For the last few years I’ve shared interesting links I wanted to write about some day and maybe I will. Last year it was 28. The year before it was 85. As in other years, I think these links are all interesting, even if I don’t have much to say about them.
For some time I was wanting to write a critique of Peter Singer and his arguments about affluence and morality. So I read a number of pieces on him and his argument here, here, and here. In the end the cartoon shown above (and found here) summed up what I wanted to say, so I leave it at that for now. In addition, I wanted to also write on the correspondence theory of truth (more on it, here) but didn’t. Same goes for Compatibilism.
WordPress blogs are just part of the count; there’s also tumblrs, web sites, and social media accounts too. Some of them are active. Others are projects I’ve started and either completed or hit a dead end.
I find tumblrs are especially good for projects, which is why I started doing small creative projects with them. Some blogs are meant to be ongoing, but some times it’s nice to pick a topic or area you want to go deeper on for at least a little while before ending it. Plus, tumblrs have a lot of different themes, which makes it easier to create a special microsite. You can make microsites using other technology too, but I think tumblr is a good fit for me in that regard.
I likely have some other blogs and sites I forgot about. I am sure there’s some Blogger sites I’ve missed. But that page accounts for most of the ones I have had an interest in.
Well, sometimes an accident can lead to good things. The accident today was mistakenly replacing the theme on this blog, instead of my new blog. When I realized the error, I thought: no problem, I’ll just reapply my old Coraline theme. I thought wrong: the Coraline theme no longer appears on wordpress.com.
Turns out I did fine a theme that was somewhat close: Colinear. At first I was not happy with the change. But I managed to get it close enough back to the old theme I am ok with it. Colinear also has features that Coraline does not have, like the ability to be looser with images inserted in posts. (Before I always had the specify a maximum width of 500. No more!) So some good with the bad.
I hope most people don’t care or notice too much. It will still have the same type of content, regardless of font changes and other design differences. I hope you will continue to like the blog.
Recently I’ve been thinking about the old days of blogging. A few things happened to put me in that frame of mind. First I was reminded of two old blogs I used to love: Sunshine+Design and Color Me Katie. Both of them ended in 2013. I wondered why they suddenly stopped, so I poked around a bit and noticed that Katie moved to posting on flickr and later on Instagram. I suspect that’s how many old bloggers moved away from blogging: migrating from original social media sites like Blogger and WordPress to newer social media like flickr and Instagram etc. They moved on and their blogging days came to an end.
Like Kevin, I am an old school blogger who somehow managed to keep at it into 2025. I use other social media, like Instagram and Bluesky and I’ve even recently started some tumblrs which I will talk about at some time. I’ve started some new blogs too. But I still keep blogging here. Blogs are a medium like anything else: you use them as a way of putting things out in the world. I suspect I will continue to post things on this site and other blogging sites until my end too. It’s good technology, good media.
In the meantime, R.I.P., Kevin. And rest in peace old bloggers and blogs everywhere.
P.S.S. I noticed an account I follow on Instagram, @evgrieve, also has an ongoing blog that started in 2007! For fans of the East Village in NYC — my favorite part of that city — it is recommended.
In writing about my old posterous blog, I started thinking about how I loved to post via email. I thought I would like to do that again. Maybe not for this blog but another blog. A blog not so much about links but about thoughts and ideas.
So I’m going to give this a little test and see how it goes.
PS going to get started with blm849.wordpress.com for now.
From 2008 to 2013, there was a great service called posterous that would allow you to easily blog from your mobile device. You could simply email your blog posts from your phone, and many a late night I would lie down with my Blackberry and blog to berniemichalik.posterous.com. (There are many ways to deal with insomnia: this was mine.)
All those posterous blogs are gone now, but at least I was able to export mine. And from time to time I would post excerpts from it here on this blog under the tag, oldposterous. That was ok, but I wanted a better solution.
My solution was to post the entire posterous blog on AWS. You can find it here at berniemichalik.com/posterous. It goes from newest to oldest post. Not all of them are great, but some are.
This blog, smartpeopleiknow, is mainly a link blog, an approach I adopted a long time ago from people like Jason Kottke. What I liked about that posterous blog was it was more a journal/ideas blog. I might start such a journal/ideas blog again. In the meantime, I can go back and see what I was thinking from 2009-2012, thanks to posterous.
Thanks for read that blog, and as always, thanks for reading this one.
It’s the time of year when it’s darkest in the Northern hemisphere. In my area the sun goes down before five o’ clock. It’s just getting started with Winter, as well. Not a hopeful time, but a time to do what we can. Likewise, I’ll try to do what I can and point out the bright stars in the night sky, so to speak.
When I started writing this not-a-newsletter newsletter in 2020, Trump was ending his presidency and the pandemic was starting. Four years later, the pandemic is done, and he will take over the White House and begin his second term as President.
It would be some form of irony if after stomping out inflation due to the pandemic, Trump brought in new forms of inflation due to tariffs. My own belief is Trump will mainly use tariffs to shake down other countries and enrich himself, but one can never be too sure with him. (For more on tariffs and their effects, read this.)
RFK Jr. is just one of the many terrible actors Trump is raising up on the world stage. Elon Musk is another. In 2021 Musk was Time Man of the Year. In 2022 he bought Twitter, zombified it into X and his own personal megaphone, and now in 2024, after spending $250 million to help Trump, is being spoken of as co-president. I think this will all end badly, but that is going to be a way of describing the next four years in general.
Will Trump bring an end to the Russia-Ukraine war? Will there be peace in the Middle East? Possibly, though I suspect Trump will be used as a tool by others to bring it about, if anything. Maybe crypto will return from the dead? Perhaps the US will annex Canada?? Anything is possible. (Though what is most likely is Trump will waddle back to Mar-a-Lago for golf and personal enrichment and partying with sycophants and leave the governing to others.)
Anyway, enough with focusing on the dark. In bright spots, since the pandemic began, we have seen inflation come down, unemployment go low and the stock market hit a 10 Year high. That’s all good. So is the investment Biden and the US made in infrastructure. And I would be remiss in noting that we mostly have forgetten about COVID-19 because while it is serious, it is manageable, like the flu is manageable.
In other bright spots, Mexico elected the first president who is Jewish and a woman, Claudia Sheinbaum. Rebels in Syria overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad. And despite all the fear mongering on the right when it comes to trans issues, Americans elected their first transgender representative, Sarah McBride.
2024 finally saw the end of Taylor Swift‘s ginormous Eras tour. The tour brought a lot of happiness to Swifties everywhere. It brought a lot of money to the cities it visited, too.
Let’s be less like Mike, less bleak, and more optimistic about the future. There’s lots of darkness in front of us, but lots of starlight too. Let’s keep an eye out for that as we head into ….
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Like last year, over the last 12 months I have found things I would like to write about but never do. I think people should check out these things/links at least, so I am including them all in this Sunday post to read at your leisure. Maybe you can write something worthwhile with them.
Hot town indeed! Toronto has recently suffered through a heat wave as we head into the summer of 2024. We had tremendous thunderstorms, crazy wind squalls, and very high temperatures. And yours truly does not generally do well in the heat. Here’s to that heat subsiding somewhat, although, hey it’s summer, why should I expect?
Meanwhile, here’s a seasonal cornucopia of posts and articles I found worthwhile this spring. I hope you find it worth a read. Maybe they can help you cool off. 🙂
COVID/the pandemic: I should be cool about this, but one thing that gets me hot under the collar is the lack of acknowledgement of death that occurred during the pandemic. In Washington there was the temporary memorial of small flags, but it’s gone. I don’t know of any national memorials in Canada. We should have something national like the Covid heart wall in London, England. It is great that we were able to recover so quickly from the pandemic and get back to normal, but we should do more to remember the loss that occurred.
Indeed, most of the stories I’ve seen with regards to COVID seems to be about putting it well into the past. Perhaps the only way we will remember it is through such things as covid 19 related art.
I would be remiss if I did not mention the death world that is crypto, where the hammer is coming down on Binance’s CZ (Changpeng Zhao). Meanwhile, bankruptcy lawyers for FTX said customers of that cryptocurrency exchange were set to get all their money back, plus interest. At least someone is recovering from the crypto meltdown.
In world news: The American election drones on with Joe Biden having a narrow path to victory. Speaking of drones, the war in the Ukraine continues with drones playing a big part. In other wars, the War in Gaza goes on, despite massive student protests in the US and elsewhere. The war on women continues in the US as well.
As an aside, one promising thing for American women has been the rise of Caitlin Clark and the related rise of interest in Women’s Basketball. As a basketball fan and a believer that women in sports deserve better, I was glad to see this.
In Canadian news: Some day Canada Post will be no more, based on that article. Some day has come for the Canadian journalist Rex Murphy, who recently died. I used to look up to him a long time ago. Also not doing well is healthcare in Ontario. The Ford government continues to underfund it. Remember when we considered healthcare workers heros? The Ontario government should go back to treating them that way.
The arts: a number of the great artists passed away this spring, Alice Munro being one of the most notable. (The Times has a collection of the best of her work, here.) Another favorite of mine who passed on was Joe Flaherty. He didn’t get the recognition of some of his SCTV counterparts, but he was equally great and very funny. And I would be remiss if I did not note the death of another great Canadian, Donald Sutherland.
Not Canadian, but truly great, was musician David Sanborn, who is now playing in the great beyond. (Two pieces on him here and here.) Among other things, he was the host of the show “Night Music”, a show I adored and wrote about, here. May they all rest in peace.
Finally: We had solar eclipse recently. Did Google searches for eye damage jump after it? Sadly in Ontario they did. Did this woman in Texas build a spa for squirrels to handle the killer heat? Apparently she did. The world is weird.
