Small things 23 Jun

• Sarcastic news: A new Canadian law would force social media and search platforms to pay for the 3rd party news stories they display. But these platforms are so close to the brink of financial collapse, they have instead elected to just not carry any Canadian news stories. Meta and Google live to fight another day.
• Have they just given up on inventing new pasta shapes? Can I not look forward to some rhombus pasta someday?
• If I owned a furniture store, I might call it ‘Shack of Sit’.
• The biggest pot in your cupboard. Or as I like to call it, the leftover generator.
• Spiders must be really confused watching soccer. The ball gets kicked into the net, but nobody eats the ball.
• My friend suggested that I’ll regret not buying the highest performance computer I can. OK, so is the Amazon data centre for sale at a good price?
• Have you ever waited so long to decide where to order food from that once you finally called they had closed?
• It’s 1989. Spotify and iTunes don’t exist yet. You just spent $20 on an album and suddenly realize it has one good song on it. Dang it!
• When you have a driving distraction so bad that once it’s over you restart the song that was streaming over again from the beginning.
• Funny drug dealer: “We don’t have Coke, is Pepsi OK?”
• Superheroes saying “The city is saved” after it’s almost completely destroyed.
• Hey kids! Slingshots! You’re welcome.
• If other things had been named like the walkie-talkie: Stabby-grabby (fork); Soupy-scoopy (spoon); Roomy-vroomies (limousine); hearty-starty (defibrillator); starey squareys (computer monitors); Eaty heaty (microwave oven); righty tighty (screwdriver).
• I got a wallet sized birth certificate. It’s for the benefit of people who think I was born yesterday.

30 people getting coffee versus 30 people enjoying coffee

 

The ‘other’ North American hockey league

The World Hockey Association (WHA), formed in 1971, tried to capitalize on the lack of hockey teams in a number of major American cities and mid-level Canadian cities, and also hoped to attract the best players by paying more than NHL owners would. Of the original 12 WHA franchises, only the Winnipeg Jets remained for all seven seasons without relocating, changing team names, or folding.

The whole dramatic story can be read here. 

Wizard of Oz pitch meeting

 

When bluffs collapse

I was mesmerized by what happened in this video at Black Beach Bluffs near La Jolla.

Pay particular attention to the black stuff that oozes out of the bottom of the bluff around the 3 minute mark.

The redundant plaque plaque

 

Things I learned lately 23 Jun

• The NHL has decided to ban ‘cause-based’ jerseys from now on, because of the few players who refused to wear ‘Pride’ jerseys this past season. They could have just said, “If you don’t want to wear it, then don’t.”
• Do OLED TVs suffer from burn in? Yes, they can. Do you need to worry? Only if you’re displaying static elements on screen for hours at a time on a regular basis. I’m talking about the score windows of video games, the ticker and logo of CNN, that sort of thing.
• Men may be more likely to lie to enhance their status or impress others, while women may be more likely to lie to protect others or avoid conflict.
• In the United States, renewable energy sources, including hydropower, wind, solar, and other sources, generated approximately 12.3% of the country's electricity in 2020. In China, 26.8% came from renewable energy sources in 2020.
• Canada may be unique in calling it a bus ‘depot’ and a fire ‘hall’.
• St. John's was used for setting up seasonal fishermen camps in the early 1500s. Sebastian Cabot declared in his original 1545 map that St. John's earned its name when he and his father, John Cabot, in the service of England, supposedly became the first Europeans to sail into the harbour, on the morning of 24 June 1494, the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. A series of expeditions to St. John's by the Portuguese took place in the early 16th century, and by 1540, French, Spanish and Portuguese ships crossed the Atlantic annually to fish the waters off the Avalon Peninsula. On 5 August 1583, an English Sea Dog, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, claimed the area as England's first overseas colony. There was no permanent population, however, and Gilbert was lost at sea during his return voyage, thereby ending any immediate plans for settlement. By 1620, the fishermen of England's West Country controlled most of Newfoundland's east coast. In 1627, William Payne, called St. John's "the principal prime and chief lot in all the whole country". Sometime after 1630, the town of St. John's was established as a permanent community.

Paris door

 

Small things 17 Jun

• I was hoping our premier would stand up to Dynalife the same way she’s standing up to Ottawa. I guess it’s hard to punish the people your party personally hired. I wonder if there are any financial links between Dynalife and anyone now or formerly in the UCP?
• "The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence." ~Nikola Tesla
• The FBI are so dumb. They kept warning me not to pirate DVDs and all they accomplished was getting me to stop buying DVDs with FBI warnings at the beginning.
• I looked in the Bible pretty thoroughly, and I couldn’t find anything that said ‘thou shalt not accidentally forget to scan that case of pop at the self check-out'.
• My sleeping pattern is rotisserie chicken. I just keep turnin’ and turnin’... By morning I’m rested on all sides.
• Vampires must get really tired of seeing human history keep repeating itself.
• I think it should be common courtesy that if you want to show someone something on your phone, you should cue it up before mentioning that you want to show it to them. Rather than saying, “Oh I have something great to show you,” and then you’re forced to wait 5 minutes while they try to find it.
• When your spouse leaves a note in the morning at your computer that says: “This is just not working.” But you turn it on and it seems to be working just fine.
• Yeah, but what’s the soup of the night tho?
• Dove chocolate tastes way better than their soap.
• I’ve got the kind of silly goose vibe that the serious geese don’t appreciate.
• Yes, we’re all cut from the same cloth, but some of us were cut with those wavy scissors.

