followed by a brandy, also likely an ounce.

(3) An imperial pint of champagne or wine at dinner followed by a brandy.

This translates into approximately six glasses (1½ 750 ml. bottles) of champagne or wine daily along with 5 to 6 ounces of whisky or brandy spread over a 12 to 15 hour period.

Whew.

It took years and years for Churchill to develop a tolerance for that much alcohol consumption: it’s not surprising that young men who experiment with drinking that much in a day fail to accomplish it. I wouldn’t recommend that for anyone.

P.S. For more on people trying to drink like Churchill, see this. For more on Churchill and his lifestyle, I highly recommend No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money by David Lough. I also recommend that piece from his supporters, The Myth of Churchill and Alcohol: A Distortion of the Record. It’s remarkable the lengths they go to downplay his drinking.

On the recent AWS outage of October 2025

Looks like AWS just published their post-mortem of their big outage this week: you can find it here.

For a lay person, this explanation might suffice.

CNN also has a good synopsis that includes other recent major outages and asks: why does this keep happening?

I think it is safe to say that we will see more of these major outages in this decade. So keep good backups, among other precautions. 🙂

McRib lovers! Here’s how you can have a McRib any time

If you are a McRib lover like me, you know how hard it is to get the McRib. Really really hard. Heck, people have built websites just to track them worldwide! And even when they do show up — finally! —  it’s for a limited time. What’s a person to do if you want to eat them more frequently?

I have a simple suggestion. First, get yourself some pickles, some chopped raw onions, and a sub bun like the one for the McRib (pictures are everywhere on the Internet if you need a reference). Then go to your national grocer (e.g., Loblaws, or my choice Walmart) and look for a box of BBQ pork back ribs. Cook the ribs as recommended on the box. Then take them out of the oven and while it is cooling a bit, assemble your sandwich. For the ribs, chop the meat off the bone and add it to the rest of the sandwich. Voila! You have a very good McRib like sandwich! You might be skeptical, but honestly you’ll feel like you’re sitting in your local McDonald’s eating one of their  McRib sandwiches.

I have not tried it with various boxed BBQ ribs, but Walmart’s Great Value Barbecue Pork Back Ribs resemble the saucy pork meat in the McRib to a very high degree. I say this as someone who has been eating McRibs for years and years. And even if it doesn’t quite match your expectations, you get a good tradeoff in that you can have these every day if you want.

Give it a try. Anytime you want. You’ll be glad you did.

P.S. For more on my McRib writing — hey, I love them! — check these out.

P.S.S. Obviously you need the Barbecue Pork Back Ribs, and not other kinds like the Honey Garlic Ribs if you want to make a sandwich like the McRib. But you could make some pretty amazing sandwiches by playing around with the ingredients and the flavoring of the ribs. Honey Garlic ribs on a bun with cilantro, pickled veg and hot sauce could make something like a bahn mi sandwich. Or the BBQ ribs with ham and pickles and swiss cheese and mustard could make something like a Cuban. Really so many ways to make a great sandwich with these ribs on a bun.

On my recent vibe coding experiences building a web site and a spotify app using Copilot and Claude, October 2025. Here’s what I did and what I learned.

Computer and code

I recently took a vibe coding approach to try and do two things:

  1. build a simple web site / blog using Microsoft Copilot
  2. write an app to extract information from Spotify using Claude from Anthropic.

Why? For some time I had these two projects in mind:

  1. Go back to the days when a blog — web log — was nothing more than a simple html page.
  2. Programatically built Spotify music playlists vs doing it in the Spotify app.

My main constraint was do it quickly: it was meant to be fun. So don’t spend all weekend getting up to speed on APIs and HTML and CSS: just see what I could do aided by A.I.

First up, to build the web site, I started with Microsoft’s A.I. Since I had some requirements of what I wanted the web log to look like, I told them to Copilot and had it built me the one page blog web site. It helps to be clear on your requirements, but I found that I only needed a few of them to start with. As I went along, new requirements would come to me (e.g. the ability to add photos from the Internet) and I would tell Copilot to now incorporate these new requirements and give me a new web site. My experience vibe coding is that there is a lot of back and forth in order to be effective. As well, there were things that I could just manually do by hand, like add a background tile and change the picture on the header, so I eventually I bailed on using Copilot and finished it by hand. You can see the result here. It’s just what I wanted.

What makes things better was that I asked Copilot to write me a python program which would allow me to easily add to the blog and then push it to AWS. That was a great new addition. Now I can just enter a line on the command line and the blog gets updated.

All in all a very successful project.

As for my Second project with Spotify, I switched from Microsoft to Anthropic. At first Claude produced great code: I asked it to build me a UI that allowed me to type in the name of three songs and then take these songs, use Spotify to build me a playlist built around those songs and lo and behold it did. Things went downhill from there. Much of the code, while long, had numerous errors. I would provide the errors to Claude and it would correct things. The code did get better, but after 30 versions, it was time to call it quits. Instead I took small chunks of the code and using VS Code, manually tried to determine why it was not working. I was able to ultimately nail it down to one Spotify API call. And why wasn’t it working? Because Spotify disabled access to it in 2024. Did Claude know that? I don’t know. It certainly didn’t act like it.

All in all a very unsuccessful project.

What did I learn for this? What would I recommend to you?

