People are often struck by the imagery in Francis Bacon’s paintings. What could make someone paint such horrible things, I often see people ask.
The answer to their question is simple and can be found here at this page on the website for the Hugh Lane Gallery:
During the Second World War he volunteered to serve in the Civil Defence Corps, where his work involved black-out enforcement as well as assisting with first-aid and rescue at bomb sites. Responding to some people’s reaction to his work being disturbing, Bacon remarked that his work was no more disturbing than life itself.
No doubt being a first responder to victims of bomb blasts would have left Bacon with terrible images searing his brain. No wonder he painted the way he did.
P.S. I thought of this reading some of the posts that the web site Open Culture has on Bacon, here and here and here.
In transit news, the Eglinton Crosstown LRT which was supposed to be open in September? Yeah, that’s not happening. despite the TTC taking control of it the LRT from Metrolinx. At this point I’m just going to assume it’s never going to occur. And even when it does happen, my neighborhood is due for more turmoil. Sigh. More on that here.
a quick aside: for automobile drivers who wondered how they can they get a temporary parking pass, wonder no more! Instead click here for details from the City.
Apparently rents are dropping all over Ontario, including Toronto. Good news for tenants, not so good for landlords. Maybe some affordable places will be built out here in proposed extension at College Park, assuming it gets built. Am I a fan of that new design? Let’s just say I wish College Park was being built out the way it was initially envisioned, as I wrote and showed, here.
Food: if you are in Kensington Market, apparently there is a great new sandwich shop there called Made-Rite. Always good to see great sandwich places opening up to go along with strong line up we already have in place, like La Salumeria, Hot Pork, Ariete E Toro and Bahn Mi Boys, to name just a few.
Sadly one of the mainstay of Annex dining, By The Way Cafe, is set to close after 40 years. I’ve started going there when it first opened and I lived in the area. That stretch of Bloor won’t be the same without it. (More on its closing, here.)
Finally: with the passing away of Giorgio Armani, many a story was published on his life, including this one with a Toronto angle. When I lived in the Annex I would go to Hazelton Lanes often. I never did skate on their lovely rink (shown in the article), though I wish I did.
Thanks for taking the time to read this. I appreciate it! I leave you with a date night photo from the restaurant Sorrel, overlooking one of my favorite buildings in the city.
I don’t write as much about the 80s these days, possibly because the media has shifted their nostalgic articles and stories from that decade to the one that follows. So I have decided to combine both decades in this one post. Hey it’s my annual indulgence, so bear with me. 🙂
The fashion giant Giorgio Armani passed away last week. While his greatness spanned decades, he really dominated the 80s with his flowing and beautifully cut clothing. There was a number of things written about him on the day of his death, but this piece in Wallpaper I found was the best. I’d also recommend this older piece that explains why 80s Armani still matters. And while I was a huge fan of his back in the 80s, as this piece in the New York Times showed, the man never stopped.
Not as many photos in it, but this essay on The Cameron Public House and 1980s Toronto is a fine remembrance of the beginning of an era at that famous Torontoian establishment. Another famous Toronto establishment, By the Way cafe, also began then. Sadly that restaurant will be closing after 40 years. It won’t be quite the same on the corner of Bloor and Brunswick with it gone.
If you want to know what we were eating in the 80s, read this. If you want to know what were listening too, go here.
One of the people I was listening to back in the day was Tracey Thorn. Nowadays she has a reoccurring column in The Independent where she writes about our current times, such as this: seeing endless faces in the city brings me comfort and relief. Always worth a read. Check out her books too.
Moving from the 80s nightclub scene to the 90s, I give you this story on the famous cafe tabac in NYC. If you had gone during that time, you might have seen Kate Moss there. Zara had a special collection devoted to her not so long ago: Collection Kate Moss. This led to coverage in places like British Vogue and The Guardian. It may be the reason why someone decided to write this: why fashion keeps selling us the 90s.
PeeWee Herman was another celebrity who rose to the top in that era. Even if you are not a fan of the 90s or Herman, I recommend a recent documentary on him…it’s brilliant.
It’s not true, of course: everything is not a gift.
