There are many reasons why Christmas in New York is special. One reason is that New Yorkers go all out when it comes to decorations. Especially when it comes to Christmas trees. Sure, the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center is great, but you’d be missing out if you went to Manhattan and only saw that one. There are at least 15 Christmas Trees in NYC that are great and not in Rockefeller Center, as that link will prove. Check some/all of them out. You’ll be glad you did.
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If you are looking for a low key, low cost Christmas craft to help decorate your place, I highly recommend making paper snowflakes. If you have kids who are getting under your feet while you are doing other things, teach them how to make snowflakes and get them to make a bunch. Then gently tape them to the wall or hang them with some thread. Your place will look more Christmas-y for sure.
If you don’t recall how to make snowflakes, here are three places to go for advice on them: One Little Project and A Piece Of Rainbow and Martha Stewart.
Of course Martha has more than good advice on how to make paper snowflakes. She has a section of her site devoted to holiday crafts and Christmas. So if you feel you need some inspiration on how to make your home life more festive, check out those links.
Back in 2005 I created a Microsoft Word document titled Christmas 2005. I did this because it seemed like Christmas was becoming a project in itself, with milestones and deliverables, and having such a document helped me keep on top of things. The document had a calendar, breakdown of things to do (e.g. get gifts for A and B, prepare food Y on date Z), and eventually it had lessons learned. (Hey, I’ve done a fair bit of project planning over my career…it’s a skill you tend to apply to everything.) Every year since 2005, I would take the previous year’s list, duplicate it, and modify the duplicate for the new year. Voila: new list!
But I kept the old lists, and I’m glad I did. I can see my life change year over year. People come and go. The gifts you buy for people change, especially kids. Technologies change (no more need to buy VCR tapes to record the kids). Traditions evolve. Even details like the price of Christmas trees over the years makes an impression viewed over time. The list remains the same, but the content changes, sometimes dramatically.
I encourage you to keep your own such records for Christmas and other special events over the years. At first it might not seem like much, but if you keep at it, you will have a special journal of an event that meant much to you over time.
Everyone has their own way of planning special events, from structured plans like me to having it all in their head. However you do it, try keeping a record of it. This year. And next year. And the next.
Merry Christmas. Did you get all those things done you said you were going to? No? Better write it down and get to it. 🙂
This week I successfully set up five Raspberry Pi devices at home: 3 Pi Zeros, 1 Pi 400, and 1 Pi original. Plus I have two old C.H.I.P. computers that work. I had struggled with using them in the past, but this time it was a breeze due to the lessons I’ve learned. Here’s some of these lessons:
Get wireless ones: I originally had Pi Zeros and Picos without wireless capability. And that can be fine if you know you don’t need it. But it is helpful to be able to have them communicate wirelessly and it gives you more flexibility, even if it costs a few more bucks.
Get headers: again, I had some Pi Zeros and Picos without headers. Unless you are good with soldering, get the ones with headers. It just makes it easier physically connect them to other technology. The Pi Zero above has no headers, the one below does.
Keep track of all the connectors you need and kept them handy: With the Pi Zeroes, I have a set of adapters that allow me to connect it to power, USB and HDMI. Once I have it set up, I just need a cable to provide power and I run it in headless mode (which I can do because of wireless). I have a special box for all that stuff so I can easily find it.
Give your Pis unique hostnames: if you are going to be connecting to them via ssh or scp, then give them a unique host name. You can do this when you set them up. What’s nice about that is once they connect to the wireless network, I can easily identify them. For example, I can ping pizero1 or I can ssh myuserid@pizero2 versus trying to find out their IP address of 192.168.0.??
Designate a machine for setting up the Pis: for me, I have a Pi 400 that I use to program the Picos. And I have a Ubuntu machine to format the SD cards. But you do what works best for you.Having a consistent environment means when you run into problems, the problem is likely not with your environment but with the SD card or the Pico.
Avoid obsolete or tricky technology: in the past I got discouraged by trying to get old or tricky technology to work. I had old dongles that gave me errors when trying to build the SD cards properly; I had old unsupported Digispark devices that would not work at all; and I had some Adafruit devices that were cool but the path to success with them was challenging. In the future, I am sticking with tried and true technology from Arduino and Pi. Don’t make working with such devices any harder than it has to be.
Get cases for your Pis: if you are going to use them on the regular, get a case. Even a cheap case make it look like a finished and working device and not some hack. Not only does it look better, but it will likely work better (i.e. the cables will not move around and lose a connection). And make sure the case you get is made for your device so it will fit properly.
Document as you go: keep some log of what worked and what didn’t. Take photos of successful set ups. Save all the good web sites that helped out. Better still, blog about it. (If you search this blog for “raspberrypi” you will find the things I have found and written about.)
Good luck with your projects. May they go smoothly.
If you’re like me and you’re doing work with an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, you are going to want to hook it up to something. Now the something might just be a simple button or an LED, or it might be more sophisticated like an infrared receiver or a heat sensor. If that’s you, then you want to consider getting this: KEYESTUDIO 37 in 1 Sensors Starter Kit for Arduino Mega R3 Nano Raspberry Pi Projects (on amazon.ca).