Divider

 

3rd places should abound

Thought provoking video from one of the great minds of our time, the guy who operates the Not Just Bikes YouTube channel.

It’s about how great it is to have a neighbourhood with a ‘third place’, a place that isn’t work or home where you can hang out and meet people. More importantly, how suburbia zoning is making places like this extinct. My own neighbourhood is slowly introducing third places, but it’s only possible because we have a ‘main street’ and the neighbourhood is small. We also have a place called Angel’s Cafe on the walkway beside the Bow River, but this place is an anomaly, and would never get a green light if it were trying to get built from scratch today.

Peacock humour

 

A challenge worthy of accepting

You could say that it took some growing up before I began to feel this way and try my best to follow through on the concept myself. But when you step back and think about it, everyone has their own issues to deal with, their own burdens to carry, their own struggles to overcome. You can never fully know what another person is feeling and why, so it may be easy to assume, judge, label, insult, name-call, and disrespect someone you don’t agree with or that has differing beliefs or values to yourself. But is it fair to do so? No. Just as you wouldn’t want others to do the same to you, when they have no idea what you’re living through, what you've experienced.

This extends to politics as well. It is perfectly fine to disagree with another person’s politics. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. There is no need for assumptions, judgement, labelling, insults, name-calling, and disrespect. They’re just people. They have families. They’re just trying to live life the best way they know how. I think we have some choices to consider, in ascending order of practicality:

• Keep your opinion to yourself.
• If asked, voice your opinion, but in a respectful way.
• Listen to the other person’s point of view and try to understand their position and why they feel that way.
• Consider that you might be missing vital facts, misinformed, misguided, or dare I say just wrong, and challenge your own views from time to time.
• Learn to compromise.

Canadian elevations (in feet)

 

Things I learned lately 17 Jun

• In Canadian law, store employees are not allowed to physically stop you from leaving or search your belongings unless they actually witness you commit an offence. You are free to walk past a receipt check, out the store. The exception is a retailer such as Costco, which can enforce receipt checks because people (probably unknowingly) agree to them when they sign up for the required store membership.
• Instant Brands, the company behind Instant Pot, has filed for bankruptcy. 
• Canada has around 106 water bomber planes that are considered airworthy and able to fly.
• Calgary has more millionaires per capita than any other Canadian city.
• One of the reasons AI art generating tools don’t draw hands very well is that they don’t have a lot of examples of pictures of hands to train from, unlike faces, for which there are a lot.
• Steamboats, once a common mode of river transport, were quite dangerous. Between 1816 and 1848, boiler explosions alone killed more than 1,800 passengers and crew and injured another 1,000. The sinking of the steamboat Sultana in 1865, also the result of a boiler explosion, claimed as many as 1,800 lives, still the worst maritime disaster in US history.
• Parrots normally live in flocks, so maybe video calls might help them feel less lonely. That was the subject of an experiment at the University of Glasgow. The researchers studied 18 pet parrots who were taught to use a tablet. They learned really quickly. The parrots would ring a bell when they wanted to make a call, and then select a bird to call. The birds made 147 calls during the study, and engaged in social behaviors while on calls. The birds that made the most calls ended up being the most popular, and were chosen by other birds more often! The action starts at 3:27  
• There is a list of fictional brand names used in movies, TV and games. You can find it here. 

Small things 9 Jun

• In some restaurants in the US, they bring the wireless pay terminal, let you tap your card, then they print out a paper bill for you to write out your tip and total and then sign your name. They do not have the ability to add the tip on the terminal for some reason. It’s like a Flintstone car, no engine, just foot power.
• "Experts" tell you not to look at screens before bed because it messes up your circadian rhythm, but they're just lying so that they can enjoy unfettered high speed internet connections at bedtime. They want the night internet all to themselves.
• I was in San Diego recently and walking the oceanside pathway, I noticed a kid had collected seashells and had them arranged for sale. A couple beat cops walked past and this kid called them over asking if they’d like to buy some shells for a dollar each. That kid is going places.
• At least during the 1918 pandemic they had cocaine in their soda.
• Remember when you used to have to ‘buy’ Microsoft Windows?
• Jobs and cars. Your job pays for your car, which you need to get to work. In some cases the car is your job. Shout out to Uber and Uber-like drivers, cabbies etc.
• Cat horror stories: “And then, she got out the spray bottle…”
• Cat poetry: A gift for you, will soon arrive. But keep in mind, it is still alive.
• I find it odd that even though both Canada and the United States are filled with the descendants of people who sought out a new life in a land of promise, many of these same descendants don’t want any more people seeking out a new life in their land of promise.

"Where going?"

