Tag: pandemic

New York is great, near or far

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.

In other restaurant news, it seems there’s been a resurgence of new restaurants since the pandemic. That’s good to see. Also, it turns out young chefs are saving old school diners. Good for them.

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.

Thinking of old school dining got me going down a rabbit hole of Manhattan nostalgia recently. Perhaps it was all the pieces I read about Lutèce after the great chef André Soltner died. Pieces like this and this and this. Those pieces lead me to read this: Reliving The 1980s: 10 Iconic New York Dining Moments That Defined Decadence. And then this: the 50 year club (i.e. the oldest upper west side shops and restaurants still in business). Which finally led me to this article on the battle for Bryant Park Grill, a famous restaurant which also happens to be a great piece of real estate.

Speaking of real estate, here’s a good story about my favorite building: cooper union is taking back the Chrysler building.

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.

The Lower East Side is my favourite part of the city, which is why I was happy to read about the efforts to save the dive bar Lucy’s in the East Village. Meanwhile for Brooklyn fans, check out this hot pink building there. Or this Maximalist Brooklyn apartment. It’s not all light in that borough though. Check out as this grim piece on Brooklyn deaths possibly due to a serial killer. NYC is not without its dangers.

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.

To close out, here’s a fun piece on the hardest working font in NYC. It looks like the NYPD is having a hard time recruiting cops. And the city is having a hard time figuring out how to bring people back to NYC. New York is never without challenges, no mater how much it changes.This piece by Naomi Fry writing about the famous piece by Jay McInerney on Chloe Sevigny in the New Yorker was very meta. Did I love this piece Jeannette Montgomery Barron’s black and white portraits of artists in Downtown New York in the 1980s? You know I did. Included in it is this photo of John Lurie, taken in 1982. Cool, like the city he was in.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. See you in a year when I post my annual appreciation of the greatest city in the world.

Heat dome! Some thoughts – hot and not – and the usual ramblings midyear year (i.e. the June 2025 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

The first half of 2025 is done, and if you’re living in Central Canada, you’ve just suffered through some face melting heat caused by a heat dome. That was a new experience for me. I’ve suffered heat waves, but not a heat dome. It’s a new way of suffering. Fortunately it did not last long, and cooler temps have brought some relief.

Once the main focus of this newsletter was the pandemic and COVID, because for the previous 5 years that was the thing that most preoccupied people. While COVID is still around, it has diminished to the point that the flu is deadlier than it in some parts of the world.

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.

When Trump hasn’t been applying tariffs on everyone including penguins and seals, he has been out seeking revenge.  It’s pretty common knowledge that Trump has a revenge list.  For those on the list, it will be interesting to see who he attacks over the term of his administration. I suspect he’ll get to most of them. Of those already attacked, many are struggling to respond. The ones that did respond by caving to Trump are losing in other ways.

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.

He’s even taking his fight to the Justice system itself. Some are wondering if the Supreme Court would stop him. Short answer is nope, it didn’t, although they are pushing back ever so slightly. While the SCOTUS is giving Trump a pass, judges in lower courts are struggling to provide some sense of justice despite this onslaught from Trump attorneys in the Justice Department.

As for other attacks, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention his wrongful deporting of individuals to other countries, the wrongful arrests of citizens by ICE, and the sending of marines to Los Angeles.  Honestly it’s too much to cover, but that’s the point.

It’s not all tariffs and attacks, mind you. For instance, he’s found time to redo parts of the White House. Much has been written about his weird Oval Office decoration (this is the guy who keeps a fake Renoir painting in his New York Home). Not surprising, the new look doesn’t even seem to be expensive, just cheap and gaudy.

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.

Musk

Speaking of failure, Elon Musk has slunk off from Washington, black eye and all. Like so many others, Musk learned that Trump will use you and then be done with you. There was some initial speculation that he was not really leaving, but that seems unfounded. (It didn’t help him that he got into literal fights with other members of Trump cabinet, which likely explains these leaks about his weird beavoir and drug misuse).

Musk really believed he and DOGE boys would find 2 trillion dollars in savings as they slashed and burned through much of the administration in Washington. Instead he cost the US government massive amounts of revenue, largely due to IRS cuts. And while DOGE was a failure in itself — some are already calling it over — Trump’s spending bill undermined any savings DOGE might have achieved. (For those interested, check out this DOGE tracker for more info.)

Elon Musk leaves behind a legacy of disease, starvation and death during his short time in Washington. Hope it was worth it for him.

The Pope

While all that was happening, Pope Francis died this Easter Monday. After a relatively short conclave, an American was chosen as the next pope, Leo XIV.

Needless to say, this lead to a slew of news stories, such as  how the new pope came up with his name and how the Cardinals were watching the movie “Conclave” for guidance. Of course while Trump was at the funeral he drew attention for the way he dressed and his supposed desire to be Pope. Whatever. Unlike Trump and Musk, Pope Francis left a good legacy and tried to live a good life, as seen here.

Canada

One weird counter-effect Trump has had on the world is damaging political parties that are aligned in some way to him. This happened in Canada, with Mark Carney and the Liberals surging from behind to win the recent Federal election. (Results here.) It helped that Carney’s Liberals won big in Toronto, despite Conservatives flipping key 905 seats.

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.

In other news

Are things still terrible in the Middle East? Of course. If anything, things are only getting worse. Ukraine? Yes. Is crypto making a comeback? Sadly I think so.

Are we in for a wave of disease and suffering due to people like RFK, Jr? It’s likely. Mind you, measles is surging in Alberta. Foolishness like this doesn’t help.

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.

 

It’s spring: out with the old scourge, in with the new! (i.e. the March 2025 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter is here)

It’s another spring. Five springs ago was the start of the old scourge, the pandemic. This spring we have the new scourge of the Trump administration. Both had/are having an effect on everyone around the globe. Both moved/are moving fast and caused/are causing major damage.

You might say: wow, I’m not sure if I want to read all this! I understand. If you want to scroll quickly down to the World section…wait, that’s not too cheerful either….to the…ok, maybe scroll down to the bottom. Or come back in five years and read this in perspective! Whatever you do, I don’t mind. For those of you who can manage, let’s start with the old scourge.

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Pandemic: there’s been much focus in the news on the 5th Anniversary of lockdown. The Toronto Star did a piece on how the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown taught us all some lessons. On the other hand, The Washington Post asked, Five years after covid pandemic: Have we learned anything? and wondered why we are so good at forgeting the pandemic lockdown. To help us remember, WaPo also did this piece on powerful photos that captured their pandemic struggles and then asked, where are they now? Over at the New York Times they presented this, Covid-19: Enduring Images of a Global Crisis, 5 Years On and this: a coronavirus timeline.  The CBC weighed in with this: Five years after pandemic began, COVID-19 has left death, illness, isolation in its wake.

The pandemic was a massive event in our lives. It is good that many are choosing not to simply act like it never happened.  If you choose to look, you can still see markers of the pandemic everywhere. You can still see remnants of COVID warnings still on doors and sidewalks.

Not all pandemic markers are visible. So many people died of COVID that Social Security in the U.S. ended up with a surplus of funds. And while for many of us, life has gone back to normal, those with long COVID continue to suffer. Likewise, young people were often deeply affected by what happened.  The Times talked to teenagers and asked them how the pandemic has changed them. And not just young people: public servants confessed on how sharing science about COVID put them in the crosshairs.

One of the weirdest parts about the pandemic is that it likely led to people resisting getting vaccines, possibly because they felt the COVID-19 vaccines were forced upon them. It appears that vaccination rates are declining and measles cases are climbing. And if that’s not bad enough, here are the preventable diseases could re-emerge next.

There’s some discussions around bringing back waste water surveillance in Canada to look for measles. It’s sad to say, but I hope that comes true. Meanwhile, there is a spring dose of a covid 19 vaccine coming available. Consider getting it, even if you’re in parts of the world, like the U.S., that is having the mildest Covid winter on record. Let’s make sure the old scourge doesn’t return.

On the topic of returning, people like Jamie Dimon wants everyone to return to office. (Like Elon Musk, he says and does a lot of stupid things.) So do other business leaders. Meanwhile people who study this, like the IMF, says working from home continues to lead to increased productivity. I guess CEOs consider increased productivity a bad thing. Funny that.

Trump 2.0: Trump 2.0 is the new scourge and definitely not a funny thing. He and his team have only been in office for a few months, and already they have hastily imposed MAGA rule on the government. Trump quickly assembled his MAGA picks for new White House term, and other than Matt Gaetz (who seems to have been universally reviled) he got most of them through, including such gems as Kristi Noem (his pick for homeland security secretary) and the DOGE boys, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Whoops, did we say Vivek? He was there for a hot minute before he stepped down. Meanwhile, ‘Uncle’ Elon Musk went straight to work, bring a team of such luminaries as teenager “Big Balls” to take a chainsaw to the Federal Government. The DOGE team hacked their way throughout the various parts of the government, doing so much damage that it is hard to keep up. Thankfully people like the staff at TIME have provided summaries.

Meanwhile there has been some pushback from tech workers against Musk’s efforts. In some cases it has led to physical standoffs at the entrances of buildings before staff took DOGE to court. Like with many of Trump and his team, the legal proceedings have led to setbacks, including 3 court losses in 90 minutes.

What will be the impact of this? It’s almost too difficult to say, since it will cause damage in a multitude of ways, including potential loses for the GOP in upcoming elections. Which is why Republicans are pressing the House leadership for help as they face pressure over DOGE cuts at home. So much pressure, in fact, that the leadership told them not to hold Town Halls.

You might think: the US government is too big and this slash-and-burn approach is the only way to shrink it. Let Al Gore via this Doonesbury comic for March 16, 2025 explain otherwise. Newsweek has more on this.

You might also think: at least all those lost jobs will mean the government is going to be flush with cash now. Alas, tax revenue could drop by 10 percent amid turmoil at IRS. The only people who are going to be flush with cash due to DOGE are rich people. Rich people like Musk, who helps himself to government funds by making sure his company Starlink gets an FAA contract (which, of course, raises new conflict of interest concerns).

Musk is not the only one enriching himself while all this turmoil is going on. The Times reported that early Crypto Traders had speedy profits from the crypto Trump Coin. Meanwhile,  many others suffered losses. (For more on that, see this: The ‘Crypto Punks’ Behind Trump’s Murky New Business Venture.) And crypto is just one way the Trump gang will grab that bag. As one story wrote, ‘the gloves are off’: Trump appears poised to cash in from his presidency in new ways.

Enrichment is not the only thing Trump is after. Retribution is another. Every group some consider “elites” have been attacked by Trump and his team. Recently he’s been going after Big Law firms, for example. Especially those who were somehow involved in his pre-election trials. It’s weird to think what would have happened if he lost the election, since the Special Counsel Report said: Trump Would Have Been Convicted in Election Case. It seems Trump thinks of it every day, and has been acting accordingly.