It says Sensors starter kit, but it has a nice collection of LEDs and buttons, too. Each of the 37 items are easy to plug into a breadboard or you can connect them to your Pi or Arduino with wires.
Other great things:
I’ve purchased sensors in the past, and the problems I’ve had with them are gone due to this kit. I’m glad I bought it.
If you are curious about the Philips Hue lighting system, I highly recommend it. I have two white bulbs, four coloured bulbs, two Go lights, a switch, a smart plug and a bridge. I’ve had them for over seven years now and they are still going strong. The white bulbs are in the basement where I just need basic light, while the coloured ones are on the main floor and give me lots of lighting options. The Go lights are great because once charged you can move them around to give you just the lighting you want where you want it. Finally the smart plug is for a lamp that doesn’t take their bulbs.
The technology is easy to set up. I bought the plug just last week and plugged it into the wall and plugged the lamp into it. Then I opened the app, told it to find the plug (which it did), then I added it as a light in that room. (By doing that, I can turn out all lights in the room easily.) You have a lot of control using the Hue app, and it’s easy to use.
Besides being easy to set up and use, they also integrate with the web site IFTTT.com. That allows me to do things like turn on at dusk, or have them turn a certain colour if the weather is going to suddenly change. I even have it so a raspberry pi flicker them when an event it is monitoring occurs, so I don’t forget about it.
Some people find the bulbs expensive, which I get. But they do last a very long time, and they provide me with capabilities not found with other lights (although I know other manufacturers are out there).
You can find out more about it, here. I’d recommend one of the starter kits and then go from there. You need to have a bridge, so if you just buy the bulbs separately, it won’t work.
Over at the site, Our World in Data, they make the case that:
The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. All three statements are true at the same time.
There are people who only want you to believe only one of those statements is true. Strong minds can hold on to all three at once. Be one of those minds.
Here’s my latest post on AI with 60+ worthwhile links found since my last post on it in June. It comes in three sections: the first section is about AI technology, the middle section is on AI in the news and the oped pages, and at the end there’s a good but odd bunch worth a look. Enjoy!
Technology – LLMs:
Technology – Ollama / Flowise:
Technology – RAG:
Technology – watsonx.ai:
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AI in the news / oped sections:
Last but not least:
What does Intel’s Pentium computer chip have in common with Navajo textiles?
Over at the web site Colossal, they say:
More than you might think. For artist Marilou Schultz, the ancestral practice of weaving melds with an unexpected contemporary source of inspiration. Merging analog loom methods with the patterns found on computer processor cores, Schultz entwines the histories of the Navajo people and modern technology.
I love it. If you want to know more about this wonderful art work, see: Marilou Schultz Weaves Computer Processor Patterns in Traditional Navajo Tapestries at Collosal.com or the Pentium as a Navajo weaving at Ken Shirriff’s blog. I highly recommend it.
Bluesky is making social media fun again, and that’s a good thing. For example, you have people developing creative new apps that show Bluesky skeets (posts) like the digital rain in the Matrix or firehose effect or a nightsky. All very cool.
It has some asking: is Bluesky the new Twitter and is that a good thing? Right now I would answer Yes to both parts of that question.
One thing for sure, people are paying attention and piling on. As the New York Times noted, Elon Musk and his swing to the right had much to do with people fleeing Twitter (ok, X.com).
What’s odd is that they are mostly going to Bluesky. After all, Bluesky is not the only game in town: Threads still exists. However Bluesky is rolling out features that are making Threads and X users want to move the butterfly app. And Threads has noticed and has started making changes. (While also trying to deal with their engagement bait problem.)
Will the changes at Threads be enough to keep Bluesky from surging to the lead? We will have to wait and see. Meanwhile I am interested in learning more about Bluesky and how I can experiment with it. If you feel the same, check out their documentation and read about the AT protocol.
Not everything about social media is fun and good. Over on X.com you have Elon making nazi jokes and spreading election conspiracies. Maybe he should spend less time doing that and more time on X.com’s technical problems. I’ll leave Ed Zitron have the last word on Elon Musk (he has several words, and they are all rightly scathing). While over on visual social media, we have TikTok users spreading misinformation on melanoma. And famed YouTuber MrBeast being sued over ‘unsafe’ environment on upcoming Amazon reality show. Not good and all.
I once believed that new developments in social media were over. But the growth of Bluesky has convinced me otherwise. I’ll be curious to see how it grows over the next few years. Hopefully people like Musk and other fans of Trump (ahem, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz) stay away.
If you’re like me, you may have a domain name that represents you (e.g. berniemichalik.ca) and that domain name is set up with netfirms. You have decided you want that domain name to be your Bluesky handle. Great! Here is the process I followed.
First, you will want to start by following the process outlined by Bluesky here. As you are following their process, you will see a Change Handle screen like the one below. When you get there, write down or save in a file the Host information information (_atproto), Type information (TXT) and the Value information (did=…..). You will need that information when you log in to netfirms.
Once you have that information, you can do the following:
That’s all there is to it! If you follow their process successfully and make the changes in netfirms as I outlined, you will have a new Bluesky handle. Now anyone wanting to verify that your Bluesky account truly is you can check out your web site listed in your handle.