Let me close off with this link to the Lovin Spoonful’s “Summer in the City”. Enjoy the season! I’ll have another newsletter in the Fall, god willing.
Happy Spring! Happy Easter, to those who celebrate. This is my quarter end cornucopia of things I found interesting and worth reading but don’t really fit into any specific category. It used to be monthly, but once a quarter is fine, don’t you think?
Inflation: while inflation is a genie that is pretty much back in the bottle, food prices have remained high. If the Times can (recently) publish pieces like cheap food you should buy on sale and easy and cheap dinner ideas, you can take it for granted that the price of food is still a concern for people. Possibly enough to cause some sitting politicians to lose an election.
Finally, here’s a good piece on who still works from home. And here’s a weird story about how an employee who stayed on a company via a Slack slackbot even though he left the company.
USA: also not a surprise is the upcoming rematch of Biden and Trump over who will be the next President. Jamelle Bouie has a good piece here as to what is at stake.
Speaking of Trump, due to his MANY trials (which the New York Times is tracking), we are finally getting a sense of just how rich he really is and what he really owns (a lot less than you think.) He could be a lot richer soon, based on the takeover of Truth Social by a SPAC…. or may be not? (For more on why SPACs are bad and why he may end up with much less, read this.)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another war, this one on the Gaza strip. I thought this VOX piece was worth a read. (I can never forget the Israeli Plan that propped up Hamas. I suspect many Israelis cannot forget it either.)
Perhaps the inauthenticity of social media lends to it. So much of its content is contrived these days. Like the trick ping pong shots on tiktok or…so much else. All so people can have a modicum of fame. Not that anyone can have much control of that, since social media algorithms ‘flatten’ our culture by making decisions for us. I have pretty much trained Instagram to feed me reels of basketball, which gives me things like highlight reels of Antetokounmpo and Wembanyama and Jokic and it’s..ok? Services like Instagram are so hungry for your attention that they are constantly trying to feed you what you want, even if you want it only occasionally.
I was recently in New York and while I once enjoyed my time during the early pandemic in many ways, it is great to be able to travel and roam freely and eat in restaurants.
Enjoy life, however it presents itself. Life is a buffet: always go back for seconds.:)
Thanks for reading this. Enjoy Spring. See you in June.
After missing last month’s newsletter due to being in the hospital with life threatening injuries, I thought I might just skip on writing my weird newsletter this year. But then I found some good things to share so I thought: let’s celebrate the end of January 2024 with at least one more.
As far as January’s go, it’s been a relatively mild one, other than one week of polar vortex weather. Indeed, there’s been much mildness all around.
Pandemic-ally speaking, it’s also been a bit of a mildness in January in terms of COVID, as you can see from the Ontario wastewater signal:
Before Christmas 2023 there was a lot of talk of the new covid variant JN1 and how it could overwhelm hospitals like those in Ontario, but if it did, I suspect that is subsiding now. If anything, we are now seeing states like California and Oregon break with CDC guidelines and tell people you don’t have to isolate so much any more. As I said last year, 2023 should be a transition year for COVID. It will always be with us, like colds and flu, but we will make less and less of an issue of it by and large.
As for inflation, it’s also looking pretty mild, as you can see from this graph from Reuters:
A remarkable change from the peak of the pandemic. We have been living through some wild years. We could use some more mildness like this and a return to the way it was before the pandemic.
This is not to say everything is going back to pre-pandemic days. Take work. While there has been some people returning to the offices, I am not certain staff will ever fully return. For one thing, workers are more productive working for home. For another, cities and landlords are starting to accept it. New York is in the lead here I believe, with their Office Conversion Accelerator Team. There’s already a pack of offices with conversions underway. I expect more cities to follow NYC’s lead.
A new trend at work is the annual January layoffs. Tech companies like Google and Microsoft went through another round of year beginning job cuts, though it wasn’t limited to those two companies. And layoffs weren’t limited to tech, as anyone in the media can tell you. It was a brutal January for that industry. And then you had inexplicable moves like Conde Nast folding Pitchfork into GQ. Weird.
Relatedly, this piece on the history of the website Jezebel is the story of media from 2008 as told through this one property, imho.
As for that other form of media, social media, there’s really only two platforms that seem to matter anymore: TikTok and Substack. (Sorry, not sorry, Elon.) Here’s two Tiktok stories: one on the sleepy girl mocktail and one on cleantok and performative hygiene. Ugh. As for Substack, this and that report on Substack’s Nazi problem. Good lord. An overall sad state of affairs when it comes to social platforms.
I had some links to share regarding Taylor Swift and Barbie, but honestly you can easily search for that with your favorite search engine. Heck, you don’t have to search for it: go to any major website and they will have a story on them. Three or four stories, even.
I greatly enjoyed watching the Netflix series The Crown during the last few years. Here’s something ranking every episode of the series. A nice way for fans like myself to relive it.
Last, here is an image of one of my favorite restaurants of all time, Prune, closed during the pandemic. I love the image of it below, and if you love it too you can buy it, here.
As always, thanks for reading this. See you in a month, I hope.
November is a month of chills and cooling off. Not just literally but figuratively. So many things have been cooling off, dying off, or just ending this month. Many things, but not all things.
Dying: A year ago cryptoexploded in a fireball. Now all that’s left are the embers. Last month the fraud / conspiracy trial of Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) was underway. How did it go? Well, not great for SBF. He was evasive under cross examination. His lawyers did not do well with their closing arguments. It didn’t help that so many of his coworkers plead guilty and cooperated with prosecutors. In the end it took the jury less than five hours to find him guilty on all charges. No doubt pictures like this couldn’t have helped his case:
The other big player in crypto is Changpeng Zhao (CZ) of Binance. Is? Was. The SEC has been cleaning the Aegean Stables that is crypto and went after him and forced him to plead guilty and step down from him company.
In the end the only people I felt sorry for in all this debacle was SBF’s parents. Do I feel bad for crypto investors? Well in April of 2022 the Financial Times sat down with SBF and more or less explained how SBF’s crypto yield farming was a ponzi scheme. If you had major money in crypto after reading that, then you got what was coming to you, I’m sorry to say.
Cooling off: after being heated in all the ways, China is starting to cool off. Last year China and Xi were at their aggressive peak, lecturing Trudeau and others with their wolf warrior diplomacy.
That said, while China seems to be backing away from invading Taiwan, they are still being very aggressive in dominating the South China sea, as these two stories here and here show. They are still aggressive at home, too, as this piece on China spies campaign shows.
It’s not all bad news for Xi and his country. This is good news, for instance: China’s war on pollution has great improved air quality for their citizens. But things could be better. Will they be under Xi is the question. Read The New York Times piece on Xi’s rule and decide for yourself. Don’t miss this piece by Noah Smith either. Smith thinks the Chinese leader is incompetent and he makes a compelling case.
Dying off: Culturally we may be seeing the dying off of the superhero movies that have dominated screens big and small for so long. The Marvels, the latest film from Marvel Studios just came out and it recorded the worst ever North American opening weekend performance of all those films. The Times put it simply: it floundered.
This has all led Disney, the owner of Marvel Studios, to do some backtracking. They are delaying Deadpool 3 and other such films. TV wise, Disney is not doing great either, as their new series, Ahsoka shows.
On death’s door: well, that would be twitter. I mean it’s been dying all year since Musk took over. But his increasingly mismanagement of the site and his own terrible behavior has led to many companies pulling their advertising dollars from it. Not only that, but increasingly people I used to follow regularly have moved to sites like Threads and Bluesky. I am not sure when it will die off: Musk could keep it on life support for a long time. Dan Sinker’s has a good piece on the site known still as Twitter to read while we sit by its deathbed and wait for the inevitable.
Gone but not forgotten: I hadn’t realized that November is JFK season in the US. Or so says Mark Bittman in this piece: JFK season. Perhaps it always will be, until the last of the Baby Boomers in the US has passed away. Meanwhile we get people still second guessing the JFK assassination. And RFK Jr is hanging around the current election, cashing in on his family name while he spouts his toxic views on disease and race.
Wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine continue to burn on as well. Here’s to better days in both places and soon, though right now soon is no where soon enough. In the mean time I am going to the New York Times for news on the latest developments in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine and I recommend you do so too.
Speaking of endlings, that’s the end of this month’s newsletter. Thanks for reading it. May the next one be merry and bright.
Happy Pumpkin Spice Latte Season for all that celebrate. While I love the season of Autumn, that drink is not one of the things I love about it. I love the fall leaves, the cooler weather, fall fashion and of course Thanksgiving, but I prefer my lattes straight up. 🙂
One thing I don’t love about this Fall is the resurgence of COVID-19. You see evidence of it everywhere, from performers like Steve Martin and Adele having to postpone shows due to it, to things like the COVID-19 wastewater signal in Ontario:
It’s been on the rise since the summer, and doesn’t show any signs of quitting. That’s the bad news. The good news is that vaccines are coming out soon and you can get one. For more details, see here, here and here. Make sure you get a flu shot too.
Also, make sure the spaces you are in are well ventilated this fall and winter. Ventilation is key when it comes to managing any respiratory diseases like COVID-19. While there are CO2 detectors you can get to measure that, you can also get this cool thing to put on your wall.
Like a canary in a coal mine, this mechanical bird stay high on its perch when the air ventilation is good and CO2 is low, and starts to “die” (fall over) as the CO2 levels get worse. You can read more about it, here.