  • I have been most successful vibe coding when I get the AI to code in small chunks. Give it small requirements and see if it can successfully do them. Then build up the chunks. That was the case in Copilot. With Claude I took the big bang approach, and then spent lots of time debugging. Eventually to discover the problem, I went to the small chunk approach manually.
  • A.I. is great for grunt level coding. Writing python code to loop through input and extract data under complicated conditions is something I hate to do. A.I. does it better and quicker than me. Again, it’s like using a mixer in the kitchen instead of your arm. It’s impressive to do things with your arm, but the mixer is fine.
  • A.I. is great for fussy coding. One thing I like about coding HTML and CSS using A.I. is I do not have to remember how to get the divs done and which CSS code I do for certain colors, etc. I just tell the A.I. and it does it.
  • A.I. has replaced my templates. I used to have a fair amount of code templates, and when I would start a project, I would get out a good template. When I didn’t have a template, I would often times spend hours going through old code trying to find an example to use as a template. Now I just get A.I. to give it to me.
  • Know when to bail on using A.I. and start doing the work yourself. I think of A.I. as a power tool: it let’s you do things fast, but for the detail work, you need to get in there with the hand tools and do things manually.
  • Make LOTS of backups. Backup your prompts too if you can. I have gone down a certain path in vibe coding, forget to do a backup, and it’s been a mess. As well, at times the A.I. will start to produce bad code. If you version control things, you can go back to a copy from an hour ago that did work and start again.
  • Most LLMs do a pretty good job of coding. I’d recommend Copilot because it is easy: it’s integrated into my Microsoft tools. The results from Claude were good too. I suspect as things advance, the code that comes out of all of them will get better and better.
  • I am not afraid of forgetting how to program in python or html any more than I was afraid of forgetting how to program in assembler when I moved on to C. Os using SQL to work with data rather than hand coding PL/1 code to do things. Or using Java and JDBC. The goal for me is to get my results via some form of coding, and if I can achieve that faster with a higher level of code combined with greater abstraction, I am fine with that.
  • The better you already are at coding, the better your chances of success. I have never had A.I. completely build my code. I get to 80-90%, then do the rest by hand. I am fine with that: I literally save hours every time I do this vs my old approach of using templates and old source code. If you have to depend on A.I. to do 100% of the coding, I suspect you will have more chances of failure. Also, if the code runs successfully with some inputs but fails with other inputs, having debugging skills will make a difference.
  • YMMV. These are my experiences based on these projects. Your experience using A.I. to assist with coding your project may be wildly different than mine. I do hope you have a good/better experience.

Thanks for reading this. I hope it helps.

P.S. When I talk of vibe coding, I am using the definition used by my current employer. The opinions expressed above are mine only and not necessarily those of my employer.

 

If your playlists are getting stale and your listening habits are diminishing….


If your playlists are getting stale and your listening habits are diminishing, it’s time for some new things to listen to. Perhaps listening to the best independent and community radio stations in the US could help. If you agree, check out LDial.

Besides being a great source of independent listening pleasure, it’s also a really good web site. Check it out.

P.S. The author of the site writes about the design, here. Smart stuff.

How AI created a new Time Zone for Cape Breton, and other stories of out East

I like to collect stories of where I was born and raised and the surrounding areas, which in this case is Cape Breton, a very special place. Perhaps not as special as Newfoundland, which has it’s own time zone. Or maybe it is as special as Newfoundland. Turns out when you ask Google if Cape Breton has it’s own time zone, it thinks it does! More on that story, here: No, Meta and Google, Cape Breton doesn’t have its own time zone.

Cape Breton may not have it’s own time zone, but it does have it’s own university. Alas, Cape Breton University faces budget cuts up to $20M due to international student cap. That’s grim.

There’s housing crises everywhere these days, and Nova Scotia is no exception. Reading these two statistics from Stats Canada, 1) 3 in 10 residential property buyers in N.S. were investors in 2018-2020: StatsCan and 2) More than 65% of Nova Scotians experienced a housing challenge in the past year: StatsCan, I am reminded that one of the things driving up the cost of housing is investors, which makes it hard for the less well off to afford homes.  The fact that the NSLC has seen a 55% increase in thefts compared to last year tells me also that people are struggling financially in my home province.

Speaking of Maritime crime of a different kind, Bell says a subsea cable from Cape Breton to Newfoundland was deliberately cut — twice. This is the type of Maritime crime story that can only occur in that part of Canada: Father and son face charges in southwest N.S. lobster-buying intimidation case.

I found this story made me laugh and also shake my head: Changes to Glace Bay street will create more downtown parking, says councillor. There is a massive free parking lot behind the shops in downtown Glace Bay. The fact that some people think somehow that street parking will somehow cause people to suddenly shop more is bonkers to me.

In better news, this great maritime TV show has just celebrated 60 Years of being on the air. Yes, I speak of Land & Sea. I love that show.

The great Nova Scotia artist Tom Forrestall died recently at age 88. R.I.P, Tom.

Finally, this was a story about Cape Breton I did not know about: When Japanese vehicles were assembled in Cape Breton.

My dream of working from home started with this ad for IBM and Coppola’s Thinkpad (publish those visions you have)

The computer above, and the ad it is, came out in the mid 90s.

It was possible to work from home then, but it was not easy. I used to have a luggable computer that weighed 40 pounds and which I would …lug… home every day one summer to work from home. What I dreamed for, though, was to work from home with a small laptop like Coppola’s. A laptop where I could work from home daily, be it at a desk or in a beautiful kitchen like the one above.

It eventually happened. The laptops got better, the networks got better, and eventually the work cultures got better and I could do this. My kitchen wasn’t as nice, but everything else was nice.

Creative people, keep putting out your visions for a better world. You never know what dreams people will have. It might be as simple as a dream of working on a laptop in a kitchen. A dream that becomes more achievable once people can envision it.