But if you take a moment and think: what if this were a gift? How would I think of it differently? How can I benefit from this?
Some people believe every day you are living is a gift. You can expand upon that. Think: every day is a gift, and every thing in that day is a gift, too.
Try taking that perspective when difficult things come your way today. Take out a pencil and a pad and for a few minutes write down the things you gain from whatever you’re dealing with. If nothing else, adversity gives you the chance to get stronger and wiser. Strength and wisdom are certainly gifts. No doubt you can glean out more.
It’s difficult to not think about migrants and natives. So many problems in the world have their roots in who belongs to a place and when. So I was interested to hear about this book: Home Rule – National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants from Duke University Press. The Duke University Press says:
In Home Rule Nandita Sharma traces the historical formation and political separation of Natives and Migrants from the nineteenth century to the present to theorize the portrayal of Migrants as “colonial invaders.” The imperial-state category of Native, initially a mark of colonized status, has been revitalized in what Sharma terms the Postcolonial New World Order of nation-states. Under postcolonial rule, claims to autochthony—being the Native “people of a place”—are mobilized to define true national belonging. Consequently, Migrants—the quintessential “people out of place”—increasingly face exclusion, expulsion, or even extermination. This turn to autochthony has led to a hardening of nationalism(s). Criteria for political membership have shrunk, immigration controls have intensified, all while practices of expropriation and exploitation have expanded. Such politics exemplify the postcolonial politics of national sovereignty, a politics that Sharma sees as containing our dreams of decolonization. Home Rule rejects nationalisms and calls for the dissolution of the ruling categories of Native and Migrant so we can build a common, worldly place where our fundamental liberty to stay and move is realized.
A lot to consider there. Some questions I considered were: Why start at the 19th century? Why not go back to the age of European exploration? What about before that age? Should it be restricted to the Western nations? What are the differences between the Roma in Europe and Europeans in the Americas? What about other persecuted groups that are native but are never considered as a group that belongs to the native group?
No doubt you have your own questions. To learn more about the book, go here.
Everyone should learn to make risotto, and no one should fear it. I was thinking that again recently when I was showing my daughter the best way to make shrimp risotto with peas.
I first recall risotto becoming a big thing in the 198os. Maybe it was risotto milanese, as this noted. At the time it was presented as a difficult dish that was hard to make and easy to mess up. It has managed to keep that reputation into the 21st century, as this piece shows.
You just have to be patient when you make it, adding the liquids a 1/2 cup to a whole cup at a time, then stirring the pot as you add the liquid.
You don’t have to stir non stop, but you should stir it every 10-30 seconds until the liquid incorporates into the rice. When you move the rice and you can’t see any liquid on the bottom of the pan, add more liquid.
Stick to medium-low when cooking the rice in the liquid. Give the rice and the liquid time to do the work.
After you add the 3rd cup of liquid, taste the rice. Is it still hard? You want it to be al dente, in my opinion. Do you prefer it softer? Then keep adding more liquid until it is soft. Generally with a cup of risotto rice, you will want four cups of liquid. Whenever I have used a ratio of 1:4 (rice:liquid) I have had success.
Here’s the recipe for Risotto With Shrimp And Peas by Marian Burros from the New York Times. It’s a winner. (My comments are in the parentheses.)
Yield: 2 servings
Ingredients:
4 cups no-salt-added fish or chicken stock (I used chicken and I don’t worry about the salt. Also most recipes call for warmed up stock)
1 tablespoon olive oil ( or any neutral oil)
½ cup chopped onion (shallot or leek is also fine)
1 cup arborio rice
½ cup dry white wine (you can replace with stock but the wine is better)
½ pound fresh peas, shelled to yield about ½ cup (canned peas are fine. Frozen cooked in the stock is also good)
½ pound shelled raw shrimp (I used a bag of mixed shrimp and bay scallops and that was great)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, optional (at least for fish based risotto)
Preparation
Step 1: In a large saucepan, simmer stock. In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat oil. Add onion, and sauté until it softens. Add rice, and stir to coat. Add the wine, and cook until liquid is absorbed.
Step 2: Add one cup simmering stock to rice. Stirring often, cook over medium-low heat until liquid is absorbed. Repeat with second cup, and continue cooking, stirring often. Repeat with third cup.