Despite people like Timothy Snyder warning people: Do Not Obey In Advance, people have been doing exactly that. Because of Trump’s war on D.E.I., companies like Google have decided to end their DEI hiring goals. The staff at WaPo were so ‘Deeply alarmed’ by the changes at their paper that they requested a meeting with the owner, Jeff Bezos. I doubt it made any more difference than the massive subscription cancellations. Politicians that Trump did not like were removed from special committees like the House Intelligence Committee. Others tried to win favour with Trump by doing such weird things as hiring Daniel Penny to work at a Venture Capital Firm (whose founder naturally backed Trump).

Though not directly due to some action of Trump, there was lots of changes over at the left leaning MSNBC after the election. Rashida Jones, the MSNBC President, resigned. Then there was a MSNBC  “Bloodbath” of non-white anchors after Joy Reid was forced out. Strange times.

 The World: Trump’s actions have not been limited to the U.S. One of the first and oddest things he did was to decide to rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Naturally Google fell in line and now we have the Gulf of America on Google maps. That was odd but mostly harmless.

The tariffs he’s been slapping on everyone have not been harmless. Which tariffs, you ask? There have been so many I have lost count. You likely did too. Thankfully AP has put together a timeline. 

By the way, if you are like Trump and think that tariffs are paid by other countries, here is your reminder that the only people paying them is Americans: What is a tariff and who pays it?

Here in Canada, the many tariffs and other threats that Trump is hurling our way has had a big impact on the country. Canadians everywhere have rallied to oppose these Trumpian efforts with the ‘Elbows Up’ cry. You hear it from Mike Myers, who started it, to the every day Canadian, who among other things, have stopped buying American products and have stopped travelling to the U.S. The annexation threats led the Canadian prime minister Trudeau to say ‘you can’t take our country’ after a big hockey win over the U.S.

Or I should say the former prime minister. Trudeau stepped down after months of polling badly, to be replaced by Mark Carney. Carney has taken up the torch of rallying the country to oppose Trump which has led to a resurgence of the federal Liberal party. A party once doomed to defeat could form the next government on April 28th.

Other than Canada, Trump has also threatened Greenland and Panama. If you are asking, “why???” this explains it. This is an alternative explanation: American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest $%&*@#! Alive.

That’s alternative explaination is just one perspective on Trump. Many others are trying to get in front of the whirlwind of Trumpian events and try and make sense of it all. Naveet Alang had some thoughts on what it is like living through an inflection point. Bluntly, Bill Gates called Elon Musk’s embrace of far-right politicians abroad ‘insane shit’.  Others are looking back to Nazi Germany, the way the Atlantic did with this piece: How Hitler Dismantled a Democracy in 53 Days. The great actor Joel Grey had similar thoughts, here: ‘Cabaret’ Was a Warning. It’s Time to Heed It. (Related was this piece on how the Germans thought they were free.)

My own belief is the actions of authoritarian governments elsewhere provide clues to where the Trump government will go. Actions like a new anti-LGBTQ+ bill in Hungary that would ban Budapest Pride event and allow the use of facial recognition software. Or the arrest in Turkey of Istanbul’s mayor, a key rival of President Erdogan. There are signs everywhere in the world right now: you don’t have to turn back to Nazi Germany.

Israel: not everything happening in the world revolves around Trump. The Netanyahu regime continues to wage a War that won’t end and not just in Gaza. The Israeli army recently demolished West Bank apartment buildings, displaces tens of thousands of Palestinians. As always, I watch the Times to keep up on this.

Nearby, Syria is continuing to change post civil war. Korea could have had a civil war after it almost succumbed to martial law. I think it is still struggling with that.

Also struggling is Los Angeles. Here’s the mayors plan for dealing with the devestation of the LA fires and her plan for rebuild. (More on that, here: Visualizing the Los Angeles wildfires in maps and charts. Plus, RIP David Lynch, a great citizen of that city. Here’s a really good study of him: David Lynch was America’s greatest conservative filmmaker.)

In other news: Oscar season came and went. The film “Emilia Perez” had the most nominations and seemed destined to sweep. And then, destiny took a turn. To see why, read about  the rise and fall of Emilia Perez and how it went so wrong. As for other things going wrong, the film, ‘Joker: Folie à Deux, was fated to lose $150 Million to $200 Million after bombing at the Box Office. Also bombing recently have been Marvel movies. Which is no doubt why Robert Downey Jr  is set to return to Marvel as Doctor Doom.

In sports news, Chicago also bombed as the Blues piled outdoor misery on the in a  6-2 beating during the recent NHL’s Winter Classic. Glad to see that the Classic is still going on as an annual event.

Not bombing but succeeding has been the Apple TV hit, Severance. If you are fed up with work, you should know ‘Severance’ Season 2 puts things in perspective. You should also know it’s great. I can’t wait for season 3.

Finally: one of my favorite Canadian candies,Cherry Blossom, is going away for good. That’s sad.

This was good:  7 planets aligned in the sky above me recently.

Don’t forget with all this news that The news ≠ your life. Also don’t forget this:

 

As always, thanks for reading this. See you again in Summer. Meanwhile, enjoy Spring.

Tipping is dead (and some other thoughts about restaurants)

Two things killed tipping: the pandemic and the handheld payment device (show in the picture above).

For decades before the pandemic, the standard tip was 15%. It was something you figured out yourself, and you either added it to the amount on your credit card or you might even pay in cash.

During the pandemic, patrons were asked to contribute more the usual 15% because everyone was struggling during the pandemic and this was especially true of restaurant workers. So people would tip sometimes 20% or more.

Also around this time the handheld payment devices became ubiquitous with default payment amounts. Unlike the one shown above, 18% became the lowest amount in many places, although I’ve seen some places have 20% and some with the audacity to make the lowest 22%. The pandemic ended, but rarely do I see 15% any more.

It’s true, for some places the device provides you an option to put in another amount. But you have to press several buttons and do your own calculation of the tip. And I am sure people do that and it’s fine. Most people I dine with, though, just go with one of the preselected picks of 18% or more.

This got me to conclude that the tip is no longer a tip. It’s just a service fee. Indeed I’ve seen some restaurants recently come out and say that on their bills. We are becoming more like Europe, where service is included but you throw in a bit more if the service is really good. I am not a fan of this.

This forced tipping is part of what I don’t like about restaurants and fine dining any more. I dislike the rushed service where they bring out all your food within 20 or 30 minutes of sitting down (if I want fast food I’ll go to a fast food restaurant).  Or bringing out the first food while I am enjoying a pre-dinner cocktail (I’ve pretty much given up on ordering them because of that). Or the smaller menus. Or surly and inflexible front of house who insist you sit in the table they’ve assigned you because that’s what’s on the iPad at their station. Or the waiters telling you that you have to be done by a certain time as soon as you sit down. And finally the payment device with a hardcoded 20% coded in handed to you by a hovering waiter. Bah humbug to all of that. I feel like I am renting a table, as opposed to being a guest.

I’m not the only one who is unhappy about it. Before he retired from the New York Times, Pete Wells wrote about how restaurants have changed and not for the better. I have to agree with him.

Maybe there are too many places chasing the fine dining experience but unable to provide it. I understand that: it’s hard to do. I mean, even the the French Laundry hasn’t aged well, according to Melissa Clark (also of the Times).

Perhaps we need to go back in time to when chefs (according to Jacques Pepin) were more like labourers and less like the rock stars you see in the bear season 3 with it’s chef cameos. I’m not sure that’s even possible any more. Everyone in the kitchen want to be Thomas Keller or Gordon Ramsey or Matty Matheson. No one wants to be Anthony Bourdain before he was famous.

I still love going out to restaurants, and there are a few places that offer great service, delicious food and fine ambience. It’s never a given you will get all three though, no matter what the prices on the menu say.

P.S. For more on how tipping has gotten out of control, check out these pieces: Tip-flation has some restaurants asking for up to 30% in tips and More and more places are asking for tips. Hidden cameras reveal who is and isn’t getting them and finally  Tipping Isn’t about Service – It’s a Psychological Con Job and Waymo may let you tip — but there’s a catch in The Verge.

 

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.

New York in August – hot time in a hot city

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New York is always great to revisit, and revisit it again I did last week. Like my visit in March, I stayed with my girlfriend in the Lower East Side, eating and walking around and even taking in a Broadway show (“Illinoise”).  We hit up Freeman’s Alley and Lafayette for the breakfast, because they are always good. Plus Clinton Street Baking Company. We also dined at WildAir and King. The best of the lot, though, was Via Carota (seen above). Is it New York’s most perfect restaurant? This piece argues it is. It’s hard to disagree, although it is a bold claim, since New York has so many great restaurants. Not just now, but in it’s entire history. Read this piece on the social history of the city, told entirely through its restaurants, to see what I mean.

During the pandemic New York adopted outdoor dining and many places like Via Carota set up a big outdoor area to serve people. It’s still going strong, although the city is cracking down on outdoor dining. If you like that kinda thing, you may want to do it while you can.

Speaking of New York City post pandemic stories, here are two: this one on a 23 floor midtown Manhattan office building going for a 97.5% discount. (Practically free). And this one about how people are returning to the Met Opera, but selectively.

Here’s three good stories on NYC history: 1) a fascinating history of  Lincoln Center you might not know about, 2) the abandoned islands of New York in pictures, and 3) a bio on Lorne Michaels.  Hey, when I think of the recent history of New York, Michaels figures prominently in it.

When we were visiting, New Yorkers were talking about an impromptu goldfish pond set up outside a leaking hydrant in Bedstuy. (See above.) It was all going well until an animal lover thought she was doing the right thing by freeing fish from the pit. The man who created the pond saw it differently. Mayhem ensued.

I am not sure who thought it would be a good idea to put up a Portal between New York and Dublin, but they did. More mayhem ensued.

Finally a non-story about how the M.T.A. wanted runners of the New York City Marathon to pay bridge tolls. Needless to say, this did not happen.

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On restaurants in 2023, post-pandemic and in general

For much of this decade restaurants have suffered for many reasons, the pandemic being the main one. I am actually surprised how many made it through those years of illness and closures. But make it through they did, mostly.

Mostly, but not all. Some big name places like Noma closed, but that was for several reasons. Some tried something radical, only for it to come out all wrong. See: What Went Wrong With Eleven Madison Park’s Vegan Menu (still got 3 Stars!). Others stuck to what was tried and true and came out the other side intact (albeit with higher prices): Le Bernardin Holds On to Its Four Stars.

Speaking of higher prices, read:  Why *are* Restaurants Are Charging $12 for Fancy Butter, and find out. Don’t fret, however, for not everyone is changing more. Some have a problem with that: Tacos Should Cost More Here’s Why.

Here’s some other reads regarding restaurants post-pandemic that I thought were worthwhile:

Summertime! And the living is easy? (some thoughts and ramblings for the June 2023 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

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.