I was not aware of On Kawara until recently, and so I went down a rabbit hole reading as much as I could about him, as well as taking in whatever art I could find online. The following links I found helpful if you want to know more about this artist:
Thoughts I had:
As someone fascinated by time and how it is measured and what that signifies, I was intrigued by the work of Kawara. If that appeals to you too, check him out.
How long have you had your router in your house? Is it relatively new? If so, that’s good. However you might be like me and have a router that’s 3 or 4 years old. If that’s the case, it’s time to replace your router. Contact your internet provider and ask them if they can refresh your router with a newer one. (And if they can’t or won’t, consider switching internet providers.)
You might think: I don’t want to go through the hassle of that. That’s what I thought too. It turns out it was a very easy thing to do in my case. I suspect that will hold true for you.
Hassle aside, what I also noticed is that I started getting much better upload and download speeds with the newer router without having to upgrade my plan. You might find the same thing, and that’s a good thing indeed.
So if you haven’t refreshed your router in a number of years, consider getting a newer one.
PS it doesn’t have to be a new device. In fact, the upgrade cost might be free if it’s slightly older than new but more recent than your current router.
Cities need third places and citizens who live there need to fight for them. A book that makes the case for them is this one: The Great Good Place. As the blurb for the book explains:
In The Great Good Place, Ray Oldenburg gave the term “third places,” where people gather for the pleasure of good company and conversation, and explained just how important they are.
- Discover the benefits of informal public and civic life and how it contributes to community health and individual well-being.
- Explore how third places have been, and still are, vital to grassroots democracy.
- Experience the power of third places and how they bring people together, fostering a sense of belonging and connection.
- Allow this book to inspire you to create and revitalize your own third places, from coffee houses to community centers, and make a positive impact on your community.
- Learn from real-life examples around the world, and see how third places have transformed and revitalized communities.
- Gain a deeper understanding of the history and evolution of third places, from coffee houses to bookstores, and how they continue to play a vital role in our society.
- Discover the power and potential of third places and how they can change your community and your life.
Reading that, it makes you want to send a copy of the book to the head of Starbucks, a company that’s been destroying third places in neighbourhoods by opening up coffee shops that have no seating. It’s not the only reason that the company has been doing poorly, but it no doubt contributes to it. Indeed, I walked by a new Starbucks last night with no seating and a Tim Horton’s with seating: the former was empty and the latter was not.
There has been a struggle to build better cities since the pandemic hit. Great third places are part of what will make cities better, but they don’t just show up. They need people like you to support them. So take the time to understand that and find out what you can do to help: talk to your local politicians, lobby community groups, share things with your friends, patronize good third places (and not grab and go food places). Perhaps read that book, so you can better express these ideas. If you want to get a copy, one place is here on Amazon: The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community. Better still, go find if your local bookstore can get you a copy, for bookstores can be good third places, too.
It’s good to be disappointed if only because it can teach you what you value.
Take the breakfast order above from my favorite breakfast place, Boom. It was different from the way it usually came: the coffee was much smaller, the fries likely started out frozen, and the sandwich ingredients were meagre. My first thoughts seeing it were: this is disappointing.
Some days I would label something as disappointing and move on. But that day I asked myself why I was disappointed. I was expecting the coffee to be much larger, the fries to be big chunky home fries, and the sandwich to have larger amount of pea meal bacon and egg. I was also disappointed because it was not much different than something I could make myself. It was additionally disappointing because I felt I wasted my money. All in all, not a happy meal.
You could say I was disappointed because my expectations weren’t met. But it could have varied from my expectations and not been disappointing. The disappointment was the poor quality of the meal for what it cost. A certain quality of breakfast for the price is the combo I craved and this meal did not deliver on that.
Never let something disappointing pass you by, even if it’s a simple thing like an Uber meal. Take a moment to consider why you feel kicked to the curb and let it inform you as to what you value. Many people do not have an understanding of what they value, and they drift through life making poor choices and settling for less because of that.
Knowing your values and moving towards them is the way to a good life. Sometimes you learn that from something dramatic happening to you: sometimes you learn it via a Uber Eats 🙂
P.S. Is this somewhat goofy? Yes, it is. Sometimes the best way to get people to think about an idea is to come up with an angle on a topic that forces them to look at differently. Approaches to a topic that are goofy, ridiculous, preposterous or absurd all can do that.
After an election, people may wonder: how could people vote for that candidate? Many people believe a vote is for a candidate, and someone’s vote means they favor that candidate.
I don’t believe that. I believe that for many voters, the logic they employ is this:
I believe this is why many incumbents hold on to power for a long period of time. Voters feel they are doing the job well enough and they don’t want to fire them from and take the risk of bringing in someone who can’t do the job.
It also explains why people can vote for someone who others think is a bad candidate. They are voting for the bad candidate because they want to vote against someone they consider a worse candidate. To them, the best way to defeat the worse candidate is to vote for the bad candidate.
The assessment of who is a good, bad or worse candidate will depend on how much information you bring into the equation. For low information voters, they might think candidate A has done a bad job managing the economy, so they will vote against candidate A by voting for a candidate who can cause the defeat of candidate A. If candidate B has the best chance of beating candidate A, they will vote for candidate B. They may dislike candidate B in numerous ways, but that is the candidate most likely to prevent candidate A from remaining in office.