Step 3: As rice becomes soft but firm, add last cup of stock. If peas are large, add them and cook about 4 minutes. Then add shrimp. If peas are small and tender, add them along with shrimp. Cook shrimp just 3 or 4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper and serve, with cheese if desired.
Time for my annual review of what I’ve seen happening in the world of robotics in the last 12 months. Progress in robots, unlike other forms of IT, tends to be slower and incremental. Not surprising: robotics is hard. If you look at the robots I featured last year and compared them to these robots, you won’t see dramatic changes. Still, it is interesting to note the progress made and the limitations still encountered.
Home robots tend to be limited to one floor. But according to this, they are close to navigating stairs. That could be a game changer. Maybe some robots will get around your house like this tiny pogo robot does? Call me skeptical. Still, engineers keep trying to give robots more range, as we see here.
One last note: the province of Ontario “began a ten-year pilot program in 2016 to allow the testing of automated vehicles (AVs) on Ontario’s roads under strict conditions, including a requirement to have a driver for safety reasons.” (In my mind, AVs are just another form of robots.) The program is still on going and I expect to see more developments on it. You can read more on that, here.
Thanks for reading this. I’ll be curious to see what happens with robots over the next year. Let’s see!
I used to follow her on Twitter while I was still a user of it. He posts there were always thoughtful and wise. To find out she was writing on Substack was a blessing. To discover (via Bluesky) that she passed away in 2025 was terribly sad.
While she was a philosopher by profession, her writing on Substack is very accessible. And thoughtful. And wise. Give what she wrote a read when you can.
(Image = link to one of her colored pencil drawings on her substack)
In reading Clive Thompson’s latest linkfest, I came across the above painting by Thomas Cole. It illustrates a section of his newsletter talking about how the collapse of empires can lead to benefits for those other than the 1%. I highly recommend not just that section, “3) 🌋 The upside of societal collapse”, but the entire newsletter.
Cole’s paintings imply an arc that goes from Commencement to Desolation, with Consumption being a peak. However based on the newsletter and the book it references to, “Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse” by Luke Kemp, it seems more likely that with Desolation comes an overlapping Pastoral State and that Consumption is bad for all but a privileged minority.
Check out the newsletter and the five paintings to see what I mean.
P.S. The Pastoral State, below, looks good to me. 🙂
One way to avoid doom scrolling is to put down your phone. If you can do that, great.
If you’re not likely to do that, then you need better things to scroll through. That’s likely my route.
To go that route, I am building a list of good sites to visit when I am bored and tempted to endlessly scroll. So far this is the list. I plan to build it up:
Around a decade ago, I put a marker on my blog regarding Peter Thiel, because I thought it worthwhile to track his decline. Last week the pattern of Nazi related activities in the American right got to the point where I thought: I need to start noting these.
First off, Peter Thiel is giving a lecture on “The Antichrist: A Four-Part Lecture Series” of all things. One thing that stood out for me was the reference to Carl Schmitt. In case you don’t know much about Schmitt and his relationship with the Nazis, you can read this.
Next up, JD Vance (who is also aware of Schmitt), said, “I don’t know why we accepted that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our kids. You should not have to cross the street in downtown Atlanta to avoid a crazy person yelling at your family. Those are your streets.” Read that, I thought, I wonder if we should be prepared for someone in the Trump administration to propose Aktion T4. This is a marker to see if they are going to go down that road.
(Photo of Miller, Hegseth and Vance with the National Guard in Washington D.C.)
P.S. For people who say, Americans would never do anything terrible, I would simply start by by pointing out CIA Black Sites, where Americans would “detain, interrogate, and often torture suspected enemy combatants” in extrajudical locations outside the U.S.
It’s been a year since I’ve visited or wrote about New York City. I miss it. Alas I don’t think I’ll be going to the States / NYC any time soon for a number of reasons. There are many in the same situation, so much that it seems to be having an impact. (Although it didn’t seem to limit Paul McCartney, who played a few surprise concerts in NYC in the last year. The man is everywhere.)