The debt ceiling crisis in the US was also a hot topic for June. There was alot of ink spilled on who gave up more in the debt ceiling negotiations: Biden or the republicans. My take was Biden did well, but the whole thing should never have had to happen in the first place. For more on it, here’s a piece from the Times. More here and here. The Washington Post weighs in here.

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.

Most of social media is not hot, with the exception being TikTok. And not in a good way.  So you have “titanic tiktok truthers“. You have influencers doing stupid things like promoting products like biore on the back of school shootings. In fact the whole thing about becoming a  tiktok influencer seems out of control. Perhaps they are looking at people like Mr Beast on YouTube and wishing that much influence and wealth. I dunno.

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.

Inflation is also cooling, it seems. Good. On that topic, I thought these pieces on it were good: what caused the US pandemic era inflation; a comparison of costco vs loblaws food prices; a related piece on inflation, groceries  and Walmart.

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.

Pixar used to be hot, but not lately. CNN had a meltdown, so kinda hot, but also not.

As for social media, Twitter the company continues to circle the drain as their ad sales plummet. Not to mention them getting hit with a big music industry lawsuit. Fun. Over at that other company, Mark Zuckerberg explains the path forward for meta. Good luck with that, Mark. I mean, who needs the metaverse meet the people still living on second life? A valid question.

Could social media be better? Of course. Anil Dash explains how, here. Also, maybe we should just consider social media alternatives like going outside and touching grass?

In other news: Sports betting  is facing a backlash. Good. The US government continues to  mop up those that contributed to the events of January 6h in the US Capito. Also good.

Cormac McCarthy passed away. This is a fine piece on how unique and now impossible that was. Also this month the five people on the submarine Titan died when that vehicle imploded on the way to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. RIP.

Big companies like Google and Salesforce keep trying to get employees to return to office. On the flip side small tech companies are leveraging this by offering
remote work as a perk to get you to go work with them! Smart move. My expectation is that as leases start running out, remote work will become a hardened norm. Keep an eye out for that.

Enough about work. Summer is a time for relaxing. One way to do that is by reading. If you need something to read this season, the New York Times has your back with many recommendations. For lovers of pure beach reads, check out what indigo.ca has. If nothing else, a book will shade your face from the sun. 🙂

Enjoy the early summer! Thanks for read this too!

It’s lilac season, people! A May highlight! Here’s some other highlights (and ramblings) for this May of 2023

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.

It’s interesting to look back on last May’s not a newsletter / ramblings and see what’s the same and what’s new. A year ago Canadian Mattea Roach was piling up the wins on Jeopardy. This year she is back and came so close to winning it all in Jeopardy’s Masters Tournament. Congrats to her!

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.

COVID-19 is still a threat. People are still dying of it and getting sick. People are suffering from long COVID. And people are still wearing masks somewhat. (Note: yes, this is a good thing, because, duh, updated evidence suggests that masks may be associated with a reduction in risk for SARS CoV 2 infection. Also water is wet.)

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.

Now Musk has cratored Twitter. But other social media is doing poorly too. It seems like Meta is doing massive layoffs every month now (see here and meta here). Remember Clubhouse? Probably don’t. Which is why they are also doing massive layoffs. Substack? Not great. People are already  Over Being Real. As for Mastodon, I suspect people are still trying to determine how make mastodon account and join fediverse.

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.

 

 

It’s Summer! It’s Winter! It’s April in Canada! Here’s my highlights and ramblings for April 2023 year (a newsletter, in blog form)

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.

Despite all that, President Biden signed a bill ending the US COVID national emergency. Doesn’t mean no COVID, just how the US is acting upon it. Thankfully the US is rolling out new covid boosters for seniors. We all still need to fight this disease.

In Canada, there is an expectation of a small COVID bump soon. Let’s see. In Nova Scotia, someone has forecasted Nova Scotia getting it badly. Sadly this may be due to how well they handled it initially.

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?

Inflation: Live COVID, inflation is still a problem, and people are still suffering from it. For instance, due to the high cost of food,  people are shopping in salvage grocery stores now. Likely dollar stores, too. Though some towns are getting fed up with them popping up everywhere. I can appreciate that.

Will inflation come down? I think so. It is coming down,  but it has a way to go. VOX has more on why  inflation is so difficult to drop. The head economist who recently left the White House conceded the economy is not yet ‘Normal’. Or maybe this is the New Normal.

Banks seemed to have settled down since the flame out last month. Here’s more on the bank failures here and here: welcome to the superprime banking crisis.

Speaking of money, here’s how the wealthy use “Wash Sales” to reap tax savings. Also why points cards are bad.

Politics: I tend not to write about politics too much on this blog. I found these pieces interesting, though.

Ron DeSantis is in a weird culture war battle with Disney for many stupid reasons. Here’s a funny story on how  Disney has used a royal clause loophole to one up him. Speaking of culture wars, here’s all about the bud light boycott due to trans issues. Here’s a left wing  framing of the culture wars in cartoon format. The framing itself could be part of the problem.

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.

One good thing: in the US, there has been an emphasis on healthcare spending in the last budget. Happy to see that.

The UK continues to suffer from Brexit. The latest minor incident was  the  Orient Express cutting is London leg due to it. At least it hasn’t damaged the Good Friday Peace accord. I thought this piece on how parts of Northern Ireland has turned out due to it rather good.

China continues to be China. Here’s a story on these menancing police outposts they have in New York and other Western cities. As well, here’s  China harassing a bookseller in  Florida. On a happier note is this story, on a Chinese Village’s breezy new library. It’s really worth a look.

Not really political, but I liked this piece on how Japan has changed a lot in recent years.

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.

In my province, the Ontario government announced a plan to hire more nurses. They also had this plan to make tuition for studies in health care free. All good initiatives.

However, people were anxious about some of their plans, like this plan to use for-profit care to reduce surgical backlogs. It’s not the only instance of their plans that have people anxious. To reassure people, they did talk about protecting access to Public Health Care. But then we heard about how a private company, Maple, was charging for visits above and beyond OHIP.

So it’s been a muddle, which is par for the course with this government. Some people, like the  prime minister, thought the province was being innovative. Others thought they were not spending enough on health care. Some complained Ontario is going down the path the province of B.C. went down, only to reverse course. Others complained they had Ontario’s Health System Into a state of crisis, while some were  not so certain. Whew. It’s a muddle, to put it midly.

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.

Not so good: How much is a Pulitzer Prize worth? For non-fiction writers, not a lot. Also not good but fascinating: how did two major innovations end up being so destructive, and what can we learn from that?

Are you a doomer? Some young people are, it seems. This piece, don’t be a doomer!, exhorts you not to be.

In the future,  Gartner has identified five emerging technology trends that will blur the lines between human and machine. I dunno. I dunno about the use of these gps trackers capable of being shot at a moving car, either.

I found this, on the great philosopher Peter Singer being challenged by a disabled person, very moving.

Likewise, I was moved by this story on a California prison artist who makes his own paints. This story on DC prisons and how Jan. 6 prisoners got relief is very instructive, and not in a good way. This was a better story:  South Carolina Reduced Theft Penalties While Safely Cutting Prison. Good for South Carolina. The US has had a  mass incarceration for some time. A reckoning is coming.

Cool: Nick Cave is cool, and the advice he gives, especially so. Recycling is cool. Here’s advice on  how to recycle everything.

This is a cool story of  how a narcissist fell out of love with himself and fell in love with something greater. Another such story is this, by Adam Shoemaker, a forty-old Episcopal priest, husband, and father of three.

More cool things: this ikea guitar built almost exclusively using products and materials from ikea; this desktop wallpaper; and these esquire covers.

Incredibly cool is the ending of the John Huston film, The Dead.

Not cool: not cool is Ricky Vaughn, who is finally going to jail. Also going to jail: Real Housewife Jen Shah has been sentenced to 6.5 years in prison. Add this guy to the mix: Mafia boss Matteo Denaro, who’s been on run for 30 years 
Perhaps going to prison: Andrew Tate. Not likely prison oriented, but here’s the scoop on Rod Dreher, a very weird American conservative.

Ok, that’s enough uncool and bad people.

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.

As for closeted skeletons, there will be a documentary on John Lennon’s “lost weekend” in the 70s. More 70s skeletons: this is a story of three big Asian communist leaders of the 70s that I found fascinating.

Speaking of famous, here a story of how the liberal party has fared under Justin Trudeau. Relatedly, this is a story of his inheritance.

IBM used to be famous for annually breaking patent records. But it lost its Top US Patent Spot After Decades as Leader this year. Here’s why IBM is no longer interested in breaking patent records.

Fun: I found this device, The Mui Board, fun. (See it below.)

These ladders are fun. So is digits, a new game from the New York Times. If you are a fan of harry potter and le creuset, you might enjoy that. Fans of joe beef should read that piece. And fans of Campus FM radio will love that link. I thought the museumoffailure.com was especially fun.

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.

My first year of the pandemic as told in Instagram stories

Instagram stories are an odd thing, at least mine are. I post almost random images of things in my life, not thinking they add up to anything. But if you are living through a dramatic period of time like the first year of the pandemic, and if you collect those images together, as I did here in “Covid: Year 1”, they take on a narrative that was not there when you snapped them and saved them.

The narrative began even before the pandemic was declared. I have photos of me going to Chinatown and eating in many places, because word had gone out that a new illness had broken out in Wuhan, China and people were avoiding that part of the city because people were afraid of coming across someone who had it and then get sick. I was down there to do a small part in keeping some of those places in business by eating as much as I could. (Brave, I know 😊.)

Soon, general precautions started. Hand sanitizer was everywhere, like this one at my work:

Then the pandemic was officially declared in March 2020 and things started to break down. I have photos of the grocery stores being cleared out of flour and potatoes. Toilet paper was scarce. People were queueing up to get into grocers and the liquor store, which both had limited occupancy. Plastic barriers went up, and everything else was shutdown: work, restaurants, stores, gyms. It was a time of lockdown.

To occupy ourselves, we adopted hobbies. People made bread. I drew and made zines. I even wrote some half decent poems.  I continued to blog, and traffic shot up.

We worked at home. Every damn day. Our hair grew long. We finally got masks to go shop for food.

We ordered take out. Lots and lots of take out.  Restaurants pivoted to this to stay alive. Some, like my favorite restaurant Brothers, didn’t make it. Many did, due to hard work and help from the government. We drank pet nat and cremant to celebrate.

In summer we finally ate outside, albeit like this:

Eventually we got to eat indoors for a bit in the fall. Otherwise, if we wanted to celebrate birthdays or Easter, we did it with people in our circle. Collecting with others outside our circle was frowned upon.

We purged our homes to make space. I had a garage sale, and was surprised by the people who showed up and bought things. We were awkwardly happy to see each other, and dealt with money for the first time in ages.

We made the best of it. We watched the blossoms in High Park in Toronto via a TV channel. We watched our talented friends put on shows on Instagram and Youtube and Twitch. We walked on streets closed off to traffic. We banged pots and pans for health care workers. We did not go to the movies, even though the movies tried to open in the summer of that first year.