How to get started with High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) by building your own customized workout courtesy of me and the New York Times

You can find lots of evidence of how HIIT is good for you. Here, for example, which is where the diagram comes from. Or you can search on “HIIT benefits” and find countless examples of how it works and how it helps.

Even if you are convinced (or even curious) about achieving those benefits by doing HIIT, you may be put off by some of the training routines you find online. (I know I was….too difficult, I thought.)

Well, be put off no more. Instead, go to this gift link for the New York Times and learn how you can build your own achievable HIIT routine.

Some of the benefits of building your own routine are:

  • you can pick exercises that focus on certain areas (e.g. your core)
  • you can avoid exercises that might not be suitable for you or that you might hate (e.g. burpees)
  • there are enough different exercises that you should have no problem in putting together your own HIIT routine.
  • You can pick different ways of going hard and taking a break.

Sounds good? I think so. Next step: go to the gift link and find out more.

The Bitter Southerner has the apparel for the times we live in


I’ve written about The Bitter Southerner before and the wonderful apparel they sell. The t shirts I mentioned then were mostly about food. While I love those shirts, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention their political apparel line too. You can find it, here.

While I may disagree on the idea that everything is political — I wrote about that, here — I do support the message on most of their shirts. Go check them out (and the rest of their merchandise as well).

Remember:

On reducing the idea of wellness down to 3 or 4 principles

On Bluesky someone asked the question:

If you had to reduce your own idea of wellness down to just 3 or 4 principles, what would they be?

One person answered:

1. Stretch 2. Drink Water 3. Squats

A good list.

I had a meta list:

1. Make a list of things that make you feel unwell. 2.List the opposite of those things. 3.Do more of 2 and less of 1.

I think wellness is not necessarily the equivalent of fitness. So you may exercise a lot, but if you may find that not sleeping enough, not resting enough, and too much work is making you feel unwell. If so, I think your wellness list should be: sleep more, get more rest, cut back on work. I’d still recommend you stay fit, but to move from being fit to being well, you need to do more than exercise.

 

The arts on Wednesday: from VanGogh to Roz Chast, with some Morandi mixed in

I’m always collecting essays and otherwise on artists, and this last three months was no exception. For instance:

 

On Palestine and Poland


When I read this story, Western recognition won’t change the reality on the ground: A Palestinian state has never seemed further away, I could not help but think of Poland. In the 19th century a Polish state also seemed far away, as you can see in this story: When Poland Was Nowhere: Foreigners Reflect on the Partitions & a Stateless Nation. It starts off by saying:

At the end of the 18th century, the Polish state, having been partitioned by neighbouring empires, was erased from the political map of Europe. Poland, as one French playwright would later put it, was ‘virtually nowhere’. And yet this did not mean that Poland and Poles would disappear from the political agendas and minds of members of the elite in Europe and elsewhere.

We can never know how history will turn. Maybe Palestine too will be ‘virtually nowhere’. I have my doubts that it will be, just like the Poles of the 19th century — my ancestors — had their doubts. Predicting the future of states is a fool’s game, and history never repeats. But anyone who thinks Palestine might as well be “a country on the moon”** should reconsider their statement in light of what happened to Poland as it went from the 19th to the 20th century.

** “With respect to us, Poland might be, in fact, considered as a country in the moon.” – Edmund Burke.

Just because you don’t want to see poverty, doesn’t mean it has gone away

It is easy to forget the poor. When you have enough of your own problems, or when other world problems loom large, the problem of the homeless and destitute tend to fall out of focus. So it’s understandable that people’a attention goes elsewhere. I’d like to bring your attention back to it for a moment with this post with links to stories on it. Thanks for taking the time to do so.

Restaurants loved and living: Côte de Boeuf


I love casual French restaurants. And my favourite thing to order in causal French restaurants is steak frites. That’s why  Côte De Boeuf is one of my Loved and Living restaurants. Ever since I left the sidewalks of Ossington Street to step inside, I’ve been a huge fan. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve been there since that first time many years ago.

It’s a perfect little restaurant/grocer. You can stop and just purchase some of the beautiful meats they have in the window. During the pandemic, I would at least do that. But my preference is to go and grab one of their tiny tables along the wall with barely enough room for a plate and a glass and a single votive.

And what good plates and glasses of wines they have! While they do many things well, from oyster to charc’ to dessert,  I cannot resist ordering their steak frites. The fries are wonderfully prepared, and their steak is top notch.  Even when their steak prices leapt up, I still kept going, it was that good and worth the trip. Their wines? French, of course, and a perfect accompaniment for any thing you order.

If I lived nearby I’d go once a week. Alas, in recent years I have not  gone at all, due to it being overwhelmed with guests. Even in summer when they have a patio, it can take a long time to get in, if you can get in at all. And no they don’t have reservations. There’s nothing causal about that, I am sad to say.

This week my sadness turned to delight when I heard that they are creating a sister restaurant in my favorite neighbourhood in Toronto, the Annex. Even better, they’ll be taking over the space left by the closing of the By the Way cafe. That means more seating and more chances for me to go. I don’t think it will be once a week, but it will be with some frequency, that’s for sure.

Here’s hoping the new sister restaurant will be open come December. I can’t wait to go, no matter how big or small their table tops are. All I need is enough room from a plate, a glass, and a single votive.

"Steak

On Crémant, a great wine that’s terribly under-appreciated

Sure you can celebrate with a bottle of champagne. Or you can pop open some cava or prosecco if you want some every day bubbles. But if you want something in between that’s well priced and delicious, you want a bottle of Crémant. As Food & Wine notes:

Crémant has the unique distinction of being both deeply appreciated by many wine professionals, yet stubbornly under the radar among most consumers. Among the most delicious — and deliciously versatile — sparkling wines in the world, Crémant remains somewhat of a mystery.

