Tag: July

Barbenheimer! Beyonce! Taylor Swift earthquakes! And more, in my July 2023 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter and assorted ramblings.

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. :))

To add to that, there was also the non-stop reporting on the Taylor Swift “Eras” tour.  It set all kind of weird records, like how it added $5B to the world economy. Or that fans at the show generated an earthquake (albeit only a magnitude of 2.3…but still!) Nothing can surprise me with a tour capable of generating $1B in sales.

Sadly for Canadian swifties, she did not announce any Canadian dates. Not even when PM Trudeau sent a personal message asking her to bring shows here. It was a nice try, but one fact I read was her shows play in stadiums holding 70,000 and the biggest arena in Canada holds 50,000. Maybe next tour.

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.

While public health is back to normal, we still see the after effects of the pandemic. For example,  local government jobs are going unfulfilled for many reasons. Companies are quietly packing it in when it comes to them using office space, at least big technology companies in NYC (and I suspect elsewhere). Schools are struggling with chronic absenteeism. And covid the disease is still affecting patients. I suspect these ripples will continue to affect our world for the rest of the decade.

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.

In other legal news, the founder of the Celsius cryptocurrency was recently arrested. Most crypto/blockchain/web 3 news these days will be about bankruptcy and jail.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

July, 2021 pandemic highlights and ramblings (a newsletter, in blog form)

Happy midsummer to you. We are halfway through the summer of 2021 which also means it’s time for my latest blog newsletter.

Pandemic: For some time now, as vaccination was on the rise, the underlying story of the pandemic was “this will soon be over”. Masks were coming off. Indoor dining was on coming back. Travel restrictions were easing.

Now the Delta variant has taken over the story and masks are going back on and cases are on the rise. More on that here. I suspect that for at least the time being, we are still going to be struggling with COVID-19 in its many forms/variants.

Some places are trying to just act like it isn’t happening. For example, Tennessee abandoned vaccine outreach to minors and not just for COVID-19. That bout of madness lasted only a bit of time before the wise folks of that state reversed things. But like the pandemic, that madness is going around. For example,  Alberta is going to try a similar route, ending COVID rules.

Here’s the problem with this, in my opinion: unlike poverty, politicians can’t ignore COVID. If you try and do so, cases rise, hospitals fill up, more people die. People get upset and promise to vote you out. There’s no getting around it. The only way politicians win in that case is when people ignore them and do the right thing. Even then, their poor judgment is going to hurt them come election time.

As for other provinces,  Ontario  is trying to open as fast as it can, but it has a good plan and it seems to be sticking to it. However, daily cases were in the 150/day range and have creeped up to over 200. The plan may not hold.

I’m still hoping Canada is on the way to post-pandemic status. Based on our vaccine rates, it’s possible. But who knows. The pandemic humbles us all.

In other pandemic stories, it’s important to acknowledge that all tragedy did not occur directly because of the disease. In Ontario, more young people died from effects of lockdown than of COVID itself. That story is a good reminder that making choices in a pandemic are never straightforward. The choice of lockdown, while benefiting many, harmed others.

The New York Times has had many a good piece on how the pandemic has affected us. Here’s another: The Year of Purchasing and Purging

Finally, many of you have been forced to work at home during the pandemic. Here’s a silver lining: Introducing a simplified process for claiming the home office expenses for Canadians working from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Non-pandemic things :

 Olympics: It is crazy that the Olympics are going on during the pandemic. There is talk that COVID cases count spike as a result. We will see. As for the Olympics themselves, people are tuning them out. I am not surprised. I know why they weren’t cancelled altogher — a lot of money is at stake — but they should have been.

NFTs: Not much to say here. The fact that Coke is getting into the NFT game tells me that either they are becoming more mainstream or they are petering out.

US: In the US we have a tale of two presidents. The former president continues to be in hot water. First off, it looks like he will be forced to turn over tax records. As well, his actions during the attempted coup of January 6th are getting more scrutiny. Good.

Meanwhile this is what amounts to a Biden controversy: people are upset about his choices of ambassadors. That aside, Biden has a good chance that Congress is going to pass his bipartisan Infrastructure bill. That will be a big win for him.

Another big plus for his presidency is that poverty dropped considerably as a result of poverty aid programs. It’s a reminder that poverty and homelessness are a choice we make.

Finally there was the billionaire space race. I wrote about it here.

Ransomware: Continues to be a problem everywhere including Canada. It looks like Biden has expressed his unhappiness with things to Putin. I am not sure if this is a result of that conversation, but some of the people responsible for ransomware suddenly disappeared.

Lastly thanks for reading this! I appreciate it. Go out and enjoy the summer days while you can.

(Photo by Chris Galbraith on Unsplash)

July pandemic highlights and ramblings (a newsletter, in blog form)

Hey! Good evening (to people in my time zone, GMT -5. :))

Thanks for stopping by.