Many high information voters will look at an election results and say most voters voted for candidates running on issues X, Y, and Z. That may be the case for a percentage of voters. Many voters, though, are not voting for a candidate, they are voting against a candidate, and they will vote for someone who can defeat that candidate, regardless of many of the issues.
P.S. I thought of this when I read many such posts like this on social media:
jamelle @jamellebouie.net (on Bluesky -b):
Also, if anyone is looking for someone to blame, it should be focused on the people who looked exactly at what Trump was selling and said “yes.”
No doubt there were some percentage of voters who voted for Trump because they wanted to see him in office. Those voters said “yes”. But I think there were many more voters who wanted to vote against Biden/Harris and thought the best way to remove them from office was to vote for Trump. To them, Harris was the worst candidate to vote for, even if Trump was a bad candidate. I don’t agree with that at all, but I am trying to understand how some voters could vote for Trump without assuming they are simply terrible people.
High information voters believe that voters should understand many of the issues of an election and the stances of the candidates on those issues before they vote for someone. High information voters also believe that most voters should be like that.
I am a high information voter who believes something different. I believe that most voters are not like that and never will be. I believe most information are low information voters.
Low information voters vote for or against a candidate based on one or two pieces of information. This limited information could be:
Once a low information voter has this information, they will make their choice.
As a high information voter, you might have a hard time understanding why someone chooses to be a low information voter. But there are many reasons why someone chooses to be this way, such as:
Of course there are a number of invalid reasons that low information voters vote, too, such as:
Regardless of what their reasoning is, this is how many voters vote and they will not be persuaded by a flurry of facts from a high information voter. Either they will not have the ability to weigh the facts provided, or they don’t think those additional facts matter to them.
It should be noted that low information voters are not uneducated or stupid. A single issue voter may be highly educated and decide that only candidates that support better healthcare. An intelligent voter may vote against a candidate because of a major scandal, even if they voted for the candidate repeatedly in the past. A vote is a limited instrument: what the meaning is of the vote is only known to the voter.
In the future, when you read a piece about the election (or rejection) or a candidate who stood for A, B, C, D, E, F and G on the issues, don’t assume that most voters voted for or against him/her because of the sum of A to G. Assume many voters voted for or against the candidates based on just one of those.
P.S. This was inspired by many things I’ve seen on social media that read like this:
Michael Hobbes @michaelhobbes.bsky.social
This is the whole ballgame for me: You cannot run a functioning democracy in a media environment where voters do not know basic facts about what candidates do and believe.
Voters are living in a post-internet world and legacy institutions have not kept up.
The Broad museum in Los Angeles has a fine collection of works by Basquiat, including the above, Eyes and Eggs (and many more). Indeed, it has a fine collection of modern art in general. I recommend you check it out, either online or — better yet — in person.
Found via this post: Austin Kleon — Horn Players – Jean‐Michel Basquiat “There was…
If anyone wants to know what happened in the last 200 days or what will happen in the next four years, then this is a good place to start: Donald Trump wins presidential election, defeating Harris to retake White House (The Washington Post). Specifically, when it comes to the economy, he promises this.
Trump did everything wrong in the campaign and Biden and Harris did everything right and none of it mattered. The economy is doing great now but the economy has also been terrible for the last few years because of a pandemic. Beyond that, housing is simply unaffordable for many people, so having a job doesn’t necessarily make you feel good about your place, economically speaking. For those voters, the hope is Trump will fix that.
While Trump will have the Senate to make changes, he may not have the House. In terms of passing laws, that could provide him with difficulties. Difficult or not, it may not make much difference to him personally. He will likely continue to use the office to get richer. And few if any of the charges against Trump will remain, so he will likely spend his time at the White House rather than a cell.
If anything, Trump will delegate governing to others, like Musk and RFK Jr and the Heritage Foundation. He’s not much interested in the job of the presidency, while others around him are. He’s content to be the Boss of the country and use it to get wealthy.
I suspect this is the end of Ukraine as a free country, though the rest of Europe may decide otherwise. I imagine things will only heat up in the Middle East as Netanyahu feels more impowered, but it is risky to make predictions in that part of the world.
It’s also risky to make any sorts of predictions about what will happen in the US, but unlike 2016, there’s more to base any prediction on. Generally, if you are a fan of Trump, you’re going to predict things will be great again. If you are a foe of the man, your predictions will be full of darkness and difficulty.
Your problem is actually a solution. And that’s the real problem. Which calls for the real solution.
Let’s unpack that.
Many of the common problems we have are actually solutions for underlying problems we have. So if you have a problem with: eating, drinking, smoking, sleeping, shopping, etc. too much, you need to look at those behaviours not just as problems but as solutions to underlying problems. You might be indulging in those behaviours because they solve your underlying problem of being anxious, bored, tired, etc. If you try and solve the problem of doing something too much like eating without dealing with the actual problem, you will have a difficult time. And you will have a difficult time because you will may have taken away the solution for the actual problem you were avoiding.
One approach to start dealing with this is get out a notepad and write down what problems you are struggling with and try to get underneath them and see if those problems are actually solving other problems. Then write down those problems and see what you can do to solve them. If you can make progress in solving the underlying problems, you might find that the other problems dissipate.