In terms of how it compares to champagne and prosecco, F&W says:

At its core, Crémant is a category of French sparkling wines that are produced using the same traditional method as Champagne, yet from other regions, and often leaning on grapes other than the Big Three of the world’s most famous bubbly (Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier)….

Because of the range of terroirs and climates in which Crémants are produced, as well as the different grape varieties, the category represents a wide range of styles and expressions. Still, they are all tied together by their method of production, which involves a secondary fermentation taking place in the bottle — as opposed to in a pressurized tank, as is the case in the Charmat method most famously employed for Prosecco — in order to convert the still wine into sparkling. This lends depth and complexity to the wine, as well as pastry and bakery-like notes from the extended contact with the yeast, which the law stipulates has to occur for a minimum of nine months prior to disgorgement, or clearing the individual bottles of that spent yeast.

If you are shopping around and wonder what makes a Crémant from the Loire different than say one from Alsace:

The main ones you’re likely to see on the market are Crémant d’Alsace (often made from Pinot Blanc or Pinot Gris, and sometimes a grape called Auxerrois, in addition to Pinot Noir and Riesling); Crémant de Bourgogne (Pinot Noir, Gamay); Crémant de Loire (Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, and even, unexpectedly, Cabernet Franc); and Crémant de Limoux (Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay, and a local variety called Mauzac). Crémants are also produced in Bordeaux, the Rhône Valley (called Crémant de Die), Jura, and Savoie. There are eight total AOCs in France for Crémant production.

We are fortunate to have over a 100 different kinds of Crémant here in Ontario, including one of my favs, Bailly Lapierre Réserve Brut Crémant de Bourgogne. Next time you are in the LCBO, check both the main section and the Vintages section: in a large enough store, there should be at least a few products in both section. Make sure it has the word “Crémant” on the bottle, since some French sparkling wine is neither Crémant nor Champagne and often not that great. However I have yet to find a bottle of Crémant I did not like in all my years of drinking it here in Canada.

Here’s to more people knowing and drinking one of the best value wines France has to offer. Cheers!

P.S. The golden age for Crémant in Ontario was during the pandemic. I am not sure if the French wine makers were dumping it on the market, but there was a tremendously great selection of the stuff during that time. There’s still a good selection, but the selection at that time was great. Much of the pandemic was like a dark cloud: the abundance of Crémant was a silver lining.

On the disturbing subject matter of Francis Bacon’s paintings


People are often struck by the imagery in Francis Bacon’s paintings. What could make someone paint such horrible things, I often see people ask.

The answer to their question is simple and can be found here at this page on the website for the Hugh Lane Gallery:

During the Second World War he volunteered to serve in the Civil Defence Corps, where his work involved black-out enforcement as well as assisting with first-aid and rescue at bomb sites. Responding to some people’s reaction to his work being disturbing, Bacon remarked that his work was no more disturbing than life itself.

No doubt being a first responder to victims of bomb blasts would have left Bacon with terrible images searing his brain. No wonder he painted the way he did.

P.S. I thought of this reading some of the posts that the web site Open Culture has on Bacon, here and here and here.

Towering Toronto (my semi-annual update on Hogtown, September 2025 edition)

Since my last newsletter on Toronto, here’s what new and caught my attention in the city with the CN tower (and Skydome):

Politics/getting around: the battle of the Bike Lanes continues on. After an Ontario court struck down the premier’s plan to rip up the bike lanes, he’s stormed off and took it up with the Supreme Court. I am a supporter of the bike lanes, but even if I was not, I don’t think this is the best use of the government’s time or other resources. Let’s see in 6 months if this battle has subsided.

In transit news, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT which was supposed to be open in September? Yeah, that’s not happening. despite the TTC taking control of it the LRT from Metrolinx. At this point I’m just going to assume it’s never going to occur. And even when it does happen, my neighborhood is due for more turmoil. Sigh. More on that here.

a quick aside: for automobile drivers who wondered how they can they get a temporary parking pass, wonder no more! Instead click here for details from the City.

Speaking of the City, the mayor is talking about scaling back on some of the costs associated with hosting the World Cup. Despite all her efforts, the city is still in a bind financially, according to this. That said, she a resourceful politician. I’m confident she can manage.

Real estate: the last time I noted that one of my favorite places, Hot Docs, was up for sale. I was worried this could be the end of it. As it turns out, Hot Docs sells its cinema for $6.25M, but will continue leasing it. Whew. That’s good. Hey, go check out their web site and see a show or two when you can.

Apparently rents are dropping all over Ontario, including Toronto. Good news for tenants, not so good for landlords. Maybe some affordable places will be built out here in proposed extension at College Park, assuming it gets built. Am I a fan of that new design? Let’s just say I wish College Park was being built out the way it was initially envisioned, as I wrote and showed, here.

Food: if you are in Kensington Market, apparently there is a great new sandwich shop there called Made-Rite. Always good to see great sandwich places opening up to go along with strong line up we already have in place, like La Salumeria, Hot Pork, Ariete E Toro and Bahn Mi Boys, to name just a few.

Ariete E To is also one of the best new restaurants in Toronto, according to Toronto Life. Others on that list I can vouch for: Martine’s, Maven and General Public. I’m sure the others are worth a visit too.