In the meantime, I’ve been following along with what’s been happening in the city, especially on the dining scene. After four years of a vegan menu, meat is back on at Eleven Madison Park restaurant. A place once impossible to get into seems less so: hence the addition of meat.
One thing that came about during the pandemic was outdoor dining, but now that the pandemic is long gone, people are wondering: is outdoor dining dying off? I suspect it won’t. New Yorkers remain resilient and resourceful despite difficulties. I mean, you have restaurants thriving without kitchens there. I suspect restaurants will hold on to outdoor dining for some time, too.
Dining experiences in New York are about the Old as much as they are about the New. To show you what I mean, check out Resy’s great guide to New York’s New Old-School Restaurants. You’ll want to hit up some of them on your next visit. Maybe you’ll go to one of the greatest of old school establishments, Keens steakhouse, beloved by old and young diners alike.
While ostensibly about the artists, this piece on the NYC apartment of Jean and Jean Claude Christo’s apartment got me thinking about living in downtown Manhattan when it was grittier. Perhaps that’s why I watched this not too long ago: ‘On the Bowery’. Very gritty indeed.
Like many people, I sometimes want New York to never change, though change it will. This year congestion pricing went in, and it turns out it’s a hit. That was fast. Not so fast is the adoption of trash bins. It boggles my mind, especially since a) no one likes all the rats b) bins wipe out rat populations. Go figure. Another antique thing that should change is the New York’s subway system. Good luck with that Herculean task. That said, they recently retired some of their old subway cars. So even the subway system can adopt.
As for other changes, this piece on the slow death of neon signage in New York made me wonder what the town would look like without bright neon. I can’t imagine it.
While I am a big fan of tiny homes on this blog, I haven’t done a post on them in some time.
I used to do them on the regular because a) I like the idea of tiny homes b) a blog I follow called Yanko Design often posted stories on tiny homes, giving me lots of material to comment on.
As it is, I still love tiny homes, and I still follow Yanko, so here’s four recent posts from them worth checking out:
First up is this cool place in Tokyo. Most tiny homes in North America are horizontal: that one is very vertical (as you can see in the photo).
1. What was the best thing that happened yesterday?
2. Will this enlarge or diminish me?
3. What would it look like to be done for the day?
4. What did you really want to say?
5. What’s the matter?
6. Would I do it tomorrow?
7. And then what?
I don’t think you have to ask yourself these questions every day or in every situation. Instead, use them in the right context. For example, whenever I am faced with doing something difficult, I ask myself #2. Whenever I am blogging, I keep question #4 in mind. If you are aiming for a goal, it’s good to keep #7 in mind before you achieve it.
If those questions appeal to you, go check out his post. He provides more insight into each of the questions that you’ll benefit from if you ask them of yourself this week.
I’ve recently discovered a bunch of math / physics Dover books via Google Books of all things. You can access previews of them based on the link below and also buy them. I like this because I have a tendency to splurge for Dover books only to find my math skills are too weak to make progress. I don’t mind, since I like giving money to Dover, but my bookshelves are too full and this seems like a good compromise. Here’s just some I found good:
Another perk more employees used to have was sabbaticals. I know some jobs still have them, but at one time even tech firms like Apple offered them. Based on this piece, it looks like young people are trying to reinvent them in a way: To Escape the Grind, Young People Turn to ‘Mini-Retirements’.
Forming Storming Norming Performing: those four words you may have seen or experienced at work. The idea comes from here:Tuckman’s_stages_of_group_development. Some teams never go from Forming to Performing, but many do.
Roxane Gay is a great writer who also writes well about work. Here’s her last piece: Goodbye, Work Friends. You’d do well to read the rest.
(P.S. Photo of many of my work neckties and bowties I finally threw out. Many trends come and go and return when it comes to work, but wearing ties is over, I think.)
As diets go, the egg and wine diet — which has an entry in wikipedia, no less — is one of the crazier ones out there. I have always been fascinated by it, but I was curious if it actually worked. Well according to this and also this but not this, it does, kinda. One person lost 7.5 pounds, one lost 5, and one lost only one. No one felt good about it. No one recommends it. I can’t recommend it either, and I love eggs, steak, coffee and Chablis! But if you were ever inclined to do it, read those articles first.