As always, talk to a professional if you think or feel that your problems are harming you. Take good care of yourself; get help if you can’t do it alone.
It was a no show for Kamala Harris at the Al Smith dinner in 2024. And while Trump was there, he wasn’t wearing white tie, as presidential candidate wore in previous years. Typically the candidates looked more like these guys:
Maybe Trump was trying to channel President Kennedy:
Who knows.
For those of us outside Manhattan, it’s truly an odd event. Perhaps it made more sense before the television cameras, but it seems strange for those of us outside of NYC to watch candidates dressed in white tie and hobnob with that city’s elite. Maybe that’s why Trump wore dressed down black tie. Or why Harris didn’t attend at all.
The pandemic put a dint in the Al Smith dinner. I wonder if we will see it restored to its former importance in 2028? Or maybe, like top hats and top coats, this event will become an anachronism.
if it starts to die off, that’s too bad. I like a good white tie event. 🙂
What is the New York Times? Based on those who have NYT Derangement Syndrome**, it’s a newspaper that has betrayed its progressive readers by publishing articles and oped pieces that are centrist or even right wing.
I have sympathy for such views. I love the Times and I wish it were solidly to the left politically the way a paper like the Guardian is. But is that what it aspires to be?
The best way to understand their aspirations is to look at what they say about themselves. We can see that recently in things they published here, here and here. The CEO himself says the Times is…
on the path to grow our subscriber base and become the essential subscription for every curious person seeking to understand and engage with the world. The combination of our world-class news destination plus market-leading lifestyle products means we have complementary offerings in big spaces, each with multiple growth levers fueling multiple revenue streams. Together we believe these make The Times resilient in a changing media landscape and well positioned for continued value creation.
That’s the business the Times is in. Indeed, it is reflected in things they produce, like the New York Times mobile app. Sure the News is still front and center on top of the app, but with a simple swipe left or right you have Cooking, The Athletic, Lifestyle, Great Reads and more. If you never ever read the news but digitally subscribe to get access to the Cooking section or The Athletic section, that’s fine by the CEO. Or if you read / hate read Bret Stevens and Ross Douthat, that’s good for revenue as well.
The days of the New York Times being a city newspaper or even a national paper are long over. I suspect the days of it being a progressive paper are over too. Rather than be progressive it will be for everyone. Rather than be a Paper, it will be a Destination.
The days of the Manchester Guardian being a city newspaper or even a national paper are long over too. But if you want a progressive paper, that may be the place you want to go.
Meanwhile read the reports I linked to in order to see what the Times is focused on. Specifically, they have to grow digital subscriptions to increase ad revenue, especially as print subscriptions and the revenue associated with that is decreasing. As they state, “revenues grew 4.4 percent in the second quarter of 2024 to $585.2 million from $560.5 million in the second quarter of 2023. Subscription revenues increased 6.5 percent to $410.0 million from $385.0 million in the second quarter of 2023, primarily due to growth in subscription revenues from digital-only products, partially offset by decreases in print subscription revenues. Advertising revenues decreased 0.2 percent to $112.1 million from $112.3 million in the second quarter of 2023, due to declines in print advertising revenues partially offset by higher revenues from digital advertising”. There you have it in black and white.
** NYT derangement syndrome is a derogatory term used to describe a form of toxic criticism and negative reaction to the newspapers articles and oped pieces. Not unlike Trump Derangement Syndrome.
No Presidential endorsements were provided by the LA Times or the Washington Post this year. This caught people by surprise, since it was expected these two papers would endorse a candidate and that candidate would be Harris. Soon it was revealed the endorsements were held up by the owners of both papers.
One way to assess the choices of the owners of the Times and the Post is to use a payoff matrix found in game theory and apply it to the moves available to them:
| Action vs impact | Harris Wins | Trump Wins |
|---|---|---|
| Endorse Harris | No Loss | Huge Loss |
| Endorse No one | Small loss | Small Loss |
My payoff assessment is based on an estimate of how much each paper has to lose by endorsing/not endorsing a candidate. If Harris wins, there is very little downside regardless of what they do. Likewise, if Trump wins and they don’t endorse, I suspect they will also lose subscriptions and staff, but overall they can manage that.
The wrinkle in all this is if Trump wins and they endorse Harris. I think the owners of both papers see a huge loss for them — either personal or financial — if that happens.
Both men have different things at stake. We already know that the team from Bezos’s other project, Blue Horizon, has been talking to Trump. No doubt Bezos would not want Trump to come into power and ban Blue Horizon from any future space exploration with NASA. That would explain why Bezos did not want the Post to endore Harris. As for Soon-Shiong, the owner of the LA Times, he tried to get a post in Trump’s first administration. Perhaps he hopes he will be successful the second time around.
If the above payoff matrix had a bigger payoff or a bigger loss regarding Harris, then they might have chosen differently. As it is, they decided to minimize their risk by endorsing no one. They are guaranteed to suffer losses, but not big ones for them personally. It’s a rational choice, but a disappointing one.
I wouldn’t be surprised if both of them got out of the newspaper business in the next four years. They clearly don’t have the appetite for the risk of running such publications.