We downloaded apps to keep track of COVID and to know what to do. We downloaded apps to finally travel in the fall. We wore our masks everywhere. We wore sweat pants almost as much, if not more.

We dealt with bad people. The anti-maskers. The anti-science people. We celebrated when Trump lost.

If we were parents, we tried our best to help our kids. We took them out on Hallowe’en and let them get treats delivered by chutes. We made them get up for virtual classes via Zoom and other technologies. We ordered them Christmas presents online because the stores remained closed in many places like Toronto.

Most of all, we awaited the coming of vaccines and yearned for a normal time. For many, it was the worst of times, losing their livelihoods and their loved ones. Getting ill. For some, it could also be the best of times, as it often was with me.

It was quite the year. Historic. Memorable.

P.S. I wrote at the beginning of 2021 the following post: On recording (why you should think about it differently, why you should resolve to do it), and closed by saying:

Your life has value and meaning. Recordings help show that. So get making them.

I hope you do that, in some form or another. Even if it is a collection of stories on Instagram. It all counts, just as you do.

Should we grow a victory garden for the war on COVID?

It’s an intriguing idea.

If you are not familiar with the idea, let me explain with this quote pinched from one of the links below: “Victory gardens are gardens grown by civilians during times of widespread food insecurity. The gardens were encouraged by the Canadian government during the world wars, as a way to feed both civilians and troops.”

In time of high inflation brought on to some degree by the pandemic, such a garden might help in several ways. But heck, if you want to stick with growing flowers to lift your spirits, that’s ok by me too.

For more on this, see these two pieces over at CBC.ca: How you can start your own ‘victory garden’. Also: It’s not too late to grow vegetables for your victory garden.

If you need more help on growing your own seedlings, check out that piece at Lifehacker.

Onward to victory over the pandemic, and inflation, and more!

Love in the time of cholera? No, shockwaves in the time of COVID (thoughts and ramblings, March 2023 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

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 weird thing I learned from all this is that banks fail often in the US. Check out this failed bank list to see what I mean. It’s so common, everyone knows what happens, and the FDIC even have a playbook on how to take over a bank. For more on this, see this on why the FDIC and the Treasury Department shut down Signature bank. Stratechery has a good analysis on the the death of silicon valley bank (SVB).

Credit Suisse is another bank that went under. For those interested on that story, see: credit suisse unavoidably messy bank failure. This, on coco bonds at credit suisse banks was educational.

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.

And people are not happy about it all. To get a sense, read about Ontario’s so called crypto king who was kidnapped and tortured. Bad.

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.

However a weird nostalgic sprung up around the early lockdowns. I saw it pieces like this, maybe zoom parties werent so bad, and this, 3 years since Ontario declared state of emergency pandemic. I confess I have had such feelings myself.

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 .

Still, we march on. Even though this grim winter, where people of Ontario just lived through its darkest winter in 73 years. And despite the gray and the snow this week, spring-like temperatures and sunshine is on the way.

Here’s to longer days, warmer days, and happier days. See you in a month.

 

If you want to keep track of the COVID-19 Wastewater Signal in Ontario, bookmark this

You can either bookmark this post or the actual URL that makes up the image above. The URL (or more accurately, URI) of the image stays the same, I think, but the data changes.

I’m glad it exists. I check the hospitalization and ICU numbers that come out every Thursday and they seem to align with the wastewater signal. That’s an indication for me at any given week how we are doing in terms of COVID-19, despite the dearth of other metrics like case loads or deaths.

While things in the first quarter of 2023 are better than the first quarter of 2022, there are still relatively high levels of COVID-19 in the wastewater. Manage your risk accordingly.

For more on wasterwater data, go here.

In the time of New Normal, here are some thoughts on where we are and the usual ramblings at month end (i.e. the Feb 2023 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)



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).

This doesn’t mean COVID-19 is going away: we are still seeing new variants occurring, for instance. But as we can see in things like the wastewater signal data, the disease is on something of a decline.

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.)

AI continues to be a hot topic, with countless articles being written about it each week. The opposite of hot is crypto, with the SEC in the US driving stakes through the hearts of whatever firms still exist. NFTs are also dying: a year ago they were so hot, now they are decidedly not, according to Google Trends. The latest loss they took was against Hermes.

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.

Celebrity news: The Grammy’s also occurred this February. Fans of Beyonce were saying she was robbed…I dunno. She seems to be holding up fine. So too is Rihanna, who dazzled at the SuperBowl but also left her fans thinking that they might NEVER see another album from her, which got them upset. People were also upset about Marie Kondo, who has admitted she has slacked off since she had kids. I say: good for her. Also, people, we need to stop getting upset. For instance, Kareem Abdul Jabbar did not get upset when LeBron James passed his monumental scoring record. Be like Kareem.

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.

 

My notes and tips on travel before the pandemic, during the pandemic and now in 2023


Travel has changed in the time before, during, and “after” the pandemic. I noticed many differences in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Here’s what I jotted down during my trips in the hopes you and I may find it useful in the future:

  • Masks: last year everyone wore masks during travel, save for when they ate. There were a few idiots who resisted, but mostly people stayed masked. Not now. In 2023, a few people wore masks, but not many. They are no longer mandatory anywhere going to Canada to the US. I think I would have been comfortable wearing a mask in 2023, but I did not.
  • Testing: in the middle of the pandemic you had to get tested before you departed and when you returned. You had to upload that information as well as your vaccine status into various travel apps if you were using them. So far this year you don’t have to do any of that.
  • Bags: baggage continues to be a problem. Expect to pay for all non carry on luggage. Once you could use the kiosk to get your luggage tag. Now some if not all airlines insist you go to a staffer who will weigh your bag and may charge you regardless of its weight. (Remember when lighter bags were free?) As a result people have these smaller roller bags that fit overhead. But now there are more of these bags than there are spaces for them, airlines are making some travellers check their bags (for free for now) at the gate. (This can be a problem if you have only a short time to get to your connecting flight.) Small carry on bags continue to be free for now but you want to insure they fit under the seat: you may get to your seat to find you cannot squeeze it in over you.
  • Boarding passes: you can print your boarding pass at home, but consider doing it at the airport. My printer wasn’t good enough to print the code on it: luckily you can download a QR code in some apps and use that. I did. (Consider taking a screen grab of that QR code: you can show that picture to get through, which is less trouble than displaying it via the app.)
  • Fees/services: Airlines continue to ever slice and dice their service and charge you for everything. (See my bag comment above. Also you can pay to change your seat, get a bigger seat, etc.) The levels of service are ridiculous also. Once you just had first class and economy. Then business class. Now there can be five or more classes. Very classy! 🙂  Pretty soon you might pay by the square footage you take up. As for food, I was surprised how little was available even on 2 hour flights. Consider bringing food onboard: you can’t be certain you’ll get much more than almonds and water.
  • Variability: on my recent trip I was on four different types of planes while travelling to the US. One flight had wide seats that had entertainment (TV, music, movies, games) on them (bring headphones and something to charge your phone). Others had tiny seats I could barely fit into and no entertainment. Other variations: the airline moved me from one seat to another. They kept me in an aisle, but I was surprised to see I moved in the time I had printed my boarding pass. So keep an eye out for that. Of course check for gate changes too.
  • Apps: one thing that is getting better are the airline apps. Get the airline app for the airline you will be travelling on. They will have lots of helpful info in it, including your boarding pass, where your plane is (is it at the gate or on the way), your seat and gate, etc.
  • Security: security seems better…maybe because there are more agents than the worst of the pandemic. Try and have empty pockets before you get to the bins to dump your stuff. Take out your computer and put it in a separate bin with your electronics. Take off all your coats and sweaters, even boots and belts and watches and anything with a hint of metal. I like to have no liquids on me whatsoever, and take an empty bottle to get water later.
  • Canadian customs: still not great but better. In 2022 it was very slow. In 2023 it was very fast. They got rid of the desks the staff sat at and had many of them prepared to deal with you quickly. Not sure that will continue, but it was good to experience this time.
  • Declarations: For people who haven’t travelled in awhile, you no longer have to fill out a declaration card in Toronto. Instead you go to this goofy machine in the custom area, insert your passport, wait for it to take a bad photo of you, and then gets you to declare, upon which it spits out a declaration sheet you give to Canadian customs. (If the machine isn’t automatically reading your passport just go to another one quickly. I’ve had a few bad machines.) As of now the amount you are allowed for under a week but more than a day or two is $800. I still remember the days it was $200.
  • US customs: if you go to the US regularly, get a Nexus card. It makes a huge difference. Otherwise after you get through security, you will need to go through the slow process of going through US customs. Before you get to an agent, know where you are going, why you are going there (business, vacation), the address of where you are staying and  how you know the people you are staying with. One women ahead of me did not know this and kept changing her answer and this got her into a lot of trouble. Be brief, polite and consistent.

(I said “after” the pandemic because it feels like we are through the pandemic in February 2023, even though our problems from COVID-19 are not done.)

P.S. BlogTO recently did a piece on what it’s like to fly on the new planes from Porter Airlines, and the service described was similar to what I experienced for several of the planes, down to this:

Ok, some of the planes had more room than this (thank god), but airlines need to back off a bit. Anyway you can see why I try to get an aisle seat. 🙂

Some very good thoughts (especially at the end) and the usual ramblings on a new year (i.e. the January 2023 edition of my not-a-newsletter newsletter)

We finally closed the book on another pandemic year (2022), and have moved through the first month of 2023. Yay for us!  Is 2023 going to be a pandemic year as well? An endemic year perhaps? We don’t know. One thing for sure: compared to last January, this one has been much gentler.

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:

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:

To this one for inflation:

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.

Unlike COVID or inflation, not everything has the prospect of improving in 2023. Guns in the US  continue to be a major problem. There is no end in sight for the war in the Ukraine.  NATO is still supportive and continues to send weapons, although it seems like Zelenskyy had to clear the decks before that occurred. As for cryptocurrencies, it may not be a year of recovery for them as the trial of SBF and FTX unfolds. But who knows: maybe this rally will be a difference.

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.

Then again, a new surge could reoccur in China. If that occurs, all bets are off. For now my bets are staying on the table.

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.

2022 is done. Thoughts and rambling on the last 365 days (i.e. the December 2022 edition)

Another year over. A semi-pandemic year, in a sense. Covid is still with us, but we did not (so far) get slammed with a bad new variant like we did last year with Omicron. Instead the pandemic is lesser than it was, but greater than the flu in terms of the sickness and death it brings. We still get vaccinated, though less than before. Schools are attended (though  affected),  restaurants are dined in, parties and special events are attended.

You could say things look….normal. But then you can look towards China: they seem to be struggling to deal with COVID lately. Who knows what 2023 will bring? More normal or more like China?