P.S. If you feel you have to lose weight, talk to a medical professional about how to do it in a healthy manner.
Whenever you read a historical book, you owe it to yourself to find good critics of the book. Those critics could be other historians writing other books on the topic. Or they could be book reviewers.
Case in point, the book Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery by Seth Rockman. Rockman writes about “the rise of wage work and factory labor, the relationship between slavery and capitalism, the emergence of a market society, the varieties of coercion under capitalism”. Reading it, you might be inclined to come to the same sweeping conclusion that the author does. I did when I read about the book. Which is why I was glad to read this review of the book, The Hazards of Slavery by Scott Spillman, in the LA Review of Books. In his review, Spillman notes the following:
Following plantation goods allows Rockman to provide an effective tour of how both capitalism and slavery operated in the early United States. He also shows that the Northern and Southern economies were knit together more tightly than our typical caricature of the free North versus the slave South might suggest. All this is welcome and generally well done…
Yet Rockman falls short in his larger ambition to prompt “a rethinking of the sectional geography of a United States where the division between slavery and freedom would eventually start a Civil War.” Like many scholars of slavery and capitalism, he focuses so intently on establishing ties between North and South that he excludes the internal development of the Northern economy from his story. His book is notably light on numbers, but one gets the impression that plantation provisioning predominated only in fringe areas of the industrializing Northeast, while larger manufacturing centers saw the South as just one of many markets. As Rockman himself admits, the production of plantation goods did not power the Northern economy as a whole.
Critics of capitalism might be inclined the come to the strong conclusion that Rockman does. I was inclined to at first. However after reading Spillman, I backed off and considered the situation might be more complicated than that.
The next time you are swept up in the conclusions of a historian, do yourself a favour and seek out other historians on the topic. If nothing else, you’ll have a wider and better view of the history you are studying.
In May I started having problems with my vision. I went to Sunnybrook and after a long series of exams I was told to come back and have a retina specialist take a look at it.
At the end of August I finally got to see that specialist. Given I hadn’t been having any vision problems for weeks, I assumed the visit would be relatively routine.
I say relatively because having your retina examined is never that routine. The way the doctor’s handle your eyeball feels tough, and the amount of light they blast in your eye is intense. You feel somewhat disoriented afterwards.
This visit was even less routine because he said there was still some damage and he wanted to repair it with laser eye surgery. While it seemed like no big deal to the doctor, it was a big deal to me. If the previous tests were intense, this was even more so. It’s not that there is pain: it’s that the intensity of light that hits your eye makes you want to flinch and move. Of course you can’t do that, which means you have to steel yourself to remain steady. Fortunately the doctor knew that so he was good about signalling how long the duration was. Despite that, it was still hard to endure.
I’m glad I got the work done. It’s worth the small amount of intense suffering to prevent going blind. But anyone undergoing such a procedure should be ready with whatever means they have to get through it.
How generative AI works is likely not how you think it works.
What led me to state this was two discussions I’ve had this week about the “design” of gen AI. I think the “design” conclusion that people come up with is based on emergent behaviours of the system. You can shape this behaviour in a number of ways, based on the data you feed the system or some ways you configure the software being trained. However at best you are influencing the behaviour of the system, vs designing the behaviour of the system.
In some ways it’s like taking a bucket of seeds and tossing them around a large area of a field. If you took only seeds of one or two flowers and distributed the seeds so that only these one or two flowers and grew there, you could say you designed the garden to grow these flowers. Likewise, if you divided up the land into rows and planted one type of seed in each row, you can say you designed the garden. However if you have a wide range of seeds included in your bucket and you don’t target the planting of the seeds but just toss them into the ground, it will no longer be considered designed.
That’s why I think gen AI is not really designed. It’s a alot like a big bucket of random seeds not planted in any order. What design you see there is likely how you look at it.
P.S. If you want to explore more on how gen AI works, see this. For a great example of how a gen AI system is built from the ground up, see this.
If you are fan of Saturday Night Live as I am, you may have guessed that cast members get paid well to be on the show. If that was also your guess, then guess again. As this piece shows, the pay is not exactly stellar. Mind you, for some cast members, things have worked very well in the longer term. But in the short term, it’s not all that much. Enough to pay the bills of living in NYC and a bit more.