 

What can you do with ChatGPT

Many of you will have heard about the AI tool ChatGPT by now. But like any other powerful tool, it’s hard sometimes to figure out what you can use it for that can help you. Here are some ideas:

Simplify complex topics. If you're ever confused about a complex topic, ask ChatGPT:

"Explain [complex topic] like I'm 5 years old."

Summarize articles. Online articles can be a pain to read. You have to get past paywalls, filler, ads, etc. ChatGPT will summarize main points from any article URL you feed it.

First drafts / inspiration. Don’t let ChatGPT write content for you verbatim, but there’s nothing ethically wrong with getting it to churn out some content to inspire you.

Tell it to write [type of content], for example, “Write a long-form article about the techno scene in Berlin Germany.”

Edit your writing. ChatGPT can be a great writing assistant. If you're unhappy with some of your writing, copy & paste it into ChatGPT, then tell it to proofread spelling & grammar, or recommend changes, or edit in a specific style. “Make the above essay longer with a more casual writing style.”

Generate headlines. Ask ChatGPT to generate various headlines on a certain topic. Take your pick and make it your own.

Summarize books. ChatGPT can distill major ideas from a book. “Summarize the wealthy barber by david chilton.”

(Many of these prompts also work in Bing AI Chat)

Shown as a Bing AI generated poem about sunsets...

California island?

In 1626, People thought California was an island and they had no knowledge of the west side of North America.

Shows / Movies I could not finish

Here is a list of movies or TV shows I could not continue with to the end:

• The Munsters (2022)
• Last One Laughing Canada
• The Hustle
• Three Pines

Ketchup though?

You had me at maple bacon.

 

Lost between two shores

Nick Fradiani plays Neil Diamond in the Broadway play A Beautiful Noise.

Here he is performing ‘I am I said’ in the studio. 

What a voice!

In San Diego, new Lays chip flavours

 

Things I learned lately 9 Jun

• As of late Wednesday, there were over 400 wildfires burning in Canada.
• 1,000 Lego-nauts were sent to the edge of space (34 kilometres) on high altitude balloons so they could be declared as having been ‘in space’. They’re going to be given away as prizes by Lego.
• Alberta has two area codes spanning the entire province. 587 and 825. I came across my first 825 number recently.
• Being a homeless person in Japan is very stigmatized. There is no culture of compassion for the homeless there. They are looked upon as only having themselves to blame, because they’re mostly men, and men are expected to be self-reliant, and deserve no help. Being homeless is considered an embarrassment. Nevertheless, there are many working poor in Japan who find a way to get by, spending the night in 24 hour internet cafes while working low paying jobs.
• You may have noticed that some car models have what look like they could or should be turn signal lights on the back, but they don’t work. The signals and sometimes even the brake lights have been moved to a different light position. Sometimes the model even has to have extra lights installed to act as turn and brake lights. Why? Because North American law says you can’t have a brake light or turn signal light on a movable panel, such as a hatch or trunk.
• French microbiologist Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization in the 1860s to deactivate unwanted microorganisms in wine.
• Nevada has been the top gold-producing state in the US since 1986.
• There’s an annual seagull imitation contest held in Belgium.

I’m not saying our childhoods were luxurious, but we got sent to school with a charcuterie board

 

Small things 20 May

• That smoke you see and smell? They told you it’s from wildfires. It’s actually from pants on fire.
• Her: Do you want to go for a walk? Me: Yeah, that would be lovely. Her: OK, see you when you get back. Take your time.
• Why is it spelled ‘Looney Tunes’ and not ‘Looney Toons’?
• The old me: Welp, time for bed… The new me: And now I must attend to my evening affairs…
• How many times are you going to say, “It’s been one of those weeks” before you realize there’s never going to be the other kind of week?
• Nothing jeopardizes the validity of your ‘man card’ than when you need to tie a secure knot for something and your brain goes, “What is this ‘knot’ that you speak of?”
• Sometimes LinkedIn sends me a message telling me that I've shown up in [xx] searches this week. That piece of information is about as useless as being told that some people saw me at the mall on the weekend.
• Ice cream flavour idea: The wrath of butter P'Khan!
• There aren’t any articles showing extroverts how to tone it down a notch…
• [Points to pizza slicer] “What’s that?”  “That’s what I use to cut carbs.” 
• Propaganda: When a British person takes a really close look at something.
• Why would they sample toilet paper at Costco? And why is the lady wearing latex gloves?
• Remember when public toilets had those toilet paper dispensers that gave you like one tiny folded sheet of paper and you had to grab a bunch to get the job done properly? What a shit show.

Exclamation butt

 

What is made of this?

I’ll list the ingredients, you tell me what it is.

Sugars (molasses, sugar, glucose-fructose, dextrose, invert sugar syrup, glycerol), Wheat flour, Water, Corn starch, Coconut flakes (sulphites), Palm oil, Beef gelatin, Licorice extract, Cocoa powder, Tapioca starch, Caramel colour, Natural and artificial flavours, Modified potato starch, Carnauba wax, Turmeric extract, Mono- and diglycerides, Vegetable carbon, