Tag: 2024

The New Dark. A glimmer of good thoughts in a bleak time plus the usual ramblings (i.e. the December 2024 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

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’s hard to believe he won. Many people tried to make sense of it, two examples being here and here. Did it matter that Trump is still an incredible liar? Nope. Did it matter that so many people talked about Trump being a fascist? Not enough. Maybe all that mattered was that voters wanted to punish incumbents everywhere over the suffering of the pandemic, and in this case, the incumbent was Joe Biden (and Kamala Harris). CNN seems to agree.

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.)

It would be another form of irony if after vanquishing COVID due to vaccines, we suffered a resurgence of other diseases due to Trump and his disastrous pick, RFK Jr. (If you aren’t a supporter of or skeptical of vaccines, read this or this. Or read more on the addled thoughts of  RFK Jr. And by the way if you think Canada is immune to that form of thinking, read about how the town of New Glasgow is about to stop adding fluoride to water.)

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.

Taylor Swift was not the only female pop star excelling this year. Us Weekly asked the question: Was 2024 the Biggest Year Ever for Female Pop Stars? I think the answer is “yes”. Grab that bag, ladies.

Not everyone who grabbed that bag felt like a winner. Proof once again that money doesn’t make you happy is the news that despite winning $20 million for this, Mike Tyson still seems heartbroken following the Jake Paul fight. (Although Mike seems bleak, generally.)

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 ….

The Fall. A time of change. Here’s some thoughts on what changes have occurred recently (and what stayed the same) in my usual ramblings for a new season  (i.e. the September 2024 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)


It’s the Fall, a season of change. Let take some time and look at what’s changed and what hasn’t since I last posted.

The obvious thing that hasn’t changed is I am still writing newsletter.  Thanks for continuing to read these odd newsletterish posts of mine. I’ve been writing them since the beginning of the pandemic. There’s a certain pleasure in adding another link in the chain.

Olympics: Since the last newsletter, we’ve had the Paris Olympics. That was a nice change for many people. It was a bit unusual, as it used the city for much of the venue. But since it was Paris, the venue was beautiful. Speaking of beauty, here are some of the most beautiful moments of the Olympics. And here are some of the best moments.

While there were plenty of amazing stories coming out of the Olympics, This  one of one Olympic ahtlete who competed at age 61 caught my attention.

Pandemic: you might not think there is anything changing regarding the pandemic, but there was a spike in covid over the summer. (Get those fall vaccines when you can.) More on that wave, here.

The kids who were preschool age during the pandemic are now in classes and struggling. Just one of the many long term impacts of that period.

Inflation: lots of good change on this front. Inflation  is finally below 3% in the US. Grocery prices are finally falling. Dining out is getting cheaper, at least in the fast food industry, as this and this explain. All good to see.

Work: Some companies are trying to get employees to change their routine and stop working from home. Some, like Amazon, are forcing employees to return to office (RTO) fulltime. Are there also layoffs coming down the pike at Amazon? I am guessing yes. After all, weaponizing RTO is an easy way to shed employees. And while they might be able to get away with this in the US, they should expect legal issues in the UK.

As time progresses, who knows how many offices there will even be in the future? The Times has a good piece on how banks are quietly dumping  commercial real estate loans.

USA: it’s an election year in America, which should bring in much change come November.  If you want to understand who is leading in the US polls, read this.

A big part of the presidential election comes down to certain states. This piece on  swing states explains that for you and why it’s important.

Have you heard of sanewashing?  Poynter explains what it means. It will be interesting to see if journalists can allow Trump’s words speak for themselves, or whether they will continue the practice.

When it comes to supporting a presidential candidate, are the Silicon Valley elites right wing or left wing? As this piece explains, it depends. Some, like Peter Thiel, are very conservative to the point of being directly involved in sponsoring  JD Vance, Trump’s VP choice, among others.

As for American conservatives on the whole, they’ve had some big wins with regards to US supreme court term decisions lately. Here”s a good piece the dives deeper and assesses the radically right wing Roberts court.

With all these wins, what might conservatives in the US come after next? Possibly no fault divorce. And if you are wondering how conservatives are so successful getting their way legally, here’s something on how they game the US supreme court.

On last American item. I think the fact that  insurance companies are going to try to stop losing money because of  climate change is going to be a big thing politically and otherwise.

China: things continue to change in China. The government is struggling to improve  the  economy. The government is also concerned with Russia and North Korea getting closer. Perhaps that explains the big shakeup in the military. This has nothing to do with changes, but this piece by a Times bureau chief exploring his father’s time spent in Mao’s army was quite good.

The World: After winning a landslide victory, Labour in the UK is shaking things up there with plans to remove all hereditary peers from the House of Lords.

Like a lot of cities, Barcelona has had it with too many tourists. To change that, it is ending apartment rentals by foreign tourists. On the other hand, Oslo had a viral ad campaign that is meant to attract tourists.

War continues to shape the Middle East. Israel is now ramping up their attacks on Hezbollah to the north of them. For readers not familiar with the group, this is a good piece on what is Hezbollah’s role and influence in Lebanon.

Finally, people have been worried about AI disrupting the world. While all that worrying was happening, the computer company  Crowdstrike caused a massinve outage on computers all over the world after pushing out a change. Talk about disruptive. Not the type of change the world needs.

As always, thanks for taking the time to read these rambles. I appreciate it.

Hot town, summer in the city! Some cool ramblings for you as summer kicks off (i.e. the June 2024 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)


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.

Besides lives, other things were lost. Students of the time suffered especially: the pandemic had a big impact on them during that time, as this shows. Some even created a delayed prom for the “pandemic class of 2020” that they missed out on during that year. Good for them in trying to recoup what was lost.