Sadly one of the mainstay of Annex dining,  By The Way Cafe, is set to close after 40 years. I’ve started going there when it first opened and I lived in the area. That stretch of Bloor won’t be the same without it.  (More on its closing, here.)

Finally: with the passing away of Giorgio Armani, many a story was published on his life, including this one with a Toronto angle. When I lived in the Annex I would go to Hazelton Lanes often. I never did skate on their lovely rink (shown in the article), though I wish I did.

Do you remember that Toronto once had 326 different moose statues decorated in wildly different ways? Here’s a look back at the art project, 25 years later.

Untitled

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I appreciate it! I leave you with a date night photo from the restaurant Sorrel, overlooking one of my favorite buildings in the city.

On Giorgio Armani, Kate Moss, and other great things from the 80s and 90s

I don’t write as much about the 80s these days, possibly because the media has shifted their nostalgic articles and stories from that decade to the one that follows. So I have decided to combine both decades in this one post. Hey it’s my annual indulgence, so bear with me. 🙂

The fashion giant Giorgio Armani passed away last week. While his greatness spanned decades, he really dominated the 80s with his flowing and beautifully cut clothing. There was a number of things written about him on the day of his death, but this piece in Wallpaper I found was the best. I’d also recommend this older piece that explains why 80s Armani still matters. And while I was a huge fan of his back in the 80s, as this piece in the New York Times showed, the man never stopped.

I was not the only fan of Armani obviously. Scott Schuman a/k/a The Sartorialist had a special Instagram account dedicated to him. Worth visiting.

If you are in the mood for more great photos of the 80s, I think this photo essay is excellent:  the 1980s turned out to be magic… david bailey on the era of excess in pictures.

Not as many photos in it, but this essay on  The Cameron Public House and 1980s Toronto is a fine remembrance of the beginning of an era at that famous Torontoian establishment. Another famous Toronto establishment, By the Way cafe, also began then. Sadly that restaurant will be closing after 40 years. It won’t be quite the same on the corner of Bloor and Brunswick with it gone.

If you want to know what we were eating in the 80s, read this. If you want to know what were listening too, go here.

One of the people I was listening to back in the day was Tracey Thorn. Nowadays she has a reoccurring column in The Independent where she writes about our current times, such as this: seeing endless faces in the city brings me comfort and relief. Always worth a read. Check out her books too.

Did Tracey Thorn go to clubs like the Limelight in London? Possibly. Did I go into one of the clubs that Sharon Smith captured with her polaroids of NYC nightlife in the 1980s? Definitely. Was I happy to see ‘The Breakfast Club’ stars reunite for the first time in 40 years? You know it. Am I glad that Giancarlo Esposito found happiness and success after a difficult struggle? Most certainly.

Moving from the 80s nightclub scene to the 90s, I give you this story on the famous cafe tabac in NYC. If you had gone during that time, you might have seen Kate Moss there. Zara had a special collection devoted to her not so long ago: Collection Kate Moss. This led to coverage in places like British Vogue and  The Guardian. It may be the reason why someone decided to write this: why fashion keeps selling us the 90s.

PeeWee Herman was another celebrity who rose to the top in that era. Even if you are not a fan of the 90s or Herman, I recommend a recent documentary on him…it’s brilliant.

Finally, here’s a piece on technology that was big at the end of the 20th century. Also big at the end of the 20th century: Friends. For fans of that 90s show, here a recent review of  friends at 30…inside story writers and producers tell all. More friends at 30 sitcom cultural phenomenon here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Every thing — everything — is a gift


It’s not true, of course: everything is not a gift.

But if you take a moment and think: what if this were a gift? How would I think of it differently? How can I benefit from this?

Some people believe every day you are living is a gift. You can expand upon that. Think: every day is a gift, and every thing in that day is a gift, too.

Try taking that perspective when difficult things come your way today. Take out a pencil and a pad and for a few minutes write down the things you gain from whatever you’re dealing with. If nothing else, adversity gives you the chance to get stronger and wiser. Strength and wisdom are certainly gifts. No doubt you can glean out more.

On natives and migrants

It’s difficult to not think about migrants and natives. So many problems in the world have their roots in who belongs to a place and when. So I was interested to hear about this book: Home Rule – National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants from Duke University Press. The Duke University Press says:

In Home Rule Nandita Sharma traces the historical formation and political separation of Natives and Migrants from the nineteenth century to the present to theorize the portrayal of Migrants as “colonial invaders.” The imperial-state category of Native, initially a mark of colonized status, has been revitalized in what Sharma terms the Postcolonial New World Order of nation-states. Under postcolonial rule, claims to autochthony—being the Native “people of a place”—are mobilized to define true national belonging. Consequently, Migrants—the quintessential “people out of place”—increasingly face exclusion, expulsion, or even extermination. This turn to autochthony has led to a hardening of nationalism(s). Criteria for political membership have shrunk, immigration controls have intensified, all while practices of expropriation and exploitation have expanded. Such politics exemplify the postcolonial politics of national sovereignty, a politics that Sharma sees as containing our dreams of decolonization. Home Rule rejects nationalisms and calls for the dissolution of the ruling categories of Native and Migrant so we can build a common, worldly place where our fundamental liberty to stay and move is realized.

A lot to consider there. Some questions I considered were: Why start at the 19th century? Why not go back to the age of European exploration? What about before that age? Should it be restricted to the Western nations? What are the differences between the Roma in Europe and Europeans in the Americas? What about other persecuted groups that are native but are never considered as a group that belongs to the native group?

No doubt you have your own questions. To learn more about the book, go here.