My favorite graffiti in Toronto is still that simple sentence, painted next to Cocktail Bar on Dundas Street West.
I’ve been working on drawing and painting again. During this work, I’ve collected a fair amount of good links on the subjects. Take a look:
Good luck to all who strive to create art!
Jerry Seinfeld gives a good example of how to change your mind in public, here: Jerry Seinfeld says he was ‘wrong’ to blame ‘extreme left’ for killing comedy.
Not only does he says his old way of thinking was wrong, but he shows that he has considered what he thought before and contrasts that with his new way of thinking.
If you have to change your position on a topic in public, it’s not enough to say, “well I thought A before, but now I think B”. You want to show why you no longer think that way. It shows you’re thoughtful and sincere.
No one likes having to change your mind in public. If you have to do so, consider the way Seinfeld did it.
Yep, it’s true. If you have some technical skill, you can download this repo from github: rasbt/LLMs-from-scratch: Implementing a ChatGPT-like LLM in PyTorch from scratch, step by step and build your own LLM.
What I like about this is that it demystifies LLMs. LLMs aren’t magic, they aren’t Skynet and they’re not some sentient being. They’re software. That’s all.
So ignore all the hype and handwaving about LLMs and go make your own.
Prefer to read it in dead tree form? You can get the book here.
If you get your blood pressure measured, arm position is important. As this piece states:
When the arm is on the lap or the side, a blood pressure reading can be erroneously high. But when the arm is supported and at heart height, a blood pressure reading is more likely to be right.
Whenever I go to my doctor, she makes sure my arm is in that position. When you get your blood pressure read, make sure you do so too.
Don’t just take my opinion, though: ask your health professional.
Is enjoying the colours of autumn (tho’ today’s temp is summer! :))
Twitter may be no more, but twitpic still lives! Photos I posted on twitpic back in 2008 still exist. To see what I mean, check out the link to the photo above with my accompanying tweet that went with it.
Back then, you didn’t have the ability to post photos directly on twitter, so new services like twitpics allowed you to do that. Of course that all died off as twitter grew and added photo posting into their core features.
What’s amazing to me is
Anyway, fascinating to me that this archive still exists. Long after Elon ruined twitter and turned it into X. So check it out while you can.
P.S. For more context on twitpic, I wrote about it in 2008 here and here. And here’s one more from me: Saturday coffee at Indigo at yonge and Eglinton, Toronto
All taken from a Blackberry. 🙂
If you want to make a case for removing cars from public spaces, I highly recommend you read this piece on Europe’s car-free plazas in Politico.
The pictures alone are striking — seeing these famous plazas jammed with cars instead of open and pulsing with pedestrians seems unbelievable at first. The article also illustrates the path these cities took to achieve these now great spaces (hint: it wasn’t easy at first).
For people who crave better cities, I highly recommend that piece.
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Ina Garten has a new memoir out that’s generating much publicity. Sometimes when I think of her, Martha Stewart comes to mind. For starters, both women have a large following and their earlier career was in something other than food.
But this line from a review of her Memoir got me thinking of how they differ:
I also distinctly remember how different the book (her first cookbook) felt from Martha Stewart and Gourmet magazine and other big food names of that era — Ina’s food was messy and real, without making any sacrifices in quality.
I think that’s part of Ina’s unique appeal. As wikipedia describes her first cookbook, the Barefoot Contessa:
Garten deconstructs simple French recipes like boeuf bourguignon or Baba au Rhum cake. She focuses on preparing foods efficiently, allowing more time to eat and spend with guests.
Post World War II, North American cooking went away from traditional home-cooking and towards French cuisine. (See Julia Child.) later in the 80s it aspired to be broader than that, bringing in flavours from around the Mediterranean, from Asia and elsewhere. Despite this expansion, the cooking aspired to be excellent and involve much effort (See Martha Stewart and Gourmet magazine.) Ina and others who followed wanted to change that: they still wanted their food to be excellent, but without all the fuss.
P.S. to see what I mean, here’s Ina Garten’s take on Julia Child’s boeuf bourguignon recipe which is naturally streamlined.
In a conflict with significant bad actors on both sides, there are no good options for bystanders.In such a conflict, you have three options:
If you take a side, you will be associated with the bad actors on that side. If you try to say “I take this side but I don’t associate with the bad actors on this side”, you will come across as a hypocrite, or naive, or ignorant. And when the bad actors on your side do something wrong, which they will, you will be associated with that wrong too.
You might say, I don’t care. Or the other side is still worse. And that’s fine. But it doesn’t make this option a good one. It’s just an option you are willing to take.
If you try and rise above the conflict, then you will be criticized by both sides for ignoring the bad actors on the other side. In addition, you will be seen as ineffective and weak and irrelevant. Again, it’s an option, it’s just not a good one.
Doing nothing is the flipside of trying to rise above the conflict. You won’t be stuck with having to side with bad actors, but you will be criticized for being indifferent and uncaring, cold and thoughtless.
In life there are often situations where there is no good options to choose from. A conflict with significant bad actors on both sides is one of those situations.