Still, if fame now and fortune maybe later is your goal, SNL is the way to go.
If you are a frustrated furniture maker like myself, you might want to see what you can make by hacking some IKEA furniture. It’s not the same as getting out the circular saw and cutting your own boards, but it is a good way to combine traditional IKEA pieces with additional material to make something unique for you. Case in point, the raised bed above: made from IKEA without looking like IKEA.
I was thinking about what makes good political art after reviewing the work of Mike Monteiro. One of his encaustic works takes a traditional image seen on Portuguese tiles and underlines it with the message: All Portuguese ships are slave ships. While I like all of his work (seen here), that one especially resonated with me. Possibly because in Toronto (with a large Portuguese speaking community) you can see such art in many places, including the subway. I had always taken a benign view to the representation of such ships before. But this work got me to read up more on the leading role of Portugal in the Altantic Slave Trade. This work had me admiring it aesthetically as well as appreciating it for its political statement.
I think for political art to be good it has to strike such a balance between the aesthetic value of the work and the political value of the work. The work of Barbara Kruger or General Idea or Picasso’s Guernica all strike that important balance. Art where the political message is obscure or art that is merely an illustrated political message is out of balance and comes up short. It’s not that the work is bad: it’s that the work that strikes that balance is better.
For more and better thought on the power of political art, read this. For more great political art, see this. Also much of the work of General Idea and Kruger is political and worth seeking out.
(Image above from the art group General Idea. For more on it, refer to this.)
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.
Anyone who knows me and my blog will know I have always been a fan of Philippe Starck. I am especially a fan of his hotels. So of course I was delighted to hear about this new place he is working on, the Maison Heler hotel (shown above) in Metz in the north of France. It’s fantastic and fantastical, as many of his hotels are / were. It’s worthwhile to read this here and check out the lots more great photos.
While I am a fan of Starck, I aslo a fan of the city of Charleston. Which leads me to point out another great hotel, The Nickel, that has just opened up in that city.
Just as the Maison Heler is a reflection of Starck, the Nickel hotel is a reflection of Charleston. Other than that, they are both very different hotels. To see what I mean, check out this piece here. That piece too is filed with details on the hotel, not to mention great photos.
If you liked those two hotels, I recommend you head over to the website Design-Milk for many more great hotel stories.
P.S. For even more on hotels, specifically hotels next to railways, read this.
Yesterday’s declutter challenge was all about getting the trash out of your home.
Today’s declutter challenge is about putting things away. To do that, you are going to use the pile method. As this piece explains:
To use the “pile method” to declutter a room, start by gathering everything that’s not in its place into a basket. Then, dump it all in the living room, start sorting, and then put items away.
It seems counterintuitive, but it works. I’ve used it for clothes especially, but it can work for any bunch of things lying around.
Some thoughts:
One good thing is once you remove all the clutter, you already feel confident the place can be restored, even if you still have a pile to deal with.
If there are things you know have a place to go, put them to one side. If there are things to go in the trash, put them right in the trash. Hopefully at this point there is a place for everything in the pile. For those things that do not, consider donating them to someone. Or try than the box and banish approach.
Inspired by this piece here in the Washington Post, I am going to challenge myself to do a “trash dash” and see how many of these things in my home I can get rid of in less than half an hour:
Expired food, including spices.
Branded freebies and promotional items like plastic cups, water bottles, koozies, insulated tumblers.
Takeout detritus including plastic utensils, takeout containers, sauce and spice packets, and paper menus.
Food storage containers.
Reusable bags.
Plastic dry cleaning bags and unused wire hangers.
Clothing that is torn, stained or stretched, including items in need of repair
Promotional swag like T-shirts, tote bags and bandannas.
Orphaned socks.
Paper bags.
Receipts and product manuals.
Magazines or books you’ll never reread.
Calendars and newspapers.
Junk mail.
Expired or barely used beauty and personal care products, including makeup, sunscreen and bug spray.
Hotel toiletries.
Dried-up markers and pens.
DVDs and board games you don’t use.