On risotto, a dish no one should fear and everyone should embrace


Everyone should learn to make risotto, and no one should fear it. I was thinking that again recently when I was showing my daughter the best way to make shrimp risotto with peas. 

I first recall risotto becoming a big thing in the 198os. Maybe it was risotto milanese, as this noted. At the time it was presented as a difficult dish that was hard to make and easy to mess up. It has managed to keep that reputation into the 21st century, as this piece shows.

I’m here to tell people to reject that reputation and embrace making risotto. As I wrote on my other blog, it’s a great dish if you make if you want to use up things you have in the kitchen. Plus it’s not hard. There’s just a few simple things to keep in mind:

  1. You just have to be patient when you make it, adding the liquids a 1/2 cup to a whole cup at a time, then stirring the pot as you add the liquid.
  2. You don’t have to stir non stop, but you should stir it every 10-30 seconds until the liquid incorporates into the rice. When you move the rice and you can’t see any liquid on the bottom of the pan, add more liquid.
  3. Stick to medium-low when cooking the rice in the liquid. Give the rice and the liquid time to do the work.
  4. After you add the 3rd cup of liquid, taste the rice. Is it still hard? You want it to be al dente, in my opinion. Do you prefer it softer? Then keep adding more liquid until it is soft. Generally with a cup of risotto rice, you will want four cups of liquid. Whenever I have used a ratio of 1:4 (rice:liquid) I have had success.

Here’s the recipe for Risotto With Shrimp And Peas by Marian Burros from the New York Times. It’s a winner. (My comments are in the parentheses.)

Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients:
  • 4 cups no-salt-added fish or chicken stock (I used chicken and I don’t worry about the salt. Also most recipes call for warmed up stock)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil ( or any neutral oil)
  • ½ cup chopped onion (shallot or leek is also fine)
  • 1 cup arborio rice
  • ½ cup dry white wine (you can replace with stock but the wine is better)
  • ½ pound fresh peas, shelled to yield about ½ cup (canned peas are fine. Frozen cooked in the stock is also good)
  • ½ pound shelled raw shrimp (I used a bag of mixed shrimp and bay scallops and that was great)
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • ½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, optional (at least for fish based risotto)
Preparation
Step 1: In a large saucepan, simmer stock. In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat oil. Add onion, and sauté until it softens. Add rice, and stir to coat. Add the wine, and cook until liquid is absorbed.
Step 2: Add one cup simmering stock to rice. Stirring often, cook over medium-low heat until liquid is absorbed. Repeat with second cup, and continue cooking, stirring often. Repeat with third cup.
Step 3: As rice becomes soft but firm, add last cup of stock. If peas are large, add them and cook about 4 minutes. Then add shrimp. If peas are small and tender, add them along with shrimp. Cook shrimp just 3 or 4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve, with cheese if desired.
P.S. Once you feel you get the hang of that, here’s 19 more risotto recipes you can make, courtesy of Chatelaine magazine. Image is from their recipe for lemony mint and pea risotto. Also check out my blog post for more risotto ideas.

My annual robot survey, 2025 edition


Time for my annual review of what I’ve seen happening in the world of robotics in the last 12 months. Progress in robots, unlike other forms of IT, tends to be slower and incremental. Not surprising: robotics is hard. If you look at the robots I featured last year and compared them to these robots, you won’t see dramatic changes. Still, it is interesting to note the progress made and the limitations still encountered.

Robots in factories are still where the bulk of robots can be found. Despite widespread adoption, they still have issues with basic tasks, as this study of robots in Amazon warehouses shows. Will that mean we are away off from amazon having package delivery humanoid robots? I’d say yes.

Home robots tend to be limited to one floor. But according to this, they are close to navigating stairs. That could be a game changer. Maybe some robots will get around your house like this tiny pogo robot does? Call me skeptical. Still, engineers keep trying to give robots more range, as we see here.

Not all home robots are limited to the floors of your house. This here contratrapion is a brainless soft robot that runs on air, while these 5 robotic lawnmowers hit the great outdoors. Speaking of robots and grass, there may come a day when your caddie is a robot.

It’s not all hard labour for home robots. These cute little fellows are mainly for emotional support for seniors. I question whether this pomodoro desk robot is an actual robot but I do agree it is the “cutest way to boost your productivity “. Speaking of desktop robots, this cute desktop robot gets gloomy when your room becomes unhealthy.

Finally, not all robots are cute: a lifelike robot that mimics human anatomy with complex muscular system is pretttttty creepy (see below).

One last note: the province of Ontario “began a ten-year pilot program in 2016 to allow the testing of automated vehicles (AVs) on Ontario’s roads under strict conditions, including a requirement to have a driver for safety reasons.” (In my mind, AVs are just another form of robots.) The program is still on going and I expect to see more developments on it. You can read more on that, here.

Thanks for reading this. I’ll be curious to see what happens with robots over the next year. Let’s see!

On life and death and the substack writings of Helen de Cruz

If you want to read some thoughtful posts today, I highly recommend the Substack of Helen de Cruz.

I used to follow her on Twitter while I was still a user of it. He posts there were always thoughtful and wise. To find out she was writing on Substack was a blessing. To discover (via Bluesky) that she passed away in 2025 was terribly sad.

While she was a philosopher by profession, her writing on Substack is very accessible. And thoughtful. And wise. Give what she wrote a read when you can.

(Image = link to one of her colored pencil drawings on her substack)

On The Course of Empire (paintings and otherwise)

Cole Thomas The Course of Empire Destruction 1836.jpg

In reading Clive Thompson’s latest linkfest, I came across the above painting by Thomas Cole. It illustrates a section of his newsletter talking about how the collapse of empires can lead to benefits for those other than the 1%. I highly recommend not just that section, “3) 🌋 The upside of societal collapse”, but the entire newsletter.