As it was a year ago, the war in Ukraine slogs on. That country’s president was in the US and Canada recently trying to maintain support for their war efforts. Already that support is faltering in places like Poland, which is not a good sign. Not that Russia is having an easy time of things: it has to deal with the Ukrainian counter offensive and it sees itself losing influence over nations it once had a firmer grip on. At some point something dramatic might suddenly end the war, but for now I can’t see what that is.
Last year China was making noises about invading Taiwan. For many reasons that noise seems to have quieted. No doubt seeing Russia doing poorly had something to do with that. An economic downturn can’t help. Indeed, China is suffering from many issues these days, from youth unemployment to deflation to flooding to things like the Evergrande bankruptcy. Perhaps those woes will keep them from adding to the pile with a war.
Meanwhile reading this piece in the Times on office vacancies, you can get a sense of the panic setting in as most workers continue to work from home (WFH).
I thought this was an interesting post pandemic fact: Toronto restaurants are suffering a decline. It’s been a rollercoaster for restaurants these last few years, and perhaps after the lows and then the highs, they are coming into the lows again.
Remember that trucker protest in Ottawa? Well the leaders of that are getting their time in court. As for other protests, a so called “1MillionMarch4Children” protest was met by strong counter protests. I am happy to see such a strong counter protest.
Culturally, it has been a weird time. Stars like Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon have imploded for various reasons. Drew’s was due to her conflct with the actors strike, which continues to drag on.
Hold up, you say! It’s not the end of the year! The year still has four more months!
Sure, fine, if you go by the Gregorian calendar. But if you go by the beginning of the (Canadian) school year, as I do, then the new year starts the day after Labour Day, which is the upcoming Monday. A new year is about to begin. The summer is winding down, and the cooler Fall temps are already sliding into our evenings here in Toronto. As someone who loves September and hates August, I am excited for all the new month and the new year brings.
What about the pandemic? While the pandemic is still dormant, COVID-19 the disease is seeing a resurgence. The Toronto Star has a story on the new COVID variance, BA.2.86 here as does the CBC. For American coverage, the New York Times has more on it here and here. Will this new variant mean we are heading back to lockdown days? I highly highly doubt it. But I would not be surprised to see people in hospitals and other areas at risk wear masks again. Let’s check back in a month.
Should I mention social media, crypto, politics or climate change? Perhaps the next newsletter. Those things will be here with us then, still.
Culturally, Beyonce, Barbie and Taylor Swift continue to reap the whirlwind, adding 11.5 billion dollars to the U.S. economy in the last quarter. Good news! Also good news for Swift fans in Canada: she is going to be coming for a six night stay in Toronto. It should be especially good for Toronto, which could use the windfall her tour brings to places.
Well, that’s it for the newsletter! Short, but sweet. No doubt as we head into the new year / Fall, new developments will pick up and there will be more material on my weird newsletter. Meanwhile enjoy the remaining summer days while you can. And enjoy the gentle Autumn days coming your way too. After June, September is my favorite month. I’ll be enjoy mine: I hope you’ll be enjoying yours too.
Last month I wrote about what’s hot and what’s not. Well it seems like everything is hot this month. Hot and humid. So we are going to gloss over serious subjects like Ukraine and Inflation and get light instead. Let’s go!
Summer Manias: It has seemed like a summer of manias so far. Sure, there was still stories about inflation, the war in Ukraine, and more such serious things. But the focus seemed to be on big time media sensations: Taylor Swift, Beyonce, and Barbenheimer.
Barbenheimer, you ask? Well for those reading this years from now, it was “an Internet phenomenon that began circulating on social media before the simultaneous theatrical release of two blockbuster films, Barbie and Oppenheimer, on July 21, 2023, in the United States and several other countries” (that’s from it’s wikipedia page, no less). The madness was fueled by positive reviews, lots of think pieces, tremendous marketing and then strong ticket sales. Honestly, it was all good fun (at least as much good fun as you could have watching a film about the birth of the atomic bomb and McCarthyism. :))
Swift wasn’t the only one holding big shows. Beyonce has also been wowing audiences with her Renaissance tour, which also seems tremendous. You can read more about it here. Beyonce, Swift, Barbenheimer: it all adds up to people exercising their rights to party and enjoy themselves after too many bleak pandemic summers. I can’t say I blame them. Heck I took in Oppenheimer myself and enjoyed it.
Pandemic: there is nothing light about the pandemic, but there is something positive. It may not seem positive, but it is good news that the total number of Americans dying each day is no longer historically abnormal. So while people are still getting sick from COVID-19, we are back to “normal” in terms of causes of deaths. At least for now. The COVID waste water signal for Ontario is showing a slight increase this month…let’s hope it’s just a blip. And let’s hope that governments continue to fund this monitoring, as this piece argues. We need it.
That said, any good news about that this disease is very good news indeed. There are worse things in the world than having too many tests warehoused because of the decline of this terrible disease.
Social Media: there was a big shakeup in social media this month when Meta announced Threads and it quickly rocketed up to 100 million users (including yours truly). It’s too early to know what this will mean, but if Elon Musk continues his idiotic ways and Jack Dorsey continue with his half assed ways, then Threads could become the dominant company in a place that Twitter once was. (One thing interesting is it seems to be vearing off in a different direction and avoiding politics and news. Could be a wise move. Read more, here.)
Nova Scotia: last month I was writing about people evacuating in N.S. due to fire. This month they had to evacuate due to flooding. Ye gads. I feel sorry for my family, friends and other Nova Scotians suffering through that extreme weather. You can read about it here, here, and here. Awful. Climate change and the terrible effects are starting to overwhelm us.
Donald Trump is still in the news, mainly due to (more and more and more) indictments. Remember, the best way to keep up with all his legal trouble is by signing up to the newsletter indictment.fyi by Dan Sinker. The Times also has a big section on the documents case against him. I still think he will get off, but the legal traps are multiplying rapidly.
To close out, here’s a story on how Adele warns fans about throwing objects at musicians. I’ve seen several musicians hit with phones, including Drake, Harry Styles, and more. It’s insane. Also insane are foot eating competitions. Do you think you have want it takes to win a hot dog competition? Are you sure? After you read this, you may reconsider it.
Thanks for reading, as always. I leave you with this, from Fanny Singer along with mom Alice Waters. They are talking about Fanny’s new cookbook that had come out at the beginning of the pandemic. Just wanted to include it here, as a reminder of how things were.
Summertime! We’ve moved on from late spring into the beginning of the summer season. For some folks, it’s the best of seasons. For me, not so much. But hey, there’s lots to love at least about this month. There’s nice weather (at least in June) and plenty of sunshine and flowers everywhere. I’ve been enjoying it myself so far.
I’m enjoying making this newsletter lately as well, though last June I wrote about giving it up. I’ve had a change of heart obviously. Some of that change had to do with positive feedback I’ve received. Plus I do enjoy going back and reading these newsletters. So you can expect more. Now let me see what was hot and what was not.
What’s was hot: well the forest fires raging out of control in parts of Canada were certainly hot. Though they burned in Alberta and Quebec and Nova Scotia, they impacted everyone, including yours truly. We had some bad days of smoky air, although nothing like what they had in New York. To see the extent of it, I recommend this photo essay in the Verge on how NYC was affected by the wildfire smoke pollution.
In Nova Scotia, they had more than smoke to deal with. People like my sister and her son were forced to mandatory evacuate their homes due to the fires. The fires were spread throughout Nova Scotia, and there was terrible stories of destruction here and here and here and here. It was bad.
The war in Ukraine is definitely hot. Ukrainians are going on the offensive and a quasi civil war erupted within Russia. There’s almost too many links to put here regarding that. I tend to keep abreast by going over the section the Times keeps on the Russia-Ukraine war.
Also hot in an almost radioactive way is Donald Trump. To keep up with all the indictments coming out against him I’ve signed up to indictment.fyi by Dan Sinker. You should too.
Would it be terrible if Trump became the next President of the US? Other than for him, yes. He needs to be president again to stay out of jail and to get richer. To see more about the latter, I recommend this: Trump’s real estate deal with Oman. Just off the charts levels of corruption.
Speaking of corrupt, it is interesting to follow the friendships of Supreme Court justices Alito and Thomas. That the two worst members of the Court are also seemingly in the pocket of billionaires is sadly not surprising.
Due to the changes this year, I think baseball is hot again. This piece from the Upshot is worth checking out if you are interested on how the game is changing.
What’s was not: Well, the pandemic is no longer hot. In fact I’d say it’s dormant, if not dead. I’m still tracking COVID. So is the New York Times. As is Ontario Public Health. But otherwise, not so much.
In fact I’d give the Times lots of credit. They are still covering it, and still doing good pieces like this, on covid and lung damage. They also did this piece on what defined the pandemic that I thought was really good. Not so good was this piece on pandemic fraud waste (not the Times).
I used to associate these newsletters with the pandemic. Heck, it was born in the pandemic. Going forward, I am going to drop that association. I’ll still mention anything noteworthy on Covid though.
Crypto is more ice cold than not hot, especially with the SEC out for one of the last standing exchanges, Binance. You can read about that here and here.
Many times I find things I would like to write about but never do. I think people should check out these links though. So I am including them all in this Sunday post to read at your leisure.
Happy end of May! We are in the back stretch of Spring and heading towards Summer. Sunshine and nice weather and flowers are everywhere. I used to say that June is the best month in Toronto — and it is — but May is a close contender with September as being the second best month. If you are coming to Toronto, any of those months are good ones for a visit.
Also last year, then Prince Charles opened Parliament on behalf of the Queen. Now with the passing of the Queen, he is Prince Charles no more. This month kicked off with his Coronation. Needless to say, there was some Royal family drama. And not everyone was keen on it. But overall it went without a hitch. The rich and famous and other royals were all in attendance. Naturally there was lots of coverage in places like the New York Times and the Guardian.