Completed coloring books, puzzles with missing pieces and other kid stuff that has run its course.
Decorative items.
Unused hobby gear.
Give it a try. And if even that seem too overwhelming for you, set a 5, 10 or 15 minute timer and see how much you can collect. I bet you’ll be surprised by how much you get rid of, and how inspired you are to do more.
Don’t make it hard by overthinking it: just grab any old garbage bag or old box and start throwing things in it. If you aren’t sure, toss it in the bag/box and reconsider it AFTER the challenge. The need here is for speed, not contemplation. Go fast, toss things in the bag, and move on.
Sad to hear that another Canadian chocolate icon, the Jersey Milk bar, is being discontinued. The company that owns it, Mondelez, said there was more demand for it’s other products. Hence, the discontinuance. Hey, I get that. It’s still sad to see part of one’s youthful experiences disappear. I really used to like Jersey Milk chocolate. It was different and dare I say better than other chocolate only bars.
Sad too was the demise of a “bar” I loved that many didn’t: Cherry Blossom. It wasn’t a bar so much as it was a mound of chocolate with a cherry filling. It was also a candy that brought up strong feelings, with many saying they hated it. What did they know: I thought it was unique and excellent.
Over at the blog Cup of Jo is a story of the 175 sq foot apartment and the woman who lives there. She has lots of tips on how to thrive in a small space.
I like the bold use of black and white to simplify the decor and make it seem less busy.
Looking at this small apartment reminded me of another small space also featured on that blog, this one being Erin Boyle’s:
Like the first place, Erin’s place is full of well curated pieces. And also like the first place, she is not afraid to put big pieces of furniture in a small space. (By the way, Erin has a book and a substack devoted to her way of life. I recommend both.)
Check out both of blog posts featuring their homes. Anyone living in or dreaming of living in a small space of their own will be inspired.
In an age when the default design approach for devices tends towards minimal and digital, it’s great to see devices that go in a different direction. Take this device:
If it weren’t for the dial, you might have a hard time determining it is a very fun FM radio. I love it. It reminds me of Italian design from the 1980s.
Or take this analog device:
It’s a brilliant way to know the weather outside! I highly recommend you go here to really get a sense of well it is designed and all it can do.
Check out the link for the radio as well. It’s also innovative in it’s design.
While I am a big fan of the Apple Watch, I know some people are put off by the look of it. If you are one of those people, then consider the Withings ScanWatch 2. It’s a good alternative for those of you who want a smart watch that has a more traditional look to it.
Even though it looks traditional, it seem it can do all the health monitoring of an Apple Watch as well. Plus, it has a long battery life and it comes in different materials and colors and has a variety of bands. Nice.
If you need a less expensive version, Withings has a variety of watches at different price points. Lots of other smart products, too. Check it all out, here, on their online Store.
P.S. It’s interesting how closely the product page for the watch resembles an Apple Product page. I’m sure that’s no accident.
What’s great about it is not only does it provide good instructions on how to become a birder, but how in the process of becoming one, you also improve your life.
Any hobby that allows you you to “broaden your horizons” and be a part of “something bigger” is an excellent hobby indeed.
Become a birder, not just to see birds, but to become a better person.
Like many, I love the famous New Yorker essay by Anthony Bourdain, Don’t Eat Before Reading This, published in 1999. For some reason, I always thought he submitted it to the New Yorker as a whim, that the success of it was a fluke, and the great books that followed were simply a response to this essay’s success.
So I was surprised to read this interview of him in 1997, “Potboiler Dreams: Chef Hopes To Write His Way Out of the Kitchen”. He confessed in the interview that he already wanted to write his “dream book, a definitive, foody memoir, a ribald account of my 22 years in the restaurant business that would probably appall and horrify anyone thinking of hiring me.” That dream book was Kitchen Confidential, published in 2000. The man had a plan, and with some luck, the plan succeeded. A good thing it did too, for we all benefitted.
P.S. Here’s an excerpt from the film, “The Big Short” in which the film writers get Bourdain to riff on his fish story to explain financial instruments.
In the last year the thing that mostly preoccupies the world are the actions of the second Trump administration. I suspect that this will also be the thing that preoccupies this this newsletter for the next few years.