I’d also recommend you check out all five paintings from this series:

  1. The Savage State, or The Commencement of Empire
  2. The Arcadian or Pastoral State
  3. The Consummation of Empire
  4. Destruction
  5. Desolation

Cole’s paintings imply an arc that goes from Commencement to Desolation, with Consumption being a peak. However based on the newsletter and the book it references to, “Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse” by Luke Kemp, it seems more likely that with Desolation comes an overlapping Pastoral State and that Consumption is bad for all but a privileged minority.

Check out the newsletter and the five paintings to see what I mean.

P.S. The Pastoral State, below, looks good to me. 🙂

Cole Thomas The Course of Empire The Arcadian or Pastoral State 1836.jpg

 

How to avoid doom scrolling

One way to avoid doom scrolling is to put down your phone. If you can do that, great.

If you’re not likely to do that, then you need better things to scroll through. That’s likely my route.

To go that route, I am building a list of good sites to visit when I am bored and tempted to endlessly scroll. So far this is the list. I plan to build it up:

Another approach is to play a game. Like Dodge This!

Finally, you can check out Clive Thompson’s mailing list! It’s jam packed with good stuff.

The rise of Nazi thoughts and deeds in American politics – a marker

Around a decade ago, I put a marker on my blog regarding Peter Thiel, because I thought it worthwhile to track his decline. Last week the pattern of Nazi related activities in the American right got to the point where I thought: I need to start noting these.

First off, Peter Thiel is giving a lecture on “The Antichrist: A Four-Part Lecture Series” of all things. One thing that stood out for me was the reference to Carl Schmitt. In case you don’t know much about Schmitt and his relationship with the Nazis, you can read this.

Next up, JD Vance (who is also aware of Schmitt), said, “I don’t know why we accepted that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our kids. You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at your family. Those are your streets.” Read that, I thought, I wonder if we should be prepared for someone in the Trump administration to propose Aktion T4. This is a marker to see if they are going to go down that road.

None of this Nazi infused thinking is new. Mike Godwin in 2023 said comparing Trump to Hitler was not wrong, in light of Trump “calling people vermin” and “talking about blood poisoning”.

Godwin’s Law — “As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches 1.”  — is good to keep in mind. It’s easy to reach for comparison of the American right wing to the Nazis, and that comparison should be resisted. Many authoritarian actions that the Trump administration has been doing are terrible but such actions are not strictly limited to Hitler and company. But as these actions pile up, and as right wing thought and action echo behaviors of Germany after 1933, it’s worthwhile keeping track. Actions like the formation of a secret police, the use of concentration camps, the attacks on the museums and the arts, or the takeover of cities by the military.

Jan 2026: much discussion now of how ICE is acting like the Gestapo. Things like this don’t help. It’s gotten to the point in Minneapolis that people are wearing their passports, the way people would be challenged by the Gestapo to “show their papers“.

(Photo of Miller, Hegseth and Vance with the National Guard in Washington D.C.)

P.S. For people who say, Americans would never do anything terrible, I would simply start by by pointing out CIA Black Sites, where Americans would “detain, interrogate, and often torture suspected enemy combatants” in extrajudical locations outside the U.S.

 

 

New York is great, near or far

It’s been a year since I’ve visited or wrote about New York City. I miss it. Alas I don’t think I’ll be going to the States / NYC any time soon for a number of reasons. There are many in the same situation, so much that it seems to be having an impact. (Although it didn’t seem to limit Paul McCartney, who played a few surprise concerts in NYC in the last year. The man is everywhere.)

In the meantime, I’ve been following along with what’s been happening in the city, especially on the dining scene. After four years of a vegan menu, meat is back on at Eleven Madison Park restaurant. A place once impossible to get into seems less so: hence the addition of meat.

In other restaurant news, it seems there’s been a resurgence of new restaurants since the pandemic. That’s good to see. Also, it turns out young chefs are saving old school diners. Good for them.

One thing that came about during the pandemic was outdoor dining, but now that the pandemic is long gone, people are wondering: is outdoor dining dying off? I suspect it won’t. New Yorkers remain resilient and resourceful despite difficulties. I mean, you have restaurants thriving without kitchens there. I suspect restaurants will hold on to outdoor dining for some time, too.

Dining experiences in New York are about the Old as much as they are about the New. To show you what I mean, check out Resy’s great guide to New York’s New Old-School Restaurants. You’ll want to hit up some of them on your next visit. Maybe you’ll go to one of the greatest of old school establishments, Keens steakhouse, beloved by old and young diners alike.

Thinking of old school dining got me going down a rabbit hole of Manhattan nostalgia recently. Perhaps it was all the pieces I read about Lutèce after the great chef André Soltner died. Pieces like this and this and this. Those pieces lead me to read this: Reliving The 1980s: 10 Iconic New York Dining Moments That Defined Decadence. And then this: the 50 year club (i.e. the oldest upper west side shops and restaurants still in business). Which finally led me to this article on the battle for Bryant Park Grill, a famous restaurant which also happens to be a great piece of real estate.

Speaking of real estate, here’s a good story about my favorite building: cooper union is taking back the Chrysler building.

While ostensibly about the artists, this piece on the NYC apartment of Jean and Jean Claude Christo’s apartment got me thinking about living in downtown Manhattan when it was grittier. Perhaps that’s why I watched this not too long ago: ‘On the Bowery’. Very gritty indeed.