All and all, pretty posh. All that poshness had some journalists writing pieces on the worth of King Charles III, here and here. For all the talk about a slimmed down Monarchy, it seems like the King has money to spare.
The pandemic is going out with a whimper, rather than a bang. The WHO ended its designation of COVID as an emergency. Even Nova Scotia, that has been more vigilant than most, has ended weekly reporting. As for Ontario, I am still monitoring the weekly stats from the province, but the number of people in the hospital due to the disease is steadily decreasing. It’s both good and weird.
If you still want to keep on top of the disease, the New York Times and the Toronto Star are still tracking things. And me! I post numbers weekly on twitter, for now.
This week I wrote about remote work, which has been a big thing that resulted from the pandemic, as we all now. As a result of this shift from offices to homes, there are now so many pieces fretting about “what is going to happen to all that commercial real estate?”, no doubt generated by people with an interest in said real estate. It’s funny, no one seemed too concerned about mall real estate when it was crashing. I suspect people with office buildings should look to that as to their future. And that future is not all that bad. Case in point, here’s a story of how this toronto mall is transforming a former sears into an east asian food destination.
Commercial real estate is not the only thing that took a hit because of the pandemic. So did companies banking on people staying at home. Shopify is one such company.
But you know who did benefit from this shift? Workers. As this piece shows, working from home gave canadians a big pay raise. If anything, that has helped most people deal with inflation, which is like a bad house guest who just can’t take the hint and go away.
One thing that has changed for the worse these days is social media. Elon Musk continues to generate case study after case study on how NOT to run a media company. So we have his less than brilliant idea on how to monitize twitter blue checkmarks. His failure in making twitter a place of free speech (elon musk tech bosses are letting dictators censor what americans see). And, well honestly it’s just tiring to relate what a colossal failure he’s been. If you are still interested, here’s a good run down.
What about BlueSky, you plead. I mean sure, I guess, if you want to do “skeets” or whatever they are called. If you must know more, you can read this or this. Remember, it’s run by Jack Dorsey, so that may be all you need to know.
I was chatting with someone on Twitter about this and I thought that maybe the “golden age” of social media is over. Clearly the IT crowd and the VCs have moved on to making AI companies. Remember, Twitter itself was always a niche: it has less users than Pinterest for gawd sake! 🙂 Young people today are too busy making TikToks to care about some old fashioned global texting service. Friendster and MySpace all withered away: perhaps Twitter and Facebook will do the same. Might be for the best.
As for me I will still be here at my blog, blogging away, recording the times and my thoughts on it. No matter how many or how few read it. Because this has become my mantra:
I recommend you consider doing the same. Plant that garden, paint that painting, knit that scarf. None of it really matters, and yet it can matter a great deal.
For those of you still reading, thank you! I appreciate you doing so. Now go outside and enjoy those lilacs that come every spring.
Is April the cruelest month? It can be in Canada. This month we’ve had summer like temperatures followed by light snow and freezing weather. It’s kinda what we expect here.
Here’s 90+ things I thought interesting that I really believe you might as well. Something for you to read on a rainy/windy/sunny/who knows April Sunday.
Pandemic: Yes, I am still going on about the pandemic. Hey, whatever public health activity is going on where you live, COVID is still making the rounds. People are still getting sick and dying. There’s a new variant going around: it’s called arcturus and so far it’s just in India. But who knows what could happen with it.
If you still want good data on covid cases, the New York Times has it. Here is a grim reminder of just how badly New York was hit by COVID. No wonder they still track it carefully.
In my last newsletter, I talked about feeling a weird nostalgia for the early parts of the pandemic. I felt that again watching this old clip of the Roots and the cast of Hamilton on Jimmy Fallon performing “Helpless”. I wonder what people will think years from now when they see it?
Elsewhere in the US, guns continue to be a major problem. Here’s the story of one of the worst guns in particular: the A-15. That’s a good piece on a horrible device.
Healthcare: there were a number of pieces on healthcare in Canada at the beginning of 2023. It could be because the provinces were in negotiation with the Federal government for more money. In the end, at least some provinces signed a health deal. I expect all will come around and sign.
Ideas: A good source of ideas is Ursula Franklin’s lectures on the Real world of technology. Austin Kleon was reading it and he reminded me of how good it was.
Famous People: Some major axe grinding in this piece on Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Jennifer Aniston. I think they will all be fine, in their own weird way, whatever skeletons are in their closet.
And on that fun note, I’ll close off this newsletter and the month of April. As always, thanks for reading this and rambling along with me. I hope you found it worthwhile. Happy Spring. Now the good weather comes.
Happy Spring? We’re official through a third of 2023, the year of the New Normal, as I wrote about last time. I want to take the time to go over the shockwaves we’ve been experiencing as a result of the pandemic, as well as talk about what’s hot and what’s not, etc.
Shockwaves: COVID shook the world like an earthquake. And just like an earthquake, there were shockwaves that followed. One of those big waves was the economic shutdown followed by recovery. We have had shockwaves in the supply chains, but those seem to have recovered. Then we had high inflation. The shockwave from that has been taking some time to settle down. I suspect it will, but not yet.
The latest shockwave hit the banking business, with banks around the world suffering the shock brought on by high inflation and higher interest rates that has led some of them to collapse. It’s been shocking to watch and hard to figure out. One thing that helped me understand it better was this podcast with ezra klein and noah smith (there’s also a transcript for people like me who don’t listen to podcasts. :)) This has been an expensive shockwave, as these bank failures led to big wipeouts and the most vulnerable US banks losing 1 trillion in deposits. Needless to say, this led lots of people worrying about their own banks, including people I knew. Among other things, I was referring them to this list: bank report of most exposed to uninsured deposits.
One thing to note: while it was bad these banks failed, it was not the banks most people worry about failing. Those banks, the Global Systemically Important Banks (G-SIBs) are here.
Crypto: Other things that have been collapsing: the crypto industry. There’s still embers there (see Binance), but it looks like winter is coming for crypto. It’s very not hot. More and more it looks like key players like Sam Bankman Fried are going to be going to jail for a long time (You can read about effective altruism and his relationship to it, here.) NFT also continue to decline. The big companies are bailing, like Facebook, who is calling it quits on its digital collectibles.
One particular man has been at the center of all this badness: Peter Thiel. His fund wound down 8-year bitcoin bet before market crash. And he sparked the bank run at SVB. What a … guy.
Work: aftershocks have also been felt at at work. There are lots of tech layoffs, but workers still have a lot of power. Elsewhere Korea is experimenting with a four day workweek. (It’s explained here.) I think we will see more reactions to the impact of COVID as the months continue.
AI: If crypto is cold, AI is hot, and all the attention, money, and skill has shifted over to that. Indeed, some of the people I follow on twitter who were noted crypto critics have now become AI critics. That’s Twitter for ya!
I’ve been writing about AI on separate blog posts, since there is much to talk about. I wonder if it will be still hot, March 2024?
Elsewhere this month, the war continues in Ukraine. Sadly. There is the US presidential race shaping up. Unless either man dies, I think it will be a Biden–Trump rematch. China is making moves, but the daily news concerning it has dropped at least in March. The Oscars occurred. It was fine. Ted Lasso is back! It’s great.
I had more stuff to say, but I think I’ve rambled enough. Just remember, the pandemic is not over, even though it may seem that way. New variants have occurred. Hospitals are managing. People are getting vaccinated AND sick. It’s a tough time still.
I don’t want to feel too nostalgic, though. This link to a chart of confirmed death due to COVID is a sobering reminder of all that was lost. Not to mention people alive but suffering from long Covid. The knowns — and known unknowns — of long Covid, are explained here .
It’s been a weird winter. Most of the time I’ve gone outside and had to remind myself it was February, a month I associate with bone chilling cold and excessive snow. We did get some of the white stuff and some cold this last week, but I suspect it may not last long. It doesn’t seem normal, but we live in a time of New Normals.
Part of what’s driving the New Normal is — you guessed it — COVID-19. Are we in a pandemic, are we not in a pandemic? I think the answer depends on where you live and who you are. For example, if you live in Nova Scotia, you see the province keeping good track of what is happening still with this dashboard. The government of Canada has good tracking too. Meanwhile in Ontario, you can still find the data, but this page feels like the provincial government has moved on or wants to move on. (I feel that way when I see them lump COVID-19 and Flu data together, as if to say: COVID-19 is just normal now, like the flu is normal).
I’m not surprised: this wastewater signal data aligns with the hospitalization data I track each week too. For more data that confirms this, you can see a lot over at the Toronto Star, here.
So in the times of New Normal, COVID-19 is around, and it is a serious disease, especially if you get long COVID. (And yes, long COVID is a real thing that doctors are working hard on.) People are still dying from it. Yet despite all that, the behavior of most people is shifting towards the way things were before the pandemic. We used to talk a lot about restaurants closing a year ago: that has really stopped since then. There’s lots of discussion about forcing workers back to the office: let’s see. There are still many of instances of people wearing masks, but it is more and more the exception, despite what some people may say on Twitter.
Speaking of masks, a badly communicated study from the Cochrane review came out and indicated that masks and other measures were not effective. I was glad to see that places like Vox took the time to show the problems with that study. That didn’t stop hair brained pieces from convervative writers saying mask mandates don’t work. Look, I don’t know what to tell you if you think that. Washing your hands, masking, avoiding crowds and vaccinations are all things you can do to reduce the risk from infectious diseases like COVID-19, influenza, and so much more. If you want to live freer and incur greater risk of dying from a disease, by all means. But you are only kidding yourself if you think public health measures are ineffective.