Last week former US President Jimmy Carter celebrated his 100th birthday. This piece sums up how many think of Carter as president:
In the popular imagination, his presidency was viewed as a fiasco. Besieged by inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran, it ended with a landslide loss to Mr. Reagan after just four years. … But Mr. Carter’s presidency was more consequential than is commonly remembered, said Stuart E. Eizenstat, his chief domestic policy adviser in the White House. Eizenstat’s 2018 book argued that Mr. Carter notched significant but overlooked wins, including on energy, the environment and foreign policy.
All that’s true, but it leaves out an important detail. Whatever Jimmy Carter was, he was Not Nixon. Indeed he came across as the anti-Nixon. President Ford was Not Nixon either, but he was still attached to his disgraced predecessor. Carter allowed Americans to turn the page on Nixon in a way Ford never could.
The Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers and then Watergate were a lot for Americans to handle. Carter gave Americans an opportunity to move on from all that and restore the presidency by being everything Nixon was not.
Sometimes presidents come along and act like first responders to a crisis. FDR did that. So did Obama and Biden. In between them was Carter. He restored the country in a way he doesn’t get credit for. Here’s hoping that becomes a bigger part of his legacy.
What does it mean when you say you’re wasting your time doing X?
This question came to me recently when I was sitting on my porch. I thought: why am I wasting my time here? And then I had the follow on thought: what should I be doing this is not a waste of time?
Before I moved though, I asked myself: why was sitting on the porch a waste of time? I concluded I was sitting on the porch because it was a nice summer day and I was enjoying it. In other word, enjoying a nice summer day has no value (i.e. it’s a waste of time).
Now there are other enjoyable I do that I don’t consider a waste of time: talking with loved ones, eating a good meal, going for a walk. So why is this different?
I think I have been conditioned to think simply sitting around is a waste of time, best done on vacation. Otherwise I think deep down I should be doing something productive. it’s a weirdly puritanical view that conflicts with my non puritanical views on food.
So the next time you are doing something you enjoy doing, attach some value to that.
If you are shopping for a gym bag or duffle bag on Amazon, you might be hard pressed to know if the bag you are buying is big enough. Some of them will say they are large but they aren’t really.
One good way to gauge how big a bag is look for its litre size (e.g. 60L) Roughly speaking, there seems to be four ranges that gym bags or duffle bags come in:
If you just have a few items, a small might do it, but something in the medium range might be more versatile and typical for a gym bag. If you have equipment to carry, though, you want to get something in the large or even extra large size, depending on how much equipment you have.
It’s the Fall, a season of change. Let take some time and look at what’s changed and what hasn’t since I last posted.
The obvious thing that hasn’t changed is I am still writing newsletter. Thanks for continuing to read these odd newsletterish posts of mine. I’ve been writing them since the beginning of the pandemic. There’s a certain pleasure in adding another link in the chain.
Olympics: Since the last newsletter, we’ve had the Paris Olympics. That was a nice change for many people. It was a bit unusual, as it used the city for much of the venue. But since it was Paris, the venue was beautiful. Speaking of beauty, here are some of the most beautiful moments of the Olympics. And here are some of the best moments.
While there were plenty of amazing stories coming out of the Olympics, This one of one Olympic ahtlete who competed at age 61 caught my attention.
Pandemic: you might not think there is anything changing regarding the pandemic, but there was a spike in covid over the summer. (Get those fall vaccines when you can.) More on that wave, here.
The kids who were preschool age during the pandemic are now in classes and struggling. Just one of the many long term impacts of that period.
Inflation: lots of good change on this front. Inflation is finally below 3% in the US. Grocery prices are finally falling. Dining out is getting cheaper, at least in the fast food industry, as this and this explain. All good to see.
Work: Some companies are trying to get employees to change their routine and stop working from home. Some, like Amazon, are forcing employees to return to office (RTO) fulltime. Are there also layoffs coming down the pike at Amazon? I am guessing yes. After all, weaponizing RTO is an easy way to shed employees. And while they might be able to get away with this in the US, they should expect legal issues in the UK.
As time progresses, who knows how many offices there will even be in the future? The Times has a good piece on how banks are quietly dumping commercial real estate loans.
USA: it’s an election year in America, which should bring in much change come November. If you want to understand who is leading in the US polls, read this.
A big part of the presidential election comes down to certain states. This piece on swing states explains that for you and why it’s important.
Have you heard of sanewashing? Poynter explains what it means. It will be interesting to see if journalists can allow Trump’s words speak for themselves, or whether they will continue the practice.
When it comes to supporting a presidential candidate, are the Silicon Valley elites right wing or left wing? As this piece explains, it depends. Some, like Peter Thiel, are very conservative to the point of being directly involved in sponsoring JD Vance, Trump’s VP choice, among others.
As for American conservatives on the whole, they’ve had some big wins with regards to US supreme court term decisions lately. Here”s a good piece the dives deeper and assesses the radically right wing Roberts court.
With all these wins, what might conservatives in the US come after next? Possibly no fault divorce. And if you are wondering how conservatives are so successful getting their way legally, here’s something on how they game the US supreme court.
On last American item. I think the fact that insurance companies are going to try to stop losing money because of climate change is going to be a big thing politically and otherwise.
China: things continue to change in China. The government is struggling to improve the economy. The government is also concerned with Russia and North Korea getting closer. Perhaps that explains the big shakeup in the military. This has nothing to do with changes, but this piece by a Times bureau chief exploring his father’s time spent in Mao’s army was quite good.