The Lower East Side is my favourite part of the city, which is why I was happy to read about the efforts to save the dive bar Lucy’s in the East Village. Meanwhile for Brooklyn fans, check out this hot pink building there. Or this Maximalist Brooklyn apartment. It’s not all light in that borough though. Check out as this grim piece on Brooklyn deaths possibly due to a serial killer. NYC is not without its dangers.

Like many people, I sometimes want New York to never change, though change it will. This year congestion pricing went in, and it turns out it’s a hit. That was fast. Not so fast is the adoption of trash bins. It boggles my mind, especially since a) no one likes all the rats b) bins wipe out rat populations. Go figure. Another antique thing that should change is the New York’s subway system. Good luck with that Herculean task. That said, they recently retired some of their  old subway cars. So even the subway system can adopt.

As for other changes, this piece on  the slow death of neon signage in New York made me wonder what the town would look like without bright neon. I can’t imagine it.

To close out, here’s a fun piece on the hardest working font in NYC. It looks like the NYPD is having a hard time recruiting cops. And the city is having a hard time figuring out how to bring people back to NYC. New York is never without challenges, no mater how much it changes.This piece by Naomi Fry writing about the famous piece by Jay McInerney on Chloe Sevigny in the New Yorker was very meta. Did I love this piece Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s black and white portraits of artists in Downtown New York in the 1980s? You know I did. Included in it is this photo of John Lurie, taken in 1982. Cool, like the city he was in.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. See you in a year when I post my annual appreciation of the greatest city in the world.

Tiny homes, 2025 edition

While I am a big fan of tiny homes on this blog, I haven’t done a post on them in some time.

I used to do them on the regular because a) I like the idea of tiny homes b) a blog I follow called Yanko Design often posted stories on tiny homes, giving me lots of material to comment on.

As it is, I still love tiny homes, and I still follow Yanko, so here’s four recent posts from them worth checking out:

  1. First up is this cool place in Tokyo. Most tiny homes in North America are horizontal: that one is very vertical (as you can see in the photo).
  2. Next is this small but might home built from a shipping container (a popular framework for tiny homes).
  3. While many tiny homes come assembled, this incredible foldable tiny home that a single person can install within an hour with no tools .
  4. Finally, if you want even more tiny homes, Yanko has 10 more homes designed to be sustainable retreats for off the grid living.

I think tiny homes are excellent, and I wish more people embraced them. If you are a fan as well, check out those links.

Seven questions to ask yourself this week

Over at Austin Kleon’s blog he had a post called 7 questions I ask myself. The questions are:

1. What was the best thing that happened yesterday?

2. Will this enlarge or diminish me?

3. What would it look like to be done for the day?

4. What did you really want to say?

5. What’s the matter?

6. Would I do it tomorrow?

7. And then what?

I don’t think you have to ask yourself these questions every day or in every situation. Instead, use them in the right context. For example, whenever I am faced with doing something difficult, I ask myself #2. Whenever I am blogging, I keep question #4 in mind. If you are aiming for a goal, it’s good to keep #7 in mind before you achieve it.

If those questions appeal to you, go check out his post. He provides more insight into each of the questions that you’ll benefit from if you ask them of yourself this week.

(Image via a link to his post)

 

Math and physics books from Dover via Google Books (what I find interesting in math and physics, Aug. 2025)

I’ve recently discovered a bunch of math / physics Dover books via Google Books of all things. You can access previews of them based on the link below and also buy them. I like this because I have a tendency to splurge for Dover books only to find my math skills are too weak to make progress. I don’t mind, since I like giving money to Dover, but my bookshelves are too full and this seems like a good compromise. Here’s just some I found good:

  1. Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics
  2. Mathematics for Physicists
  3. Mathematical physics
  4. Classical mechanics
  5. Foundations and Fundamental Concepts of Mathematics

Also I found these good links, not Dover or Google Books necessarily, but worth checking out:

  1. Calculus and beginner calculus
  2. History of physics
  3. Principle of least action
  4. Lagrangian physics and why it is useful.

On the death of Perks Culture and other thoughts on Work in 2025

Untitled

If you are interested in perk culture and reading about work generally, I thought these pieces were all worth reading:

First up, this piece: For Younger Workers, Job Hopping Has Lost Its Stigma. Should It? I think criticizing job hopping is a classic case of employers not liking an advantage workers have. Relatedly, What Is (or Was) ‘Perks Culture’? touches on the clawback of worker privileges that tech firms no longer figure they need to provide them. That said, Meta is going on a hiring spree, so maybe things will swing back. For companies that are on a hiring frenzy, they would do well to study this piece on how Aaron Schwartz hired programmers.

Another perk more employees used to have was sabbaticals. I know some jobs still have them, but at one time even tech firms like Apple offered them. Based on this piece, it looks like young people are trying to reinvent them in a way: To Escape the Grind, Young People Turn to ‘Mini-Retirements’.

Work culture is different outside North America. For example, over in Asia we have this: Declaring ‘Crisis,’ South Korean Firms Tell Managers to Work 6 Days a Week. China too has the 996 system: 6 days of working 9 am to 9 pm. Not sure that will be sustainable.

Forming Storming Norming Performing: those four words you may have seen or experienced at work. The idea comes from here:Tuckman’s_stages_of_group_development. Some teams never go from Forming to Performing, but many do.

Roxane Gay is a great writer who also writes well about work. Here’s her last piece: Goodbye, Work Friends. You’d do well to read the rest.

(P.S. Photo of many of my work neckties and bowties I finally threw out. Many trends come and go and return when it comes to work, but wearing ties is over, I think.)