I think you are also kidding yourself if you think people will/should continue to wear masks all the time and avoid crowds. Yes, it would cut down on infectious diseases significantly. I mean, the flu basically disappeared during the depth of the pandemic. But I just don’t see that happening, because people are …well, people.
As for me, I have my own new Normal. (Likely you do too.) I engage with crowds now, but selectively (restaurants, yes; cinemas and performances, no). I’ve mostly abandoned shopping in stores: I’m an online shopper now. I still haven’t got back to the gym: I need to figure out a better way to get in shape without getting diseases on the regularly from heavy breathing all about. I went into the office: I don’t felt like I missed much, though I enjoyed talking to my manager face to face and I found reading easy on the subway.
I hope we can all find new and better Normals. Perhaps it could be the four day work week. Or a decline in inflation, finally, eventually (I hope). Or an end to the war in Ukraine (now a year old). I’d like to make some predictions on when we get to these new normals, but I am terrible at predicting, so I will leave that to the Times, which has them for 2023. (Let’s check back next year to see how well they did.)
Speaking of losers, Scott Adams continues to demonstrate he is one with his latest racist tirade that has caused newspapers to abandon his Dilbert cartoon. I don’t know what happened to that guy, but then again who knows what happens to guys like him and Kanye and even Musk.
On a lighter note, there’s been lots of talk last month about the owl Flaco who escaped from the Zoo in New York and who is now living apparently his best life in Central Park. Love that for him.
Finally, it’s easy to think winter is over, but we have a way to go, still. Try and get out and enjoy it while you can. I know that can be hard in parts of the country like Ottawa where the canal has not frozen over enough to skate on. Try and make the best of it. Dress warmly.
Soon the snowdrops will appear and spring will be following right behind. Stay well in these times of the New Normal.
Well since then, I’ve surpass my goal of 1,000,000 hits (now at 1,031,207 hits). I wasn’t sure if I could achieve it when I posted that in December of 2020, but just over 10 months later, I managed to make that milestone. I wrote about it, here: Some reflections on reaching one million views on my blog today.
I never did start a separate newsletter on places like Substack, though many others did, I am glad to say. All my newsletter writing within this blog can be found here.
I continue to sit down every Saturday morning and review interesting things I’ve found on the Internet and saved in Pocket. I still take 3-4 hours to write about these things and schedule them to be posted throughout the week. I am sure there is a better way to do this, but if so, it escapes me.
I still enjoy this writing time, too. I have the same routine of getting up on Saturday morning and grabbing some breakfast and a coffee before I craft my posts. Perhaps the only minor change is that I used to take images from Unsplash.com to illustrate things, now they come mainly from pixabay.
Sometimes I find I have more things to say and I could stay at my desk all day, banging out posts. Other times it can feel like a job, and I ask myself: why am I doing this? Mostly though I find it a good hobby and a creative way to think about things and express them in this unique format.
Will I continue to write here? I think so. Maybe some day I will see that no one is reading my posts and I will stop. (That’s kinda happened with my cooking blog.) I used to even fret when I would publish something here and only 3 or 4 people would read it. But recently I have checked my stats and it is gratifying to see posts that get a few reads every day or so have 300, 400, 500 or more reads over the years. It makes me think my writing has some benefit.
To all of you who have read my blog posts and interacted with them in some positive way: thank you! It’s always appreciated. I would like to include you in the group of smart people I know, even if we haven’t met.
I was sad to see that Joanne Goddard, the creator of the blog Cup of Jo, had decided to separate from her husband, Alex. She wrote about it, here: Some Personal News.
I’ve been a big fan of her blog since before she even met Alex around this time in 2007. Over the last decade and a half you can see the arc of their love affair from The Very First Emails Alex and she Sent to Each Other (We Were Nervous!), to stories of their First Date to having kids to…well, now. She and her team have written about many things, but that story, that arc, has always been part of the blog. And now it’s over.
It’s odd to live out loud in public. I get why some people do it, but I think it can be extra painful when things go badly. I think people have learned that after years of social media. Even now for people who are out there, it’s more a persona that is on display than their real self. You need to keep your real self tucked away, I think.
Like her, Paul Simon is another person who has lived out loud in public. On his album Hearts on Bones, he writes about the start of his love affair with Carrie Fisher; on his next album Graceland, he writes about the end. On the song Hearts and Bones, he uses the phrase “arc of a love affair” and on the song Graceland he writes about how “everyone can see you’re blown apart”. That resonates for many of us who’ve been through it.
I have gained much from following her and her blog over the years. I am sure she may feel blown apart, now that the arc of her love affair is ending. I hope soon enough she feels more better, more positive, as time passes.
Blogging was once a big part of social media. A big part of telling our stories. We’ve moved on in many ways, from the social media we use to the way we use it. Regardless, we will continue to tell stories, for ourselves and for others. And the best of stories will remain, whether they are happy or sad.
I think in some ways 2023 may be a transition year. We continue to have transitions when it comes to COVID. We still have new variants like the Kraken (XBB.1.5) that has surged to 40.5% of all infections and rises in hospitalizations. But we take that as a matter of course now. Indeed, there is talk of having annual COVID and flu vaccines. COVID may be more serious than the flu in terms of illness and death, but we may end up approaching them in the same way. No one talks much of flu deaths, and perhaps other than places like Nova Scotia, no one will talk about COVID deaths either. For example, in my province of Ontario it is relatively easy to track hospitalizations related to COVID: it’s relatively hard to report on deaths.
I know because I still have been reporting on COVID hospitalizations every week on twitter for months. My last update was this one:
Ontario COVID Data for 2023-01-26: 1173 currently hospitalized with COVID, 82 are in the ICU, and 28 are being vented (all three numbers are down from last week and on a downward trend)
As I tweeted, the numbers have been dropping recently. Even the ICU numbers, which shot up due to the tripledemic, have declined as the tripledemic declined. Thank god: the pediatric ICUs in November were over 100% full for a time.
So we are transitioning in a positive direction. Good. And not just with COVID. Everywhere you see spike graphs, like this one for unemployment:
My expectation is that the annual inflation rate will continue to transition and decline in 2023, and interest rates will follow them. That is not to diminish the impact that inflation has had so far. Things have reached the point where people are stealing food and law firms are promising to defend them for free. That said, many, including the New York Times, expect inflation to cool this year. Perhaps it will drop back to where it used to be (i.e. below 3%). If you are skeptical, I recommend this piece in VOX.
I suspect crypto will stay dormant for many reasons. One big reason is that tech is going to change its focus from Web3 to AI. Sorry Web3. (Sorry metaverse for that matter!) Microsoft alone is spending billions on it. AI will be all anyone will talk about this year. (No one knew what to do with crypto, save techies and rich people flogging NFTs. Everyone I know seems to be using ChatGPT and the like. That’s a key difference). I’ll be writing more about AI in standalone posts in 2023, there will be so much going on.
In 2023 I expect a continuation of the trend of people flooding back into cities after having left them, based on data like this: Annual demographic estimates census metropolitan areas and census. While residences have become scarce (and rents have become high) as a result, people have not been flooding back into offices. So much so that places like NYC are looking to convert office spaces to residential spaces. The problem with the pandemic is that the changes it has forced on society are more rapid than social systems can respond. But respond they will.
Finally, thanks for reading this and anything else you read on this blog recently. I appreciate it. I am optimistic for 2023 in many ways. I hope you are too.
Keep wearing your masks when advisable. Get vaxxed to the max. Try not to pay attention to Elon Musk or the fate of Twitter: that will all play out in due course. Don’t get too hung up about what AI is going to do: that will all play out as well. Continue to read newsletters. Watch streaming. Listen to podcasts. Most importantly: get out and about whenever you can.
There will always be bad people in the world, and bad acts occurring. Do what you can to prevent that from happening, but don’t rob yourself of your capacity for joy as a result. Be a happy warrior on the side of good. Joy is your armour.
Never forget: you have lived and possibly thrived through some of the most dramatically difficult times in history. You deserve better times ahead.
Enjoy yourself. Live your life robustly. Whenever you feel lethargic, think back to those times of being locked down and unable to even go to a park and sit down. Let’s go and get it. Here’s to a better year ahead. We are counting on you, 2023.
If you don’t know who Matt Yglesias is, the Washington Post has a good piece on him that includes this summary:
The Washington ur-blogger’s slightly contrarian, mildly annoying, somewhat influential, very lucrative path toward the political center
He is all of those things. He has been all those things since the early days of blogging. Andrew Sullivan, another major blogger from that era, used to give out something called The Matt Yglesias Award to other writers who were annoying and contrarian too.
Why I call him inscrutably odd is that I cannot tell if that annoying contrarianism is for effect or if it is just who he is. I used to think it was for effect, but I thought something different with his recent comments on Uvalde. As the Post describes:
Hours after the May mass killing at a school in Uvalde, Tex., he tweeted: “For all its very real problems, one shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the contemporary United States of America is one of the best places to live in all of human history …”
Technically true. But …
“[W]hat the f— man,” New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, who also got his start at The American Prospect, replied in a tweet.
“Real people are experiencing actual anguish right now,” tweeted Yglesias’s former Slate colleague Dana Stevens, “and don’t need your middle-of-the-road ‘Well, actually’ garbage.”
For a smart guy to make such a comment makes me think there is something lacking within him that would say: time to give the contrarianism a rest. Perhaps it was a knee jerk reaction, a result of years of being that way that caused him to automatically blurt out something terrible like that. I don’t know. Like I said, he’s inscrutable.