The World: After winning a landslide victory, Labour in the UK is shaking things up there with plans to remove all hereditary peers from the House of Lords.
Like a lot of cities, Barcelona has had it with too many tourists. To change that, it is ending apartment rentals by foreign tourists. On the other hand, Oslo had a viral ad campaign that is meant to attract tourists.
War continues to shape the Middle East. Israel is now ramping up their attacks on Hezbollah to the north of them. For readers not familiar with the group, this is a good piece on what is Hezbollah’s role and influence in Lebanon.
Finally, people have been worried about AI disrupting the world. While all that worrying was happening, the computer company Crowdstrike caused a massinve outage on computers all over the world after pushing out a change. Talk about disruptive. Not the type of change the world needs.
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As always, thanks for taking the time to read these rambles. I appreciate it.
This is minimalism at its best: a side table concept uses a single wood sheet with almost no offcuts. Smart. Lovely.
Reading this piece by Greg Couillard in Toronto Life (from 2018) brought back tons of memories of dining in the 80s and 90s. Back then fine dining went from being French-centric to representing a diverse range of cultures and flavours. Greg Couillard was at the center of all of that in this city, and the restaurants he and others cooked in drove that change. Whenever he joined a new place, I would grab a table and eat his Jump Up Soup and anything else he was plating. He didn’t stay at places long, but while he was there, the food was great. (In fact the soup was so great the Loblaws bottled it up and sold it in stores.)
It was a treat to read his piece and to recall places like Avec and Emilio’s. A treat to read those old clippings from NOW (shown above). It got me thinking about his soup, too. I’ll have to try and make it some day and relive old times and tastes. It won’t be as good as eating it at his places, but it’s the best I can do these days.
Toronto is a city of abundance. But don’t just take my word on it. In a recent
travel piece on this place, The New York Times described Toronto as…
…proudly multicultural with an outstanding art scene, fantastic food and a patchwork of diverse neighborhoods to explore… this sprawling city — Canada’s most populous — has more to offer than one could possibly digest in a single weekend.
So there!
On the topic of abundance, city hall also seems to have it. Indeed, it is doing much better than it was a six months ago when I last wrote about it. For one thing, local politicians have gotten its finances in order and it is now running a surplus! Much thanks to that should go to the mayor, though of course it is a team effort up to including all levels of government. Nonetheless the Mayor should feel good about that.
Toronto also has a surplus of problems. Case in point, real estate. Commercial real estate continues to suffer. There is talk of converting or even demolishing them. Some Toronto CEOs tried to enlist Mayor Chow with regards to encouraging employees going back to downtown offices. She later said something more nuanced than what’s in here.
The residential market has also been struggling recently, with some Toronto developers saying no one is buying condos anymore. I am not sure about that. After all, housing prices are too high and some say unattainable in Toronto. So something is going to have to adjust.
The TTC has seen some highs and lows in the last while. There are still episodes of horrible incidents happening on it, such as a sword attack of all things. Then there was a major incident so bad the TTC CEO apologized and offered to have open review. Not good.
On a more positive note, it looks like the TTC will be adding service to 24 bus routes with focus on off-peak hours. So that’s good. Also good: the Ontario line is progressing. And multiple subway stations are getting colourful transformations.
Shawn Micallef recently asked if Toronto’s streets are boring and brought in my area, Yonge and Eglinton, as an example. He’s not wrong. But a new park is coming to the area. It will likely get here before the LRT is done. A new grocery store is also coming to the area, which is good, because people here are fed up with the local supermarkets and their high prices.
As for other maligned grocers, here’s a story of the recent loblaw boycott and a statement by their CEO regarding it. The good news is inflation in Canada is really coming down. This may take the heat of them and other food companies in the future.
In other food/bev news, the strike concerning LCBO workers was recently resolved. Good thing for wine drinkers, because the Wine Racks that had been making up for the closed LCBOs almost ran out of wine.
Like other cities, climate change is affecting Toronto. Case in point, the bad flooding we’ve been having the overwhelms place like Union Station and even Drake’s mansion. It didn’t help we had the wettest summer on record.
The film festival has come and gone as it does every September. One frequent visitor is Guillermo Del Toronto, who apparently loves Torontos bookstores. We do have good bookstores. Also good libraries! Not only are they great to visit, but a Toronto Public Library card will help you get access to places in the city! One more reason libraries are great.
As for other parts of Toronto, downtown the renaming of Dundas Square is not going well according to this. Meanwhile over in the Annex there is sad news regarding the hot docs cinema, with a temporary closing and a laying off staff. Here’s hoping for better things for them. Indeed, they may be reopening soon.
I hope so. I loved that theatre — once known as the Bloor — since I first moved to Toronto in the 80s. I hope it is open for business and doing well, just like I hope that for all of the city.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll have another update in another six months!
Too much is made of martinis being dry. Meh. A martini is a cocktail: if you just want to drink gin or vodka straight up, do that instead.
I especially like this Wet Martini Recipe from Pete Wells because it leans into not one but two different vermouths as well as some other ingredients to make a true cocktail. Martini lovers especially should give this a try.
Smart People I Know 