Merry Christmas to all the smart people I know! I’ve written quite a bit on the topic of Christmas over the years, as you can see if you follow that link. As a small present, so to speak, I’ve pulled out some of my best Christmas links and put them below:
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.
Another thing going sideways is COVID/the pandemic. It was surging in Ontario and other places, but I checked the New York Times and they record hospitalizations going down this week. All I know is the new XBB vaccine booster is out, so you should go get that, people. Get a flu shot, too.
Remember inflation? It too continues to crab walk (see chart above). Same with Donald Trump. He continues to meander through various courtroom preceding in the US. He is currently participating in his civil trial in New York and is expected to testify. He also has a three other trials underway: the Washington Post has more on all that here.
Not everything is going sidewise. In the Middle East, Hamas forces from the Gaza Strip attacked neighboring Israeli towns, killing over a 1000 soldiers and civilians, and then withdrawing with over 200 hostages. In response the Israeli army has repeatedly bombed Gaza, killing 1000s more Palestinians. And that is just the beginning. Likely by the next newsletter Israel will move ground forces into the Strip, resulting in even more loss of life for their soldiers, Hamas fighters, and Palestinians stuck in the middle of the fighting.
As the world watches this unfold, people have been tying themselves in knots in trying to respond. And regardless of whether or not they have responded, they have been criticized. Former president Obama issued this statement on Israel and Gaza and the length of it highlights the difficulty on weighing in on the matter. Personally I don’t think commenting on social media is the way to go, and I wrote about that, here.
A year ago Elon Musk took over Twitter. It’s been a weird time for social media since then. It’s been zigzagging for the most part. Dan Sinker has a good run down of what it’s been like, here. I highly recommend that piece, as well as anything that Dan writes.
In terms of crypto and NFTs, they have more or less scuttled off to their demise. The only thing going on of note is the trial of SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried). It’s not looking good for him, as the Verge explains. We shall see. Anyone wanting to read more about the rise and fall of SBF and crypto should read Michael Lewis’s new Book, Going Infinite.
I wish climate change was only going sideways. Instead it continues to worsen. At the beginning of the month, New York was suddenly hit with crazy flooding that caught them unaware. At the end of the month Mexico was hit with a sudden CAT 5 hurricane. Bad weather from global warming is bad enough: surprising bad weather is even worse.
As always, thanks for reading this, whenever you are reading this. If you are reading this years from now, I hope things improved, and things went from going sideways to progressing.
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.
2023 is shaping up to be a big year for recognizing that the titans of Silicon Valley actually have very little clue how the financial system works. That’s essentially what capsized Silicon Valley Bank: the venture capitalist crowd was long on self-confidence and short on basic-understanding-of-how-things-work.
At some point with characters like Balaji, you have to ask yourself whether he’s putting on a show or whether he really is a fool. There are a lot of guys at the heights of Silicon Valley who put on a similar performance. (*cough* David Sacks *coughcough* Jason Calcanis.) They have money, and they speak with such confidence. For years, they’ve been taken them seriously. This ought to be the year when that presumption of omnicompetence withers away.
I think that quote of how 2023 is going to be “a big year for recognizing that the titans of Silicon Valley actually have very little clue how the financial system works” really can apply to anything, not just the financial system. As Karpf notes, all these leaders in Silicon Valley “have money, and they speak with such confidence” and people take them seriously.
So when Marc Andreessen bloviates on how AI will save the world and how it’s the best technology EVAH, no one says he’s full of crap. They don’t look at how he went long on crypto when others were getting out, for example, and say “yeah maybe he’s not the best guy to listen to on this stuff”.
And that’s too bad. I think we should mock these people more often. We should mock the vapidity of Bill Gates’s recent commencement speech. We should cheer when companies like Hindenburg Research go after Jack Dorsey and block for what a crappy company it is. We should recognize how fraudulent people like Tony Hsieh or Elizabeth Holmes are. We should recognize that these people do not deserve our attention. And if they get it, they should be scrutinized and at the very least, mocked. I mean Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are talking about fighting in a cage match.
These are not serious people. We should stop acting like they are.
As for Tony Hsieh, you can read here how he used companies like ResultSource to make his book Delivering Happiness into a “best seller” (not to mention giving it away). Just another form of fraud. Here’s a good takedown of Tony Hsieh and the emptiness of the tech mogul.
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.
I love this: Ikea and Marimekko have teamed up to create a collection of home goods at affordable prices that are also beautiful. They range in prices from this low cost bag at $2:
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.
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.
Yes, it is mostly stuff you old people may have read before. In that case, it’s a good refresher course for you. For younger people, that’s a good list to read and consider.
I have a love/hate relationship with resolutions. I think it’s good to resolve to change/improve your life, but I don’t think January 1st is the best time to do that. Some argue it’s February, and I tend to agree. Birthdays are also a good time to do that. So is the beginning of a new season.
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.
Remember inflation? 
I wish climate change was only going sideways. Instead it continues to worsen. At the beginning of the month, New York was suddenly 
I really like this piece by Dave Karpf on how 
Ideas: A good source of ideas is Ursula Franklin’s lectures on the 
Smart People I Know 