But that’s for 2023. As for last year and what was trending, we can look to  Google which has all its data. One place that was trending alot in 2022: China. China is struggling with both Covid and Xi’s approach to it, as this shows. As for the Chinese leader himself, it was a bad year for Xi, as well as Putin and other global bad guys, sez VOX. And it’s not just the Chinese residents that are having to deal with Xi and his government: Canada has been investigating chinese police stations in Canada. More on that here. I expect China will also trend in 2023. Let’s hope for better reasons.

Other trending events in 2022? Crypto. There was lots of talk about it and people like Sam Bankman-Fried after the collapse of his crypto currency exchange and subsequent arrest. We had stories like this: How I turned $15 000 into $1.2m during the pandemic and then lost it all. Tragic. The overall collapse of the industry has lead to things like bans on crypto mining. That’s good. It has lead to questions around the fundamentals, like: Blockchains What Are They Good For? Last, to keep track of all the shenanigans, I recommend this site: Web3 is Going Just Great. I expect crypto to remain a shambles next year. Time and money will tell.

Elon Musk also managed to trend quite often due to his take over of Twitter and more. He still has fans, but many are disillusioned. After all, his campaign to win back Twitter Advertisers isn’t going well. He was outright booed on stage with Dave Chapelle. (No doubt being a jerk contributed to this.) Tesla stock is tanking. Even his  Starlink is losing money. What a year of failure. I can’t see his 2023 improving either. Hard to believe he was Time’s Man of the Year in 2021!

Because of Musk, people are looking to join other networks, like Mastodon. (BTW, here’s some help on How to Make a Mastodon Account and Join the Fediverse). Some are looking to old networks, like this: the case for returning to tumblr. Some are looking at new ways to socialize online, like this.

Musk was not alone in trending this year due to being a bad guy. Let’s not forget that Kanye West trended as well due to his freakish behavior and antisemitism.

AI was another big trend this year, with things like ChatGPT and stable diffusion (here’s how you can set it up on AWS). We also had stories like this: Madison Square Garden Uses Facial Recognition to Ban Its Owner’s Enemies. Not good. What’s next for AI?  This takes a look. I think we may get an AI winter, but we have 12 months to see if that holds true.

For what it’s worth, Newsletters like Matt Yglesias’s are still going strong, though levelling off I think.

Trends and development aside, here’s some other topics I found interesting and worth being up to close the year:

Assisted death was a grim topic in 2022 in Canada. I remain glued to stories like this: We’re all implicated in Michael Fraser;s decision to die, and  this and this. It all seems like a failure, although this argues that assisted dying is working.

Here’s two good pieces on homelessness:  Did Billions in Spending Make a Dent in Homelessness? And ‘It’s a sin that we all had to leave’: Moving out of Meagher Park.

Need some advice for the new year? Try this: How Much and Where Are You Really Supposed to Tip? Consider this a good approach to  reading. Here’s a good approach to  slowing down, while here’s a good discussion on  Boundaries. Things to avoid:  the biggest wastes of time we regret when we get older.

Things I found interesting in sports this year:

Things I found interesting in general this year:

Finally, here’s some good advice to close out the year: Don’t Treat Your Life as a Project.

Thanks for reading this and anything else you read on this blog in 2022. I appreciate it. I managed to blog about roughly 3000 things on the internet this year. I hope you found some of them useful.

Happy New Year!

Thinking numerically about CERB fraud

Thanks to Auditor General Hogan, there has been much discussion about CERB (Canada Emergency Response Benefit) and fraudulent claims. Indeed, this piece indicates it’s a problem: Canada paid out billions of dollars in CERB to people who lied about needing it. I mean billions of dollars is a lot! It must be really bad. So let’s look at what was said, and specifically, let’s look at the numbers.

The article states: “In the end, the federal government distributed $210.7 billion ($74.8 billion in CERB alone) to Canadians who were unable to work — or rather, those who told the government they couldn’t work.” So $74.8 B went out for CERB.

Why did the government do this? It goes on to say: “The government’s decision to take workers at their word, without any sort of screening, was criticized by some when the pandemic first hit, but Prime Minister Justin Trudeau argued that getting payments out swiftly was more important than verification.” It also states that: “Officials promised at the time that they would conduct extensive post-payment verifications to claw back anything taken by scammers or ineligible recipients, but according to Hogan, they have yet to sufficiently do so.”

Key word there: sufficiently. Let’s drill down further to see why that AG said that. The article says:  “In doing so, it (the Government) recognized that there was a risk that some payments would go to ineligible recipients. We found that overpayments of $4.6 billion were made to ineligible individuals, and we estimated that at least $27.4 billion of payments to individuals and employers should be investigated further.” Ok, so now we have some extent of how many billions were lost. But wait, we also have this: “Hogan noted that some $2.3 billion of errantly-distributed funds had been recovered as of this summer, thanks mostly to voluntary repayments from individuals who’d received them.”

In short, of the $74.8 billion that went out for CERB, the AG knows that $4.6 billion of that went out to ineligible individuals but it retrieved $2.3 billion of that. So around 6% of the overall money went out to ineligible individuals but then half of that was retrieved. Another way to look at it is 94% of the money went to eligible individuals, and of the remainder, half was recovered.

Now it’s possible that a good chunk of the $27.4 billion also went out to ineligible individuals. But based on the concrete data that was provided, it seems like the program was effective, based on percentages.

This doesn’t mean fraud is good or unimportant. Fraud is bad and payment systems and payment providers need to combat it. But in light of these numbers, the amount of fraud seems low. For what it’s worth, this piece argues that in the US medical system, fraud can be as high as 20% of all claims. In an ideal world, there would be no fraud. In a real world you want to get close to zero, but you proceed knowing there will be some fraud and make tradeoffs in comparison with other benefits.

In the case of CERB, the benefits were real and significant. I agree with the government on this: there was no time to put a rigorous benefit program in place. The pandemic needed quick solutions: you could not take 12 or 18 months to develop a system to get money to people you told could not work. That would have led to all sort of societal problems. You needed to get money into the hands of people now. Delay is fatal. The last time I saw government organizations fail to take action was at the beginning of the Great Recession: that failure almost led to the collapse of the global economy.

CERB was an essential program that kept parts of the Canadian economy afloat during the worst part of the pandemic. It’s upside was good, and despite what the AG says, the downside was not that bad.

For more on why CERB was good, see this.

 

 

 

What was new in our crazy mixed up world, November 2022 edition

Yowza! It’s been a crazy month, this month, between surges in diseases, Twitter turning into a dumpster fire, crypto imploding, inflation hanging on, the war in Ukraine intensifying with seemingly more attacks on civilians, the US GOP becoming more Nazi curious….you name it.  Let’s take a look.

Pandemic: we are still seeing the effects of the pandemic rippling through our society. In Ontario the ICUs of our children’s hospitals have been slammed, with usage up to 108% at one point. Blame the pandemic on that. Other things to blame the pandemic on? Nursing shortages. In fact work shortages in general: long COVID continues to affect many people and has taken many of them out of the workforce.

In response, people are still wearing masks, though not many. Some people are carrying their own CO2 monitors to tell them when internal air quality is risky. Other people are even making their own. Fortunately new vaccines are rolling out, and you can still get COVID tests for free at some places, although that may be going away. Get that flu shot too, don’t end up being a flu statistic.

Will things gradually improve? I believe they will, but who knows. Some people thought worse variants would come along, but so far so good.

Social media: after years of something of a status quo, social media has entered a meltdown/transformation phase. This has been lead by Elon Musk, who has taken over Twitter. Initially people were wondering: will it matter? Turns out it mattered a lot. He started by firing lots of people. Then he told those left to either be “hardcore” and work under insane work conditions or quit. Not surprisingly, many quit. Other people quitting? Celebrity users. And most importantly, advertisers like GM. It doesn’t help that Musk has loaded up the company with a lot of debt. It’s going to get worse before it gets better, if it even can get better.

With Twitter in chaos, what can users do? Some people like me are considering moving on to other platforms, like Hive and Post and Mastodon. However, the alternatives have not really taken off yet, and in some cases, they are not keen for people like journalists to take their business there.  (Maybe they should have read these mastodon tips.) Who knows how it all shakes out.

One good thing about the twitter debacle: it has lead to some good essays. Like this one: Welcome to Hell, Elon. Or this one on the fraudulent king. This one by McSweeney’s was funny.  Also this. Last but not least, this piece with a rundown on how Musk is a terrible person.

If Twitter is quickly imploding, Facebook/Meta is slowly collapsing. Like Twitter, it has had its shares of layoffs. The whole Meta project seems to be failing or at least flailing. It has suffered security problems, too. Generally the company is seen poorly, as this piece by Om Malik shows. It doesn’t help that much of the popular content is trash on Facebook, though they have tried to clean it up. I’m not sure what will happen with this company either, so I’ll leave the last word on Facebook/Meta to Stratechery.

In other news, Trump’s Truth Social continues to be a dud. Tumblr is allowing nudity. And Youtube, which is kinda social, struggles with ad targeting. Just one dumpster fire after another.

How to consider all this? Maybe by reading this piece in Nature on collapsing social networks. I found it very insightful.

Crypto/NFTs: other things melting down recently is the whole crypto currency business. This was lead by Sam Bankman-Fried and his FTX company.  Not that the lunacy is limited to him: Peter Thiel had a new company that lasted three months.  Relatedly, NFTs are not doing well, but people are still flogging them. Companies are looking to incorporate them into TVs.  Into the restaurant scene. Even into famous paintings like the work of Hilma af-Klimt. Ugh. Crypto winter can’t come soon enough.

Christmas: speaking of winter, for those of you celebrating Christmas, here’s a few links you might like. Here’s some gift ideas for those of you on a budget. Here’s more gift guides you can use. I especially thought this would be a good gift for young and aspiring scientists. For people looking for cool decorations, check out that link.

Other Cool stuff:  I’ve recently got an Apple Watch and it is excellent for anyone worried about their heart. Here’s something on how it detects arrhythmia. I recommend the Apple Watch just as a health device. In terms of other devices, if you use a Kindle, I recommend Libby. This is also a cool plant device (shown below).

Inflation: Inflation is like a tenacious beast, hanging on. One place in particular that people are experiencing it is in food prices. Lots has been said about the cost of food these days. Companies like Loblaw have done quite well in turn. There has been some attempt by them to respond to this, despite these moves, I expect there will be more pressure on them in the months ahead. For one thing, the Walmart giant is waking up. Maybe more people will join me and get their groceries there. I’m a happy customer. Let’s see.

Work: workwise, things are still unsettled post pandemic. Wages aren’t rising, despite inflation. Some employees are returning to the office, but aren’t necessarily happy about it. Indeed, employees seem to be unhappy in general. It doesn’t help to be reading of layoffs in many places, even Amazon. Odd times.

Ukraine: the war in Ukraine slogs on. It could be a very tough winter for Ukrainians, though they continue to fight back in many ways. I don’t think anyone knows how to end the war. Either one side will collapse or it will be a stalemate. Zelenskyy wants it to end. The head of Turkey says Putin wants it to end. Let’s hope and pray for a quick ending.