Trump 2.0
Tariffs were pretty high on the agenda for Trump’s second term in office. I think he dreamed he could eliminate income taxes and replace them with tariffs. (Never mind that tariffs are just another form of tax, which everyone but Trump seems to know). Turns out, it’s not that easy to get rid of income taxes. And while trying to switch over to a tariff based form of revenue, you get things like shipments freezing up just like in the bad old days of the pandemic. Does any of Trump’s tariffs make any sense? Some try to explain away his actions, but the constant changing of tariff rates on various places seems like madness to many.
It’s not only individuals that Trump is after. It’s also institutions, such as U.S. universities. While his administration has gone after a number of schools, Harvard has been hit especially hard, as you can see here. Why Harvard? Perhaps because they are fighting back, unlike Columbia University, which quickly threw in the towel.
What else? He picked up a free plane from Qatar, just one of many corrupt acts. He also got his wish of having a military parade on his birthday. In the end, many thought it was a failure. What does not seem to have been a failure were the No Kings protests that happened at the same time.
Carney has since paid a visit to Trump and it seemed to go well, but one never knows what will happen at any given week in the White House. Meanwhile Carney has also been courting other world leaders like King Charles and members of the G7, no doubt as a way of dealing with our neighbor down south.
Michelin, which has been to Toronto a few times, has now expanded their Canadian presence by going to Montreal and Quebec and reporting back on all the goodness that part of the country has to offer.
Finally
The great Brian Wilson of Beach Boys fame passed away recently. I’ve always loved his song, “God Only Knows”, and here he is with an abundance of new and not so new musicians to perform it with him for the BBC:
As always, thanks for reading the June 2025 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter! Enjoy your summer.
Over at my other blog, I recently asked myself, “why record at all”. I didn’t have an answer to it until I looked at some old photos like the one above.
I like that photo, taken using a Diana camera of a wooden wall I made. The wall wasn’t very good: I didn’t know enough and didn’t have enough resources to make it properly. As a result, it flopped around and was prone to getting wrecked when a high wind came along. No matter. I was proud I could make that then. And I was happy with the way this photo came out. I am still proud and happy about that.
The record — in this case a photo — reminds me of what I am capable of. It states: you could do that again. At a time when one is plagued by negative self-talk, a record can provide a voice to drown out the negativity. A record can be a voice of encouragement.
There are many good reasons to make a record in any form. A record that can help you regain your better self is surely a good reason to make it.
When people first started putting things on the Web, virtual tours were very cool. Guess what? They still are. Check out this recent virtual tour of the Basilica Santa Maria.
Wednesday seems to be a good day to take a break from your work and feast your eyes on the work of artists covered in these 10+ pieces. There’s something for everyone’s taste, from classic painters to conceptual artists. Enjoy!
For fans of album art, you will want to see the seven LP album covers that the artist Josef Albers designed for Command Records. You can see them here.
For fans of photography, here is a great piece on the Mean High Water project, the stark impact of water, and the photography of Jared Bramblett, here.
For fans of filmmaking, I recommend this interview with Steven Soderburgh.
I had never seen Haring’s “Altarpiece: The Life of Christ” before. I came across it on Google Arts and Letters. Puts me in mind of Warhol’s later religious work. It was also one of his last works of art.
I recently discovered the work of the artist Brian Charney and I was struck by how he captured what was going on in his mind that suffered from schizophrenia through his paintings.
It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that the 21st century is 1/4 completed. When I was young, the 21st century was far off in the future. Now so much of it has already past.
Given this milestone, it seems a good time to look at what some of the best books and films have been of this era.
For films, I recommend this essay in the New York Times of the best films of each year from 2000 to 2024.
For books, I recommend this piece from Kircus Reviews.
It’s difficult to not think about migrants and natives. So many problems in the world have their roots in who belongs to a place and when. So I was interested to hear about this book: Home Rule – National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants from Duke University Press. The Duke University Press says:
If you want to read some thoughtful posts today, I highly recommend 
Over at Austin Kleon’s blog he had a post called 
How generative AI works is likely not how you think it works.
Smart People I Know 