When he is not being contrarian he can write really thoughtful pieces on topics like housing and the economy that I get a lot from. He is also good at skewering bad ideas from the left and right. To dismiss him like some do is a bad idea.
But then he writes something daft like a defense of the Austria-Hungary empire, a piece where he takes a contrarian position and like a good debater arranges the facts to support his argument, even if it means overlooking the obvious or assuming the opposite. No wonder he can drive people crazy.
Is sharing on the web still worth it? I don’t know.
I used to think it was. When I wrote this two years ago, On blogging/writing online in 2020 (how I write now), I believed it was. I used to like sitting down each Saturday and writing my blog. It felt worthwhile. I also had a goal then: I wanted to get to a million views. That goal has been met and then some.
I am not sure if I have any more goals or things to achieve with this blog. Perhaps I can look to blog less but keep my monthly numbers in the current range of 1600-2500/month. Or perhaps I should be happy for a much smaller number like 1000/month. It’s unclear to me what will feel worthwhile anymore.
It’s hard to know what will be worthwhile to my readers, too. Last year the posts most read here were:
a link to Suresh Doss based on some work I did at the beginning of the pandemic
None of them were my favorite things I ever wrote. The Zara post I once dashed off in 15-20 minutes. I’m glad thousands of viewers thought them useful enough to pay a visit, though. Someone must have found something good.
It’s not just blogging either. I like to share useful things on other social media like twitter and Instagram, but even there I wonder what is the point. Does it really matter? Is it the best use of my time? I don’t know.
Perhaps I need to focus on sharing just things I think will really benefit smart people I know. Otherwise I may just give this a rest.
Another year over. A semi-pandemic year, in a sense. Covid is still with us, but we did not (so far) get slammed with a bad new variant like we did last year with Omicron. Instead the pandemic is lesser than it was, but greater than the flu in terms of the sickness and death it brings. We still get vaccinated, though less than before. Schools are attended (though affected), restaurants are dined in, parties and special events are attended.
Thanks for reading this and anything else you read on this blog in 2022. I appreciate it. I managed to blog about roughly 3000 things on the internet this year. I hope you found some of them useful.
Google is declining in value as a search engine. You can search Google Going Downhill to see numerous pieces showing this. Even Google recognizes this: search for Google ChatGPT to see that they are concerned about how much better a user experience is with ChatGPT versus Google.
It’s not just that Google has declined by itself. What has also contributed to its declining value is the number of sites that have gotten good at SEO. I’ve pretty much given up on searching for some topics: all I get is bad Pinterest boards. Likewise hotels and restaurant searches are dominated by TripAdvisor and Yelp. You can add sites like Stack Overflow to that list. All in all, sites of low value (to me) make Google search results worse.
Locally, I think BlogTO is one of those low value sites. It really hit me this week when I was looking up a story on the demise of Betty’s on King. This recent piece in BlogTO was good. But it’s review of Betty’s? Just a placeholder, really: one sentence summarizing the place. And it’s not just Betty’s. I was doing some research on restaurants and became interested in Parquet on Harbord. Here’s BlogTO’s review of it: again, it’s one line and a poor photo. Meanwhile here’s Toronto Life’s review of it: lots of photos, in depth reporting on the place and the people who own it, context on the restaurant scene on Harbord…you name it.
Now here’s the thing: if you Google places in Toronto, BlogTO’s “writeups” will always appear on the first search page…often ahead of better reviews and even the place’s own website. If you’re mindful of this problem, you may ignore BlogTO and look around. But I am guessing that most people click on BlogTO, find their write up, and then see they have a link to the place’s website and click through. Or not.
That’s one reason why I suspect BlogTO does this: they will get clicks even for these next to useless web pages. I suspect the other reason is to do away with competition. I always wondered why Eater closed up in Toronto when it is still going strong in places like Montreal, not to mention the Carolina’s and other cities much stronger. The stated reason is here. But I suspect it is hard to compete with sites like BlogTO that will settle for a basic photo and a one line description that can be done in 15 minutes, all while coming ahead of you in Google searches.
Not all of BlogTO is bad. Some of their pieces are researched and well written, and I appreciate them. But they also flood the web with barely there pages to dominate searches for Toronto on sites like Google. And that makes it worse for everyone but them.
P.S. Here’s a tip to save you time clicking through on BlogTO pages. If you are on their page and it has a headline like “This restaurant is known for its croque monsieur”, hover your mouse over the URL. You will see the name of the place at the end of the URL. From there you can decide if you want to click through.
Yowza! It’s been a crazy month, this month, between surges in diseases, Twitter turning into a dumpster fire, crypto imploding, inflation hanging on, the war in Ukraine intensifying with seemingly more attacks on civilians, the US GOP becoming more Nazi curious….you name it. Let’s take a look.
In response, people are still wearing masks, though not many. Some people are carrying their own CO2 monitors to tell them when internal air quality is risky. Other people are even making their own. Fortunately new vaccines are rolling out, and you can still get COVID tests for free at some places, although that may be going away. Get that flu shot too, don’t end up being a flu statistic.
Will things gradually improve? I believe they will, but who knows. Some people thought worse variants would come along, but so far so good.
Social media: after years of something of a status quo, social media has entered a meltdown/transformation phase. This has been lead by Elon Musk, who has taken over Twitter. Initially people were wondering: will it matter? Turns out it mattered a lot. He started by firing lots of people. Then he told those left to either be “hardcore” and work under insane work conditions or quit. Not surprisingly, many quit. Other people quitting? Celebrity users. And most importantly, advertisers like GM. It doesn’t help that Musk has loaded up the company with a lot of debt. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, if it even can get better.
With Twitter in chaos, what can users do? Some people like me are considering moving on to other platforms, like Hive and Post and Mastodon. However, the alternatives have not really taken off yet, and in some cases, they are not keen for people like journalists to take their business there. (Maybe they should have read these mastodon tips.) Who knows how it all shakes out.
Other Cool stuff: I’ve recently got an Apple Watch and it is excellent for anyone worried about their heart. Here’s something on how it detects arrhythmia. I recommend the Apple Watch just as a health device. In terms of other devices, if you use a Kindle, I recommend Libby. This is also a cool plant device (shown below).
Inflation: Inflation is like a tenacious beast, hanging on. One place in particular that people are experiencing it is in food prices. Lots has been said about the cost of food these days. Companies like Loblaw have done quite well in turn. There has been some attempt by them to respond to this, despite these moves, I expect there will be more pressure on them in the months ahead. For one thing, the Walmart giant is waking up. Maybe more people will join me and get their groceries there. I’m a happy customer. Let’s see.
Here’s a month end cornucopia of things I found interesting and worth reading but don’t really fit into any specific category. (I would have posted it yesterday, but I had that very important 12 foot skeleton post to submit. :))
As I’ve said before, I like posting these because I will be curious to see how they read in the next 5-10 years. I hope you find it worth reading now, though. And thank you!
AI and art: Artists and non-artists continut to make art and play around with AI. Microsoft is even going to incorporate some of the tools into their software. Where this goes, I am not sure. But here’s something on an artist in Amsterdam using it. Not everyone is keen on it: the Getty is banning it.
Pandemic/Inflation: we continue to make our way through the pandemic as COVID remains a threat. Even though we also continue to try and live with it, the disease has brought big pandemic life changes, Fortunately there are more booster coming out. Also a number of people I know are using CO2 monitors to measure CO2 in indoor spaces. There is still some mask wearing.
In Canada there’s been some complaints about the cost of the arriveCAN system. It was expensive, for sure. This piece breaks down the costs. Meanwhile, some jokers convinced some in the media it could be built for next to nothing at a Hackathon. This just tells me the media needs to get more tech savvy to such boasts.
Meanwhile in Toronto we had an election with poor turnout and mostly incumbents voted back in, including the mayor. People in the city are worried about the fact that the city is cashed strapped and the mayor isn’t going going to do anything about it other than cut services like the Toronto Public Library. Grim. The Mayor was even mocked in this art installation called austerityTO.
Totally unrelated but not grim: the Canadian legend Mr. Dressup is getting a documentary! Nice.
Work: employers continue to struggle with remote work. The Times argues: Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Lean In Employers.. The flip side of that is we get many stories of employers tracking workers. It’s a strange new working world. Speaking of that, here’s a piece arguing for using AI to supercharge workers. As a long time automation specialist, I agree.
Signs of the times: A weird chess scandal broke out recently. I thought these pieces in the WSJ here and here did a good job on assessing it. As did this piece in the Atlantic.
Meanwhile, social media continue to dominate some people’s lives, based on this: Want to Get Noticed by a Celebrity? Snag Their Username on Social Media. Speaking of social media, Facebook/Meta is tanking and Elon Musk took over Twitter. Oh well. Blogging is still going strong! As are you if you are reading this: thanks very much!
Here’s a month end cornucopia of things I found interesting and worth reading but don’t really fit into any specific category. Among other things, I like posting these because I will be curious to see how they read in the next 5-10 years. I hope you find it worth reading now, though. 🙂
China: China has been making noise about invading Taiwan. A recent visit by Nancy Pelosi especially helped stir that pot. Foreign Policy had some good pieces on it here and here. China has been threatening Taiwan with drones, although it will take much more than drones to accomplish it.
The U.S.: While Biden and Trump are likely to be fighting to be president in 2024, others are looking to content. Politico looks at how Nikki Haley raises money. And Josh Barro dismisses Gavin Newsom . AOC ponders if she will ever be president. Some day. Maybe. Finally, here’s a piece on the DeSantis Martha’s Vineyard stunt. Odious. Speaking of odious, Ken Starr died. Politico properly assesses his poor legacy.