Finally: for new fans of football watching the World Cup, here’s how to determine offsides. You’re welcome. 🙂

Thank you to those who have read this far. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you! Enjoy the last few days of 2022: here’s to a brighter 2023.

 

A ramble through what was new in the world, Oct. 2022 edition

Here’s a month end cornucopia of things I found interesting and worth reading but don’t really fit into any specific category. (I would have posted it yesterday, but I had that very important 12 foot skeleton post to submit. :))

As I’ve said before, I like posting these because I will be curious to see how they read in the next 5-10 years. I hope you find it worth reading now, though. And thank you!

AI and art: Artists and non-artists continut to make art and play around with AI. Microsoft is even going to incorporate some of the tools into their software. Where this goes, I am not sure. But here’s something on an artist in Amsterdam using it. Not everyone is keen on it: the Getty is banning it.

NFTs: speaking of the art world and new technology, they continue to flirt with NFTs, as you can see here: MoMA and NFTs. Also here’s a piece on what Christie’s is doing:  Meet The Artist Who Just Launched Christie’s New Platform For NFT Sales. This investment by museums does not seem like a good idea to me, as this shows: NFTs and art going bust. Not to mention that NFTs are tanking on Opensea and these six-figure NFTs are down 99%. That won’t stop people trying to make money from them, such as these private clubs using nfts. But there has been some payback: Kim K getes a fine for crypto flogging. NFTs have been terrible forever and that doesn’t look like it is changing soon.

Pandemic/Inflation: we continue to make our way through the pandemic as COVID remains a threat. Even though we also continue to try and live with it, the disease has brought big pandemic life changes,  Fortunately there are more booster coming out. Also a number of people I know are using  CO2 monitors to measure CO2 in indoor spaces. There is still some mask wearing.

In Canada there’s been some complaints about the cost of the arriveCAN system. It was expensive, for sure.  This piece breaks down the costs. Meanwhile, some jokers convinced some in the media it could be built for next to nothing at a Hackathon. This just tells me the media needs to get more tech savvy to such boasts.

One holdover from the pandemic is the rise of tipping for everything. I get it, but I also think it has gotten out of control. This piece touches on that: Why tip requests on touchscreen tablets are everywhere (and make us feel guilty.

Part of the problem is that everyone feels they have to cut back due to inflation, tipping and otherwise. So we get pieces like this from Consumers Reports on how we save money now . Or this on how inflation is costing lives. Relatedly, car prices are crazy right now, so you see lots of pieces like this  How to Negotiate With Car Dealers as Prices Keep Rising.

Canada: We’ve had some political changes in Canada. A new premier in Quebec. A new one in Alberta. The PM is promising money to the folks out east to recover from Fiona.

Meanwhile in Toronto we had an election with poor turnout and mostly incumbents voted back in, including the mayor. People in the city are worried about the fact that the city is cashed strapped and the mayor isn’t going going to do anything about it other than cut services like the Toronto Public Library. Grim. The Mayor was even mocked in this art installation called austerityTO.

Totally unrelated but not grim: the Canadian legend Mr. Dressup is getting a documentary! Nice.

Work: employers continue to struggle with remote work. The Times argues: Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Lean In Employers.. The flip side of that is we get many stories of employers tracking workers. It’s a strange new working world. Speaking of that, here’s a piece arguing for using AI to supercharge workers. As a long time automation specialist, I agree.

The World: In the US, here’s some pieces on the January 6th commision: Jan 6th and the Oath Keepers and Laws passed to prevent another Jan 6th. Lizzo played a historical crystal flute and racism broke out. Never mind, Lizzo: you sounded great. The right wing is morphing into something ugly in America, so you get things like this:  We Need To Stop Calling Ourselves Conservatives. I think the word they are looking for is Fascist. Finally, here’s a piece on the US Supreme Court: Inside the law school chaos caused by SCOTUS decisions. More on SCOTUS .

In China, everyone was shocked by what happened to  Hu Jintao. More on Hu Jintao here.  Meanwhile, Noah Smith uses game theory to explain why he thinks an invasion of Taiwan probably means WW3. Yikes. In other news, China Delays the Release of G.D.P. and Other Economic Data. Never a good sigh.

Elsewhere in the world, the right wing leader is unusual to say the least, based on this: How Lord of the Rings Inspires Italy’s Giorgia Meloni. Ok. Meanwhile lots of speculation on the  Russian nuclear threat. Clearly a sign of how bad things are going for Putin. Speaking of going badly, we have the chaos currently underway in UK Strong and stable? Maybe maybe not.

Signs of the times: A weird chess scandal broke out recently. I thought these pieces in the WSJ here and here did a good job on assessing it. As did this piece in the Atlantic.

Cheating is not just a chess thing either. The Times had a story on the  Fishing Contest Rocked by Cheating Charges After Weights Found in Winning Catch. Lots of money and fame can bring the cheaters out everywhere.

Meanwhile, social media continue to dominate some people’s lives, based on this:  Want to Get Noticed by a Celebrity? Snag Their Username on Social Media. Speaking of social media, Facebook/Meta is tanking and Elon Musk took over Twitter. Oh well. Blogging is still going strong! As are you if you are reading this: thanks very much!

Happy Autumn!

The pandemic hit NYC in so many ways, including an unusual one

The pandemic hit NYC harder than many cities, I believe. While terrible things like COVID deaths and ad hoc evacuation have thankfully declined, it is still feeling the impact. Dining is one of these things that was affected. According to the Times, the city that never sleeps is now turning off the “Open 24 hours” sign, at least in some places:  In NYC Some Doors Now Close at 10 p.m. One of the reasons for this could be that for (some) New Yorkers, 6 p.m. Is the New 8 p.m. How long will will this last? I’m guessing like many things in New York, it is transitory and the city that used to never sleep will be sleepless soon enough and flocking to places like Katz’s Deli in the Lower East Side.

I love New York. It never gets old. It’s just acting like an oldster lately. 🙂

P.S. Somewhat relatedly, this was a fun story: Immigrant brothers crafted New York’s hand-drawn posters for decades 

(Image: from the Times piece – Katz Deli)

What was new in the world, September 2022 edition

Here’s a month end cornucopia of things I found interesting and worth reading but don’t really fit into any specific category. Among other things, I like posting these because I will be curious to see how they read in the next 5-10 years. I hope you find it worth reading now, though. 🙂

China: China has been making noise about invading Taiwan. A recent visit by Nancy Pelosi especially helped stir that pot. Foreign Policy had some good pieces on it here and here. China has been threatening Taiwan with drones, although it will take much more than drones to accomplish it.

Other things to note that are happening in China are a Banking Scandal and a poetry contest that causes problems. For more on China, this talks about how China is dealing with Covid. This addresses how China’s Surveillance State is encountering public resistance. Businesswise, Huawei is running into problems. More stories on China’s entrepreneurs.  Last, this piece and this one address how good or bad Xi Jinping is as a leader.

Asia: in Japan, Chie Hayakawa imagines a Japan where the elderly volunteer to die. Bleak. Here’s a piece on how the Unification Church causes problems in Japan. Meanwhile, India scrambles to contain fallout over insulting comments about Islam.

Europe:  Mikhail Gorbachev recently passed away. Vox looked at his legacy. As everyone knows, the Queen also died. Here’s why VOX thinks monarchies are better than republics. As for the new king, some think that he could be an improvement, at least when compared with Charles I and II 🙂

The right is strong elsewhere in places like Poland and Hungary, though the paths of those countries have diverged. Indeed, as the war goes on in Ukraine, Polish pilots Training to fly the Bayraktars war drones. Meanwhile, The right is ascendent in places like Italy and Sweden.

The U.S.: While Biden and Trump are likely to be fighting to be president in 2024, others are looking to content. Politico looks at how Nikki Haley raises money. And Josh Barro dismisses Gavin Newsom . AOC ponders if she will ever be president. Some day. Maybe. Finally, here’s a piece on the DeSantis Martha’s Vineyard stunt. Odious. Speaking of odious, Ken Starr died. Politico properly assesses his poor legacy.

Canada: Here in Canada the Conservative party has a new leader. Let’s see how that goes. I’d like to pause for a moment to highlight the interim leader, Candice Bergen. She forced the previous leader out of Stornoway so she could move in. Then she retires. Nice. Have to remember that the next time the Tories complain others not being fiscally conservative. More on that  here and here.

It’s the end of August. This looks like a newsletter, and reads like a newsletter, but it isn’t a newsletter

Here’s a month end cornucopia of things I found interesting and worth reading but don’t really fit into any specific category. I hope you find it worth reading, too.

The pandemic is being memory-holed, unfortunately. Before people forget or try to gaslight us, here’s a piece comparing how Canada did in the initial 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic vs other places. And here’s where you can find information on Covid and Ontario . Who knows how long that will last?

Have you wanted to learn how to play chess? Check out this at the New York Times. Here’s a good piece on how to copy quotes from a library book. If you want to learn about ten classic polish films , go there.

Filmwise, here’s a sad piece on the decline of Bruce Willis . These pieces, on the death of a Minecraft Youtuber, a young influencer who dropped out of college, and a piece on Hope Solo struggling with addiction were all sad but worth reading. Also sad was reading about an old relative in the obits: John (Jonk) Raymond Melnick | Pierson’s Funeral Service Ltd.. RIP, Jonky.

Old movie trailers, even for great films, can be embarrassing. This link can help with that: Aliens modern trailer. Speaking of Sci-Fi, here a piece on the rise of Skywalker nostaglia.

Do you know if you live in one of one of the 49 Coolest Neighbourhoods in the World Right Now? You may be if your area appears on that list. Nothing for Toronto, though some for Montreal and Vancouver.

Speaking of cool, here’s a video of Night Music episode 121 from 1989 fearuring Robert Cray, John Hiatt, Nat King Cole, Tracy Nelson, World Saxophone Quartet. Night Music was always cool.

The Stones video of “Emotional Rescue”? Also cool:

Speaking of odd, here’s something on What Justin Bieber taught someone about fun things to do. Also odd, at least to me: How influencers get paid by affiliate marketing . If you were wondering why the Girl Explaining meme is all over your Twitter feed , that link will explain why. Odd.

I used to write often on newsletters. The newsletter boom has died down but the format isn’t going away. Crypto isn’t going away either, but this the SEC crackdown of it won’t help. Shame. Not.

Finally, here’s a twitpic I took a long time ago. Amazing they still exist.

Ian Brown catches COVID again and why that’s good

It’s good not because I want him to be ill! Not at all. Rather, it’s good because what came out of that is this fine essay: I caught COVID, again – this time, nobody cares (The Globe and Mail). It nicely catches where we are in this ongoing pandemic. Not just by writing about the disease and what we are doing or not doing about it, but also what else is competing for our attention. I highly recommend it.

I hope by the time you read this Ian is well and none the worse for having suffered through another bout of COVID.

 

On rethinking work

Work takes up a significant portion of your life. To me, it is something we should always be examining, if we care about our lives.