This is my latest not-a-newsletter of highlights (not so many) and ramblings (many) since the last one at the end of June.

We are still in the era of the pandemic, but we seem to have spin offs of it: in some places, it is getting much worse (e.g. the US, Brazil), in other places it is dying down (e.g. Canada) and then there places it seems to have died down but then flared up again (e.g. Australia). I think the only safe thing to say about this disease in any place is that we are in it for the long haul. Countries and governments that get that will be the ones that do best.

Pandemic: speaking of the pandemic, here are two pieces I found worth highlighting.
First up: As people mostly have to dress up only for work videoconferences, they have adopted some innovative ways of doing this: The Video Call Is Starting. Time to Put on Your Zoom Shirt. – The New York Times Secondly, a reminder: if you are going on a road trip, be prepared for failure and don’t expect things to work the way they did in the past: Canada Reopens, but Little Returns to the Old Ways – The New York Times
Free speech: there’s been lots of chatter about free speech in the US recently. Two things I noticed were the changes at Reddit, followed by the so called Open Letter defending free speech published by Harpers.

My thought on Reddit cancelling the subreddit ‘The Donald’ was: Good. That subreddit had ample opportunity to follow the most basic of rules and they didn’t, as this piece explains: Reddit, Acting Against Hate Speech, Bans ‘The_Donald’ Subreddit – The New York Times

As for the other item, I don’t have much to say about the somewhat controversial Open Letter in Harper’s. I thought it was something of a nothingburger. Others did not: it got plenty of people riled up. For those who think it was somewhat significant, I recommend this piece: Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam | HuffPost Australia.

Also, stop writing Open Letters, people. Get a blog or something. 🙂

Bad thought: There is so much bad thought/writing in the world today, some of which I write myself! Most of it is ignored. But then some of it hits bigger sites, like The Big Think. I like the Big Think. There’s some good stuff there. There’s also some dubious stuff, such as this: End of the world: MIT prediction from 1973 is proving true – Big Think. I was surprised that they would just reference Club of Rome so generally. If you do some research into the predictions of the Club of Rome, there’s many articles debunking them. As always, take anything you read on the Internet with a grain of salt, even if it comes from reputable sources.

Speaking of bad thought,  a twitter cliche is to say “Everything is terrible, but here is something good”. For example:

Not sure why people just can’t say “here’s something to good”. Everything isn’t terrible, obviously. It’s a distorted world view. If you say, “everything is wonderful”, people would rightly give you the side-eye or worse. But say “everything is terrible” and many just nod in agreement. Bah!

More on the US: I found this accidentally while going through the New York Times site recently. It says something about the US that this barely registers as news anymore: 2 Dead in Shooting at Walmart Distribution Center in California, Including Gunman – The New York Times

Remember that couple who came out brandishing guns when Black Lives Matter protesters crashed their gates? Here’s a good follow up story on them. These people are almost Dickensian in their terribleness: Portland Place couple who confronted protesters have a long history of not backing down | Metro | stltoday.com.

I am not a fan of Kayne’s clothing — I find the designs heavy handed, bulky, and colourless – but I found this interesting: Kanye West and Gap Strike 10-Year Deal for ‘Yeezy Gap’ Apparel Line – The New York Times. I could actually see him doing something interesting with the Gap. He could help lift them up for a bit, and maybe he could find his stride with the line. Fans of West could argue that he has been successful with Adidas, and I’ll grant him that. If he and the Gap paired and succeeded, I would be first in line to applaud them both.

I’m just going to ignore the whole “Kanye running for President” non-event.

Canadians: on Twitter, people often flare up and tweet about how smug Canadians are. I thought this was solely a habit of left wing Canadians, but a search through Google showed me it cuts across the spectrum of politics: smug canadian – Google Search.

I find the idea of smug Canadians quaint, to be honest. Canadians have much to be proud of, but I am not sure they should be excessively proud (i.e. smug). And from my limited perspective, I don’t think I have ever met a smug Canadian. After all, we have many faults. And we are secondary at best when it comes to many other places in the world. So,  lots of  reasons to temper our pride. As for our accusers, I wonder if the people wagging a finger at “smug Canadians”  just don’t care for Canadians or a particular set of Canadians? I find it an odd phenomenon.

The rest of the world: I struggle with how blind we are to what is happening in the world because we focus so much on the US and its problems. We miss tragedies like this one. There is unprecedented violence in Mexico now and it barely registers north of their border: Mexico Police Chief Shot in Possible Assassination Attempt – The New York Times.

Finally, something out of this world: I think, based on this, that our understanding of our Solar System is going to change in a big way soon: Beyond Pluto: the hunt for our solar system’s new ninth planet | Science | The Guardian

Thanks for reading this. I hope you found it interesting and somewhat useful.