Canada: Here in Canada the Conservative party has a new leader. Let’s see how that goes. I’d like to pause for a moment to highlight the interim leader, Candice Bergen. She forced the previous leader out of Stornoway so she could move in. Then she retires. Nice. Have to remember that the next time the Tories complain others not being fiscally conservative. More on that here and here.
a list of random items I’ve been stashing away while working from home in this time of social distancing and the pandemic. Initially my goal was to create a newsletter, and perhaps I still will create one. Most of the newsletters I get, though, read like blog posts. That’s fine. But then why do I need to create a newsletter, when I can just post here. Plus, it will save you another thing to deal with in your inbox. Read when you have nothing else to read.
That was my goal. But pretty soon (as early as June 2020) these monthly posts transformed mostly into what was happening pandemic wise. In that month I noted it was…
…a weird time in the pandemic: in parts of the world, the worst is behind them (e.g. parts of Europe)
“The worst is behind them”. How little did I know! In fact, as the months passed, things grinded on with wave after wave of infections. But there was also progress, as I highlighted a year later in June of 2021 :
Canadians continue to ramp up on getting vaccinated. 30% of the population has been fully vaxxed, including yours truly. Well done!
And now it’s been a year later and most Canadians have not only been vaccinated but boosted. Some — like me — double boosted! And many of us — me again! — got COVID anyway. Got COVID and lived and stayed out of hospitals. Not great but good nonetheless.
But it is not over. COVID-19 is still out there mutating and people are still getting sick and in some cases dying. It hasn’t gone away, only our extraordinary approach to it has. I don’t know what will happen in the fall. No one knows. Many have beliefs. Some are wondering if and when will COVID-19 be endemic? We will just have to do our best and see.
With that, I think it is time to retire this “newsletter”. Truth is, I don’t have much news to share on a monthly basis that you don’t already know. I’m never go to get rich or gain a big following that way. It’s fine. And not having a monthly deadline is a relief.
Unless the pandemic was to be medically and socially disruptive, it will stay done. What I do plan to do is just randomly writing my ramblings posts on general topics. We will see. In the meantime, a list of all my newsletters is here. If nothing else, it’s a somewhat interesting plague journal.
Plenty of things have happened in this period. The worst of people (e.g. Putin, Trump) did their worst and left unpunished. The better people (Biden) did their best, only to be unappreciated. Economies recovered, but inflation sprung up. With luck and strong action, in a year from now the war in the Ukraine and worldwide inflation will be positively resolved. One hopes.
Besides newsletters, the other fad of the pandemic was cryptocurrencies, NFTs, Web3 and all that nonsense. Now with the coming of crypto winter, we may hear less of that. There was also Wordle. Some of you are still playing Wordle, though it seems less so. (if you are, click here to help your score).
We will go on. Thanks to all of you who have read these pandemic ramblings over these many months. If you want to continue to keep up to date on what is happening with Covid, I recommend this newsletter from Eric Topol called Ground Truths. As for me, look here for my (non-pandemic) ramblings and other posts. Take care. Stay well.
Last month, I thought I needed to switch up this monthly missive of a quasi newsletter. Make it a bit more rambling, a bit less worldly and world weary. I decided to push down the pandemic stuff and look at some other things first. I hope you like it.
In Canada one of the big things last month was the streak that Mattea Roach had on Jeopardy. I swear everyone in Canada was proud of her. In fact, it was funny to read the news in Nova Scotia and Ontario, because both of them wanted to claim her for their own. I get it! She’s great!
She caught the attention of not only Canada, but the US too. Even the NY Times did a piece on her. Not surprising: she is newsworthy.
I mean let’s face it, if being rich meant being happy, then Elon Musk would be the happiest person ever. Instead, he is on social media all the time making a fool of himself. Not just due to his trying to buy twitter, but his opinions in general. If you want to read more about what he is/was up to at this time, you can read this or this. I think the less we hear from him, the better.
Speaking of rich, the whole NFT/ crypto/thingamabobs did not do well this month, with articles on their big meltdown all over the place. This says NFT sales are flatlining , but ‘flatlining’ is too kind a word. Finally, I think the Beaverton captured it perfectly . I love the Beaverton: a perfect blend of Canadian humour and perspective. A good counterpoint to all that financial madness.
The pandemic is in a state of transition too. Here in Toronto we have ended our pandemic emergency declaration after 777 days. Wow. That’s a long time and big number. Another big number is the number of Covid deaths in Canada, 40,000, and in the US, 1,000,000. For those who have lost loved ones, the fact that Canada managed the pandemic better than the US is cold comfort. It’s also astounding to think about, numbers wise. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been without vaccines.
I’m also curious to see what happens as people let down their guard. Lockdowns are over everywhere. Concerts and travelling are ramped up. People are still wearing masks, but less and less so from what I can see.
What’s next? Well, hospitals are in transition, if I read this piece correctly in The Atlantic . Also viruses on hiatus during the pandemic are coming back which is not great. Smart people like Bill Gates and others are thinking about how to prevent the next pandemic. I hope we can. We will need lots of effort, smart people and tools. Although I don’t think the metaverse is going to be one of those tools, despite what this piece says. (Wanted to throw a bone to the metaverse here….we used to hear about it all the time. Now, barely at all. :))
There’s been other things happening too, like the Roe vs Wade situation in the US, not to mention the horrible shootings there. Sadly, no transition for the better in either case. And the war in Ukraine still goes on, though sadly it has become less newsworthy.
Inflation has been bad and newsworthy, but I believe it is going to be transitioning for the better. It has been tough on people, though, leading to articles like this: How to put delicious meals on the table as inflation drives up costs. Inflation is good for people with large fixed debt, but bad for people barely getting by. Let’s hope it gets under control soon.
It’s spring, somewhat, here in Ontario. That means one day you can be out walking in the sunshine, admired all the blossoms, only to have a snowfall dump on you the next day. It’s a rollercoaster of a month. You could almost say that April rambles. Much like this newsletter. Here it is, once again! May you associate it more with sunshine than snowfall.
What should you do? Remember, you are more or less on your own now in the pandemic. I’d recommend sticking with masks and social distancing still. If you do still get COVID then here are two pieces on managing it yourself at home: this and this.
One last thing. I go downtown sometimes and see many places closed up. Like the many deaths that have occurred, there is a blindness to it, it seems. I find it throws me off, that we have gone through this terrible event and we are still dealing with it and yet there is a rush to act like it never happened and move on. It’s weird.
Ontario: In Ontario where I live, the province is gearing up for an election. The government is doing what it can to prepare to win the election, including releasing this budget and hoping it can win enough people over by things like eliminating some highway tolls. Let’s see. Meanwhile for those of you concerned about COVID in this province, here is the Ontario COVID dashboard to keep track of.
Ukraine: I don’t have to tell people that life in Ukraine continues to be grim. There are constant stories about it everywhere. Here is a snapshot that shows what life under the occupation by Russia is like.
Meanwhile Ukrainians fight. I support them and want them to be free and independent from Russia. There is nothing good about the situation, just degrees of bad. That’s why I find it is sad and remarkable with how many people in the West are war happy and get excited about shipping more and more weapons to Ukrainians. It may be a necessary evil, but it is an evil in the light of a greater evil.
As an aside, here’s what is happening to one of the few allies Russia has left: Belarus. It’s a place I am keeping an eye on. I suspect the last thing Putin wants is for stuff to go poorly there: he has enough trouble his hands (trouble he is solely responsible for).
USA: There is a weird thing happening on the right wing in the US with regards to moral panic. My belief is that it is a strong reaction on the right to the push on the left against transphobia and other such initiatives. Even Disney got swept up in all this talk about “grooming” and generally abusing kids. You can see part of it here and here . I have a theory that this is partly a blending of moral panic/bigotry and the rise of the Internet. In the days of early trolling there was this bizarre character that was used to accuse people and groups of being pedophiles. (Pedophile being the worst thing you could accuse someone of.) I suspect that right wing push, combined with Internet culture, has led to those accusations being used widely. Gotta love when the sewers of the Internet overflow into the general culture. (Not!)
The right in the US is also in some cases trying to restrict the use of abortion pills. These are all skirmishes on the broader culture war occurring down south, in places like Florida with its battle against “indoctrination” with things like this and this. All events to set up the governor of Florida as being the next Trump. That’s what culture wars stoked by politicians are about.
Speaking of Trump, the first family of corruption continue to make news with stories like this and this .
I had some other ramblings about the world, but frankly it is all too grim. Let’s change gears.
Elon Musk: yeah, no. The man is festering in attention as it is. You can get nonsense elsewhere.
Not fun but useful: do you have trouble finding a notary? It can be hard. If you need one, consider this. I also thought this piece on starling murmurations was great.
Finally, I think I need to switch this newsletter up soon. It has become too worldly, too worldweary. I appreciate you reading it: thanks for that. But you deserve better ramblings. I’ll try to do that. Meanwhile, enjoy Spring!
Spring is here. And with Spring, thoughts turn to getting outdoors. I understand the feeling. People want to enjoy themselves after a tough winter. But hey, if you have a few minutes, I hope you can take the time to read this, my latest newsletter.
Pandemic: Well Omicron rushed out as fast as it rushed in, at least in my part of the world. Just in time to mark the 2nd anniversary of the pandemic. It’s been so dramatic that people are willing to declare the pandemic is over. There’s been constant talk of returning to normal. But what does Normal even mean? I’m not sure, and I don’t think anyone else is either. As this post states, How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal? . There’s nothing normal to return to. Ask Hong Kong. They are dealing with a ‘preventable disaster’. They wish they could return to normal.
Speaking of the Ontario Government, I was disappointed that the Minister of Health decided to stop posting COVID stats on twitter. Fortunately they can be found on a web page. So I wrote a python program called covid.py to scrape the data and output it. I then post it on twitter myself. (You can find the code here.)
Work: As for work life, people have been going into the office. If this will be you and you forget how to dress, then this (on dress jackets) or this (on no suit business attire) may help. It would be nice if the office you went back to looked as green and lush as this. Or they were as open to personalizing your space as Corbusier wanted.
Ukraine: things seem to be reaching new phase in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Apparently peace talks are progressing. We shall see. I am sad to see such needless suffering has been brought on by the Russian government. It is bittersweet that the Ukrainians have held out this far, thanks to their own fighting and the aid of NATO nations. Let’s hope for an end to it soon.
In other news: I was in London last week and I saw the British Museum is getting into NFTs. Sigh. According to this, it’s not just them. (London was great btw. We had a week of sunshine and warm temperatures. It was a perfect vacation.)
Streaming is becoming a bigger and bigger deal. So what are these streaming platforms considering doing more of? Ads. Streaming also had its moment at the Oscars recently, as this piece shows. (What about Oscars and the Slap, Bernie? We don’t talk about the slap no no.)
Inflation is still a concern these days. One way companies are dealing with it is by shrinking the products you buy. Many products are too big, so this could be something of a good thing. Inflation is still a bad thing.
Electric vehicles continue to make progress. A new (to me) competitor for the Tesla is the Polestar . I like how their ads are mainly saying they are not Elon Musk’s company. Tesla’s shareholders should take note.
Thanks again for reading this newsletter. I hope someday it will be filled with things having nothing to do with sickness or conflict. It’s good to be hopeful. See you next month.
Well, happy (?) end of February to you. February has always been the toughest month for me in Canada. It’s too dark, too cold, and both Christmas and Spring seem far away. Perhaps this newsletter can distract you and I from the challenges of this time. Or remind you of them. Sigh.
Pandemic: Omicron came in with a roar and is now rushing back out again. Good. It was very contagious, which means most of us had it but then it was done. I hope that’s true.
Russia: As I write this, Russia is in the process of invading Ukraine. In the short term this is catastrophic for the latter, but the pain of this will soon increase for the former. No one gets to invade a country and not pay the price. Putin may not think so, and perhaps he will quickly overrun the country and put in a puppet government that does all the dirty work. All the scenarios are hard to consider.
America: America continues it’s weird drift away from what it could be. States continue to gerrymander and their Supreme court continues to veer right so hard that even the Chief Justice, John Roberts, has lost control.
Joe Rogan: Everyone has been talking about this guy recently. I don’t have much to say about him. Certainly not much that is good. I certainly am not happy about how he has supported and help propagate COVID-19 misinformation right-wing myths. Not many others are happy about him either. For more on him, such as his other Spotify controversies, you can read this.
Trucker protests: Well after almost a month of shenanigans at the capital of Canada and elsewhere, the “trucker” protest has retreated. It took Trudeau using The Emergencies Act, partially due to some prompting from his critics. Thankfully he quickly withdrew it. Like Joe Rogan, I don’t have anything positive to say about it either. This sums up the delusion of the protesters: The American Anti-Vax Fantasy of Canada’s “Freedom Convoy”.
This is the third calendar year of being in this pandemic: 2020, 2021 and now 2022. True, the duration is technically less than 3 years (March 2020-January 2022) but heck it feels like three years to me. Likely it does for you too. I can assure reading this newsletter will go by quickly in comparison.
Pandemic: The last month has seen Omicron variant slamming into the world with full force, including yours truly. After managing to avoid Covid-19 in all its variant forms, me and the people in my bubble (save my son) managed to get it within a day of each other. Fortunately we were all vaxxed and in some cases boosted. Likely because of that, we all felt sick and weak but nothing remotely requiring a visit to a hospital, never mind a stay. It sucked, and I missed some work in order to rest up (and frankly in the early days I slept most of the day while my body worked overtime to squash those bugs). We are now as healthy as we were before.
And it wasn’t just us. It seemed almost everyone had it. Partially because of all this sickness, we started to see impacts of it everywhere, such as the grocery stores. It seems like grocery stores running out of food, but this piece has what’s really going on. The stores are empty in many parts. But I suspect this will not be for long.
Meanwhile, speaking of the unvaccinated and the anti-vaxxers, in much of the West the walls are closing in on them. Let’s hope that leads to less and less unvaccinated people. Sadly, there is still a big convoy going to Ottawa to protest vaccine mandates. Idiots.
A milder form of protest is in the form of people whose livelihood depends on crowds. Restaurants for sure, but also the arts. It was stated here that arbitrary shutdowns show that most Canadian leaders hold little value in artists. It may seem unfair, especially in light of sporting events going on. But to say that crowded venues are harmless is wrong, in my opinion.
Business: the pandemic continues to impact business and the working world in many ways. Besides food shortages, we also have demand driven inflation. Here’s a horribly wrong take on how to deal with it: What a Socialist Response to Inflation Should Look Like. While I am sympathetic to the impact inflation has on low income workers, price controls will not effectively deal with it. Income supports and other programs would be far more effective.
Crypto: it seems like there is an explosion of discussion with regards to digital finance. While there are many aspects to it, it seems to have centered around the term “crypto”. Here’s a good piece on it from Josh Barro: Why I hate cryptocurrency. Here’s an attempt at a fair assessment Crypto: the good the bad and the ugly. I still think it is mostly bad. Even in areas where it is supposed to be helpful, it isn’t. Case in point: NFT art sales are booming. Just without some artists’ permission. I find the whole topic depressing to think about.
Finally and positively: In general, it is easy to get downbeat in the midst of winter during this seemingly endless pandemic. But it is truly incredible how quickly we have developed a vaccine and rolled it out (and continue to roll it out) around the world. Most people have worked hard to do the right thing and try and end this situation. It is too easy to focus on the bad parts like the antivaxxers and antimaskers, when at least in Canada the vast majority are provaxx and promask and supportive of good initiatives. Let’s focus on that for a moment. Meanwhile do what you can to stay well and help your community to do the same.
P. S. I took a drawing challenge this month: draw every day and post it on Instagram. I failed, but I failed in a “shoot for the stars, land on the moon” way. I didn’t manage to draw 31 images, but I managed to draw much more than I had been in ages. I was glad for that. Here’s one of those sketches: white conte on black paper.
When I lived on Castlefield Avenue I would often see the sky like this walking home late at night. It’s a good image and memory for me. Thanks to my friend and old colleague Karen Maxwell for the challenge.
Happy holidays to you! It’s hard to believe we are almost at the end of the 2021. It’s also hard to believe at times that we are still in the midst of a pandemic, but we are. Let me reflect on that and more in my latest and relatively short blog newsletter for you.
Pandemic: The big pandemic news this month has been the rise of the new variant: Omicron. It’s all very new, as this shows: WHO discusses new COVID-19 variant with unusual mutations. As I write this there is still much happening to determine its impact.
To prevent this, people like me have been getting boosters. If you can, get yours too. Lots of young people have been getting their first shots. When I got mine on Saturday, there were lots of old people like me and lots of kids with their parents.
Meanwhile, there are people in rich countries refusing to get vaccines, like the Chicago police. Fortunately when push came to shove, most people accepted vaccine mandates and got their shots, although some quit. At this point I have zero tolerance for hold outs.
Workwise, The Great Resignation is still ongoing, at least in the US. It will have big ramifications for business going into the new year (and already has is 2021.) Speaking of that, I suspect we will not be going into the office for at least until the first quarter of 2022. Indeed, nearly 80% of downtown Toronto office employees are still working from home . I can’t see that percentage dropping much.
This story struck me: Cape Breton woman says CERB will most likely make her bankrupt . I can’t say why she applied for CERB when she was not eligible. I can say the government should not be so harsh in how it claws back the money. The pandemic is hard enough: impoverishing people is not a good way to fix things.
In other economic news, there are still shortages these days due to the pandemic and the supply chain problems it caused. For example, Ikea won’t be selling Christmas trees in Toronto this year due to shortage . My favorite example of this though is a Santa shortage! Despite all that, I believe the supply chain issues will clear up fairly soon.
Finally: this video mocking the Metaverse and Mark Zuckerberg made the rounds this month and it was excellent: Introducing the Icelandverse
Last word: I hope the holidays are good to you. If you need help during this time, I wrote a number of posts on Christmas over the years. I think they are hood and helpful. You can find them here.
I wrote about my friend Norbert Hoeller and his blog back in 2023. I am happy to report he is still blogging two years later. While he doesn’t post as often as I do, whenever he does post, it’s very much worth a read. I am fortunate to lunch with him fairly often and whenever I do, I learn a lot from him. If you can’t sit down for a meal with him, the next best thing you can do is read his blog. For instance, you can read any of his posts and learn something: on travel / where my baggage, on travel / foreign currency, on hacks / air conditioner battery, on ticks and lyme disease, on hacks / monitoring refrigerator temperatures and on paypal shopping notification.
It’s the time of year when it’s darkest in the Northern hemisphere. In my area the sun goes down before five o’ clock. It’s just getting started with Winter, as well. Not a hopeful time, but a time to do what we can. Likewise, I’ll try to do what I can and point out the bright stars in the night sky, so to speak.
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Inflation: while inflation is a genie that is pretty much back in the bottle, food prices have remained high. If the Times can (recently) publish pieces like 
Ideas: A good source of ideas is Ursula Franklin’s lectures on the 
Smart People I Know 