Other things from the pandemic soon to be lost are the ghost kitchens restaurants that had popped up. Not lost is the belief that COVID was the result of a lab leak. The New York Times had a piece arguing that for that. It’s persuasive, but not conclusive, in my opinion. More of a downsizing than an outright loss is Ontario’s groundbreaking wastewater testing program, which will be replaced by a significantly smaller federal program.

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.


(Image by Tatsuya Tanaka)

Inflation/crypto/work/office space: Meanwhile the ripples of the pandemic continue in the economy. As far as inflation goes, grocery prices are finally falling. Maybe that’s what is inspiring Burger King to offer a $5 value meal. Speaking of offerings, some Toronto office building landlords are offering free rent. Things are grim in New York too. (Some residential landlords might have to do that, as ‘no one’ is buying condos either.) The fact that it’s been proven over and over again that in office mandates do not work may not cheer up holders of said office buildings.

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.

Was I glad to see that Daniel Radcliffe won his first Tony award and then went on to a fantastic Tony awards after party? I was.

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! Here’s some thoughts and ramblings for the first quarter of the year (i.e. the March 2024 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

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?

Pandemic:  It’s the 4th anniversary of the Covid-19 pandemic and I recommend this piece in the New York Times on it. Related, the Times asked people: what is your earliest pandemic memory. No doubt you have your own. (I have so many photos of the time that I have saved them as highlights on Instagram. I revisit them from time to time: it was an extraordinary time and we should not forget it, though many have.)

The Times has always had great coverage on the pandemic. I recommend this piece, for example. Other good stories: people talk about things the pandemic ruined, and people talk about pandemic relationship regrets. Here’s a good piece on the precaution remnants of the pandemic. This on how the pandemic affected the economy in many ways is worthwhile. So too is this on how COVID affected people’s lives in the US, and this on how the pandemic affected people in the UK.

Finally, I like what Mary Ruefle had to say about the pandemic. It mirrors my thoughts:

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.

Work: since the beginning of the pandemic, things have been tough for America’s offices and the businesses that support them. (More on that here.) Unlike inflation, though, that genie is not going back in the bottle. Indeed, it’s been shown that RTO (return to office policies) doesn’t improve company value, but it does make employees miserable. And companies that try to force it by return to office punishments are finding that it is backfiring. Are empty offices a disaster waiting to happen? According to this, they could be.

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.

Speaking of leaving jobs, Google spent two billion on layoffs severance fourth quarter earnings 2023. Cisco laid off thousands. Companies like Vice and buzzfeed sacked many as well (though Vice CEO Shane Smith did alright for himself).

By the way, this was a good piece on the new media’s rise and fall: Jezebel, an  oral history.

Canada: as for jobs in Canada, 70% of Canadians want to leave their jobs soon. Remarkable. Meanwhile Canada is struggling with the number of students wanting to come to study. Good stories on that here and here.

Also remarkable in Canada was the funeral of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who passed away this month.

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China: it can be hard to know what is going on in China, but you can see signs to get a sense of it. For example, affluent Chinese have been moving to Japan since the COVID lockdowns. Another sign is the rise of attacks from China nationalists on leading Chinese figures.

Perhaps the struggle of  China’s real estate giants tell us something. Certainly the fact that Chinese stocks have lost $6 trillion in 3 years is a sign of trouble. As is its inability to stem deflation. Even I know this is bad. More importantly, economists like Paul Krugman think so. When your censorship starts targetting critics of your economy, your government likely thinks so too.

Russia/Ukraine: Russia remains mired in the quarmire that is its current war. In a surprise to no one, Putin recently was reelected. What was a surprise was a recent terror attack. The follow on torture of the accused perpetrators was not a surprise, sadly.

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.

Trump must be thinking that people are going to forget what his time in office was like, if he is asking Americans if they are better off now than they were four years ago. It may seem laughable to many, but it’s not entirely dumb. Trump is hoping voters focus mainly on grocery prices, which are worse due to inflation.

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.)

Crypto: crypto was always dumb and now it’s practically dead. Sam Bankman-Fried has just been sentenced to 25 years in prison. The Winklevoss crypto firm Gemini had to return $1.1bn to customers.  And what’s left has been taken over by the big boys like Fidelity. I don’t know if I have much else left to say about it, other than point to this good piece by Dave Karpf who just eviscerated crypto’s Chris Dixon with this review of Dixon’s new book.

Culture: culture wise, Sydney Sweeney is having a moment, albeit not a good one, due to right wing misogyny. I suspect she will be fine. I suspect the Oscars will be fine too, despite this scathing critique of how fawning lechery and sheer inanity ruined the red carpet.  During the Oscars there was much talk about the film, zone of interest, although not nearly as much as Ryan’s Gosling performance of I’m Just Ken.

Social media: there was some social media backlash after Robert Downey Jr thanked Mel Gibson in a SAG speech recently, but my only thought was: who cares about social media backlashes any more? Perhaps body positive influencers who suddenly undergo weight loss, but I suspect no one else does. Indeed, the Times asks: has fashion cancelled cancelling?

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.

I’m back and rambling into 2024 (i.e. the January 2024 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

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 would like to say anything to do with web3, bitcoin, crypto, NFTs, etc is dead as a doorknob…but no. Like zombies, it’s coming back in the form of bitcoin ETFs from major asset managers like BlackRock and Fidelity. Caveat emptor, people.

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.

One of my favorite films of all time is Moonstruck. The director of that film was Norman Jewison, who just recently died. The writer of the film, John Patrick Shanley, has a good remembrance of making that film with him, here. Highly recommended.

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.