This is especially the case during this pandemic. I think we all have been examining work as a result of  how we have had our working lives disrupted. That’s a good thing.

I expect employers are going to want us to resume working as if it were the Before Times. Maybe you are one of those employees who wants to go back to that time. Maybe you aren’t.

All that is to say that I recommend you read these two pieces as you reexamine your work life:

We sometimes need prompts to help us think about things. Those two pieces will help with that.

Thinking about your work life is thinking about your life in general. A worthwhile thing to do.

The end. Here’s my last highlights and ramblings (a newsletter, in blog form, June 2022 edition)

Hey there! Yes, this is my last newsletter in blog form. My first edition of Highlights and Ramblings (a newsletter, as such) was in March of 2020, the beginning of the pandemic. When I started I wanted to provide:

a list of  random items I’ve been stashing away while working from home in this time of social distancing and the pandemic. Initially my goal was to create a newsletter, and perhaps I still will create one. Most of the newsletters I get, though, read like blog posts. That’s fine. But then why do I need to create a newsletter, when I can just post here. Plus, it will save you another thing to deal with in your inbox. Read when you have nothing else to read.

That was my goal. But pretty soon (as early as June 2020) these monthly posts transformed mostly into what was happening pandemic wise. In that month I noted it was…

…a weird time in the pandemic: in parts of the world, the worst is behind them (e.g. parts of Europe)

“The worst is behind them”. How little did I know! In fact, as the months passed, things grinded on with wave after wave of infections. But there was also progress, as I highlighted a year later in June of 2021 :

Canadians continue to ramp up on getting vaccinated. 30% of the population has been fully vaxxed, including yours truly. Well done!

And now it’s been a year later and most Canadians have not only been vaccinated but boosted. Some — like me — double boosted! And many of us — me again! — got COVID anyway. Got COVID and lived and stayed out of hospitals. Not great but good nonetheless.

Societally, we have shifted in our stances. From lockdowns to free travelling and association. Restaurants are full. People are still working from home (although some bullies like Elon Musk are telling staff that ‘remote work is no longer acceptable’). People are still wearing masks. Ottawa even announced the end of troubled COVID Alert app this month. All in all, it feels like the pandemic is over.

But it is not over.  COVID-19 is still out there mutating and people are still getting sick and in some cases dying. It hasn’t gone away, only our extraordinary approach to it has. I don’t know what will happen in the fall. No one knows. Many have beliefs. Some are wondering if and when will COVID-19 be endemic? We will just have to do our best and see.

With that, I think it is time to retire this “newsletter”. Truth is, I don’t have much news to share on a monthly basis that you don’t already know. I’m never go to get rich or gain a big following that way. It’s fine. And not having a monthly deadline is a relief.

Unless  the pandemic was to be medically and socially disruptive, it will stay done. What I do plan to do is just randomly writing my ramblings posts on general topics. We will see. In the meantime, a list of all my newsletters is here. If nothing else, it’s a somewhat interesting plague journal.

Plenty of things have happened in this period. The worst of people (e.g. Putin, Trump) did their worst and left unpunished. The better people (Biden) did their best, only to be unappreciated. Economies recovered, but inflation sprung up. With luck and strong action, in a year from now the war in the Ukraine and worldwide inflation will be positively resolved. One hopes.

Besides newsletters, the other fad of the pandemic  was cryptocurrencies, NFTs, Web3 and all that nonsense. Now with the coming of crypto winter, we may hear less of that. There was also Wordle. Some of you are still playing Wordle, though it seems less so. (if you are, click here to help your score).

We will go on. Thanks to all of you who have read these pandemic ramblings over these many months. If you want to continue to keep up to date on what is happening with Covid, I recommend this newsletter from Eric Topol called Ground Truths. As for me, look here for my (non-pandemic) ramblings and other posts. Take care. Stay well.

 

The great Starbucks retreat

For most of the pandemic, food/bev businesses worked hard to hang on and last through this period. Not Starbucks. They did the opposite. As soon as they could, it seems they shut down their locations. Locations that had barely been open a few years were shuttered. Even this location above, on Eglinton Avenue just east of Yonge in Toronto closed up despite a steady flow of customers even during the pandemic. 

Apparently at the start of the pandemic their goal was to close 400 stores over 18 months.  I would not be surprised if more than that closed. 

I wonder what the fallout for all this will be? One thing for sure, the idea of getting Starbucks as a tenant will likely lose its lustre when they do come back and want to expand. Then again, given that people are reluctant to go back to the office, that expansion could take some time.

Here’s eight good pieces reflecting the state of work these days

I wanted to say the state of work is in flux these days due to the pandemic, but I have to admit that work is always in a state of flux, regardless of what is going on in the world. Here’s eight pieces that reflect that:

  1. According to VOX,  employees don’t want to return to the office . If the pandemic had lasted less than a year, we might not have seen this. But two years later, many people have adjusted and settled.
  2. Still, some are going back to the office. It will be interesting how this looks in a year.
  3. For those working at home, try and find an employer that does not use such surveillance. Such companies do not care about you at all.
  4. If you are going to look for a new job, here’s how to get your resume past the robots .
  5. If you are considering how to balance work and non-work, here may be the best thing ever written about “work-life balance” according to Austin Kleon .
  6. Whatever you do, do not write open letters complaining about your employer, especially AT WORK. Sheesh. I know I am old, but this is a terrible idea and I am not surprised that SpaceX fired the open letter writers.
  7. Here’s a good piece on how the billable hour is a trap into which more and more of us are falling. For some jobs, the billable hour is important. But find other ways to show your value to your clients, your employer and your co-workers.
  8. And finally, whatever you do, remember that you are more than your job title. 

On my recurring pandemic dreams

During the pandemic I had a recurring dream that was unique to me. It’s not unlike the recurring dream people have about showing up to class and realizing there is a test. In my recurring dream I am travelling somewhere and I know this because I am on a boat or at an airport or in the process of transporting from A to B. But I can’t get to B. Something in the dream starts to come undone: the transportation breaks down, or I don’t have my travel documents, or I have to go back. I keep trying to prevent the breakdown, but it continues until I wake up. Or in some dreams, I say to myself: you are having the Failed Travel dream again, it’s not real.

I wonder if others have had a similar dream or their own dream during the pandemic?

I wanted to record this in case I forget that this occurred.

On retiring my COVID-19 reporting (for now)


Recently I was reporting COVID-19 data daily. I wrote a program called covid.py that scraped the Ontario.ca Covid web site and and pulled out data for hospitalization and cases. It was a rough but useful gauge to see how COVID was going in Ontario, and I was able to get the information in a snap.

Unfortunately the information is no longer posted on the page I was visiting with my code. The data is out there somewhere in the datasets, but I think I will reconsider things before modifying my code. It is a shame that the data is harder to get though.

All these actions by government organizations to make it harder to get data is a bit frustrating. I read people say: you should track the pandemic and make good decisions. It’s hard to do that though when the information is hard to get.

For more information and data:  Government of Ontario data sets on COVID-19 are here. Government of Canada COVID-19 information is here. More on my code, here.

 

May is done. Here’s some of the highlights and some ramblings for May, 2022

Last month, I thought I needed to switch up this monthly missive of a quasi newsletter. Make it a bit more rambling, a bit less worldly and world weary. I decided to push down the pandemic stuff and look at some other things first. I hope you like it.

In Canada one of the big things last month was the streak that Mattea Roach had on Jeopardy. I swear everyone in Canada was proud of her. In fact, it was funny to read the news in Nova Scotia and Ontario, because both of them wanted to claim her for their own. I get it! She’s great!

She caught the attention of not only Canada, but the US too. Even the NY Times did a piece on her. Not surprising: she is newsworthy.

Speaking of the Times, they did two pieces this month that gave me some perspective. First there was this piece on why for tens of millions of Americans the Good Times are Right Now. That was somewhat hopeful. And this piece on the relationship between being happy and being rich was also good, perspective wise.

I mean let’s face it, if being rich meant being happy, then Elon Musk would be the happiest person ever. Instead, he is on social media all the time making a fool of himself. Not just due to his trying to buy twitter, but his opinions in general. If you want to read more about what he is/was up to at this time, you can read this or this. I think the less we hear from him, the better.

Speaking of rich, the whole NFT/ crypto/thingamabobs did not do well this month, with articles on their big meltdown all over the place. This says NFT sales are flatlining , but ‘flatlining’ is too kind a word. Finally, I think the Beaverton captured it perfectly . I love the Beaverton: a perfect blend of Canadian humour and perspective. A good counterpoint to all that financial madness.

Apropos of nothing, here’s news on the black hole at the center of our galaxy. Very cool.

Overall, May has been a month of transition, from the relatively new (Apple phases out the iPod) to the relatively old (Charles Gives Queen’s Speech at State Opening of Parliament in U.K.). The iPod is not coming back, but the Queen did, opening her new subway line, the Elizabeth Line, in London this month. My daughter was in London and I was encouraging her to ride it for bragging rights in the future, if nothing else.

The pandemic is in a state of transition too. Here in Toronto we have ended our pandemic emergency declaration after 777 days. Wow. That’s a long time and big number. Another big number is the number of Covid deaths in Canada, 40,000, and in the US, 1,000,000. For those who have lost loved ones, the fact that Canada managed the pandemic better than the US is cold comfort. It’s also astounding to think about, numbers wise. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been without vaccines.

I’m also curious to see what happens as people let down their guard. Lockdowns are over everywhere. Concerts and travelling are ramped up. People are still wearing masks, but less and less so from what I can see.

What’s next? Well, hospitals are in transition, if I read this piece correctly in The Atlantic . Also viruses on hiatus during the pandemic are coming back which is not great. Smart people like Bill Gates and others are thinking about how to prevent the next pandemic. I hope we can. We will need lots of effort, smart people and tools. Although I don’t think the metaverse is going to be one of those tools, despite what this piece says. (Wanted to throw a bone to the metaverse here….we used to hear about it all the time. Now, barely at all. :))

The provinces of Canada are in transition too. In Alberta Premier Jason Kenney stepped down after barely surviving leadership. I was surprised by that. Let’s see how Premier Ford does in Ontario after the upcoming election. Maybe he will be surprised too.

There’s been other things happening too, like the Roe vs Wade situation in the US, not to mention the horrible shootings there. Sadly, no transition for the better in either case. And the war in Ukraine still goes on, though sadly it has become less newsworthy.

Inflation has been bad and newsworthy, but I believe it is going to be transitioning for the better. It has been tough on people, though, leading to articles like this: How to put delicious meals on the table as inflation drives up costs. Inflation is good for people with large fixed debt, but bad for people barely getting by. Let’s hope it gets under control soon.

The weather is also transitioning, from cool to hot. That can make it tough to sleep at nights. If that’s you, consider some of the ideas here: 5 Cheap(ish) Things to Keep Your Bedroom Cool | Wirecutter .

That’s it for another month! Thanks for reading, you half dozen people who read these every month. I appreciate it. 🙂

Enjoy the nice weather.

 

 

It’s Spring (somewhat). Here’s my highlights and ramblings for month year (a newsletter, in blog form)


It’s spring, somewhat, here in Ontario. That means one day you can be out walking in the sunshine, admired all the blossoms, only to have a snowfall dump on you the next day. It’s a rollercoaster of a month. You could almost say that April rambles. Much like this newsletter. Here it is, once again! May you associate it more with sunshine than snowfall.

Pandemic: is the pandemic over? Well, the behavior of many seems to be, yes. I dunno. I still see enough hospitalization and deaths to say it is not. It seems we are in a state where most people can avoid the worst, but still get sick. Sometimes repeatedly, as this shows. And what happens as you try to move on? Well, as airlines have shown, the ones that dropped mask requirements are now suffering staff shortages.  Meanwhile, we are seeing soaring covid infections among health care workers. And places that did well during most of the pandemic, like Nova Scotia, are now getting walloped.

What should you do? Remember, you are more or less on your own now in the pandemic. I’d recommend sticking with masks and social distancing still. If you do still get COVID then here are two pieces on managing it yourself at home: this and this.

That’s for the short term. What does the long term look like? Well there’s this: Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible, and this: Canada’s hospital capacity crisis will remain long after the pandemic is over. And then there is long COVID to consider. Not promising.

And let us not forget these things. A study in Nature says that COVID’s true death toll is much higher than official records. And when people say we should have handled things like Sweden did, here’s a reminder how badly Sweden did during the pandemic.

One last thing. I go downtown sometimes and see many places closed up. Like the many deaths that have occurred, there is a blindness to it, it seems. I find it throws me off, that we have gone through this terrible event and we are still dealing with it and yet there is a rush to act like it never happened and move on. It’s weird.

Ontario: In Ontario where I live, the province is gearing up for an election. The government is doing what it can to prepare to win the election, including releasing this budget and hoping it can win enough people over by things like eliminating some highway tolls. Let’s see. Meanwhile for those of you concerned about COVID in this province, here is the Ontario COVID dashboard to keep track of.

Ukraine: I don’t have to tell people that life in Ukraine continues to be grim. There are constant stories about it everywhere. Here is a snapshot that shows what life under the occupation by Russia is like.

Meanwhile Ukrainians fight. I support them and want them to be free and independent from Russia. There is nothing good about the situation, just degrees of bad. That’s why I find it is sad and remarkable with how many people in the West are war happy and get excited about shipping more and more weapons to Ukrainians. It may be a necessary evil, but it is an evil in the light of a greater evil.

As an aside, here’s what is happening to one of the few allies Russia has left: Belarus. It’s a place I am keeping an eye on. I suspect the last thing Putin wants is for stuff to go poorly there: he has enough trouble his hands (trouble he is solely responsible for).

USA: There is a weird thing happening on the right wing in the US with regards to moral panic. My belief is that it is a strong reaction on the right to the push on the left against transphobia and other such initiatives. Even Disney got swept up in all this talk about “grooming” and generally abusing kids. You can see part of it here and here . I have a theory that this is partly a blending of moral panic/bigotry and the rise of the Internet. In the days of early trolling there was this bizarre character that was used to accuse people and groups of being pedophiles. (Pedophile being the worst thing you could accuse someone of.) I suspect that right wing push, combined with Internet culture, has led to those accusations being used widely. Gotta love when the sewers of the Internet overflow into the general culture. (Not!)

The right in the US is also in some cases trying to restrict the use of abortion pills. These are all skirmishes on the broader culture war occurring down south, in places like Florida with its battle against “indoctrination” with things like this and this. All events to set up the governor of Florida as being the next Trump. That’s what culture wars stoked by politicians are about.

Speaking of Trump, the first family of corruption continue to make news with stories like this and this .

I had some other ramblings about the world, but frankly it is all too grim. Let’s change gears.

Elon Musk: yeah, no. The man is festering in attention as it is. You can get nonsense elsewhere.

Fun: I loved this: the museum of endangered tech sounds. We all know them! Speaking of sound, this is a very cool device.

Not fun but useful: do you have trouble finding a notary? It can be hard. If you need one, consider this. I also thought this piece on starling murmurations was great.

Finally, I think I need to switch this newsletter up soon. It has become too worldly, too worldweary. I appreciate you reading it: thanks for that. But you deserve better ramblings. I’ll try to do that. Meanwhile, enjoy Spring!

 

What I learned writing web scrapers last week


I started writing web scrapers last week. If you don’t know, web scraper code can read web pages on the Internet and pull information from them.

I have to thank the Ontario Minister of Health for prompting me to do this. The Minister used to share COVID-19 information on twitter, but then chose recently to no longer do that. You can come to your own conclusions as to why she stopped. As for me, I was irritated by the move. Enough so that I decided to get the information and publish it myself.

Fortunately I had two things to start with. One, this great book: Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. There is a chapter in there on how to scrape web pages using Python and something called Beautiful Soup. Two, I had the minister’s own web site: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/. It had the data I wanted right there! I wrote a little program called covid.py to scrape the data from the page and put it all on one line of output which I share on twitter every day.

Emboldened by my success, I decided to write more code like this. The challenge is finding a web page where the data is clearly marked by some standard HTML. For example, the COVID data I wanted is associated with paragraph HTML tag and it has a class label of  covid-data-block__title and covid-data-block__data. Easy.

My next bit of code was obit.py: this program scrapes the SaltWire web site (Cape Breton Post) for obituaries listed there, and writes it out into HTML. Hey, it’s weird, but again the web pages are easy to scrape. And  it’s an easy way to read my hometown’s obits to see if any of my family or friends have died. Like the Covid data, the obit’s were associated with some html, this time it was a div statement of class sw-obit-list__item. Bingo, I had my ID to get the data.

My last bit of code was somewhat different. The web page I was scraping was on the web but instead of HTML it was a CSV file. In this case I wrote a program called icu.sh to get the latest ICU information on the province of Ontario. (I am concerned Covid is going to come roaring back and the ICUs will fill up again.) ICU.sh runs a curl command and in conjunction with the tail command gets the latest ICU data from an online CSV file. ICU.sh then calls a python program to parse that CSV data and get the ICU information I want.

I learned several lessons from writing this code. First, when it comes to scraping HTML, it’s necessary that the page is well formed and consistent. In the past I tried scraping complex web pages that were not and I failed. With the COVID data and the obituary data,  those pages were that way and I succeeded. Second, not all scraping is going to be from HTML pages: sometimes there will be CSV or other files. Be prepared to deal with the format you are given. Third, once you have the data, decide how you want to publish / present it. For the COVID and ICU data, I present them in a simple manner on twitter. Just the facts, but facts I want to share. For the obit data, that is just fun and for myself. For that, I spit it into a temporary HTML file and open it in a browser to review.

If you want to see the code I wrote, you can go to my repo in Github. Feel free to fork the code and make something of your own. If you want to see some data you might want to play with, Toronto has an open data site, here. Good luck!

 

The pandemic is not done and neither is my newsletter. Here’s my highlights and ramblings for March 2022 (a newsletter, in blog form)

Spring is here. And with Spring, thoughts turn to getting outdoors. I understand the feeling. People want to enjoy themselves after a tough winter. But hey, if you have a few minutes, I hope you can take the time to read this, my latest newsletter.

Pandemic: Well Omicron rushed out as fast as it rushed in, at least in my part of the world. Just in time to mark the 2nd anniversary of the pandemic. It’s been so dramatic that people are willing to declare the pandemic is over. There’s been constant talk of returning to normal. But what does Normal even mean? I’m not sure, and I don’t think anyone else is either. As this post states, How Did This Many Deaths Become Normal? . There’s nothing normal to return to. Ask Hong Kong.  They are dealing with a  ‘preventable disaster’. They wish they could return to normal.

Nonetheless, in some parts of Canada, premiers are trying to get there somehow, even as they are cautioning that the pandemic isn’t over. And newspapers like the Toronto Star are reminding us that just because we are feeling done with covid, it doesn’t mean it is done with us.  This hasn’t stopped places like Ontario from removing restrictions like the mandatory use of masks, although you will need them in some places like subways.

Speaking of the Ontario Government, I was disappointed that the Minister of Health decided to stop posting COVID stats on twitter. Fortunately they can be found on a web page. So I wrote a python program called covid.py to scrape the data and output it. I then post it on twitter myself. (You can find the code here.)

As for what is in store for us as we trying to be Normal again, there is some good insight published here, here and here. Whether people are ready for potential new waves of the pandemic remains to be seen. Case in point:  Once again America is in denial about signs of a fresh Covid wave.

Finally, I recommend that you take matters into your own hands and keep an eye on things. For example, here’s data on Hospitalizations for COVID-19 (coronavirus) in Ontario. Also good data in general, here. CBC.ca is tracking information here.

Work: As for work life, people have been going into the office. If this will be you and you forget how to dress, then this (on dress jackets) or this (on no suit business attire) may help. It would be nice if the office you went back to looked as green and lush as this. Or they were as open to personalizing your space as Corbusier wanted.

Ukraine: things seem to be reaching  new phase in the Russian-Ukrainian war. Apparently peace talks are progressing. We shall see. I am sad to see such needless suffering has been brought on by the Russian government.  It is bittersweet that the Ukrainians have held out this far, thanks to their own fighting and the aid of NATO nations. Let’s hope for an end to it soon.

Unlike the pandemic, I haven’t kept too many pieces on it. However, I thought these two were worth reading: one from a socialist perspective and one from a military perspective. As was this: Xi’s China during the war.

Climate: Is it possible to write anything positive about Climate Change? Well this piece comes close: Global update: Projected warming from Paris pledges drops to 2.4 degrees after US Summit: analysis.

In other news:  I was in London last week and I saw the British Museum is getting into NFTs. Sigh. According to this, it’s not just them. (London was great btw. We had a week of sunshine and warm temperatures. It was a perfect vacation.)

Streaming is becoming a bigger and bigger deal. So what are these streaming platforms considering doing more of? Ads. Streaming also had its moment at the Oscars recently, as this piece shows. (What about Oscars and the Slap, Bernie? We don’t talk about the slap no no.)

Inflation is still a concern these days. One way companies are dealing with it is by shrinking the products you buy. Many products are too big, so this could be something of a good thing. Inflation is still a bad thing.

Twitter: someone made a twitter bot specifically to respond to brands posting their Ws during International Women’s Day. Here the story behind the Twitter Bot posting the gender pay gap of brands celebrating IWD . A nice bit of guerilla activism.

Electric vehicles continue to make progress. A new (to me) competitor for the Tesla is the Polestar . I like how their ads are mainly saying they are not Elon Musk’s company. Tesla’s shareholders should take note.

Thanks again for reading this newsletter. I hope someday it will be filled with things having nothing to do with sickness or conflict.  It’s good to be hopeful. See you next month.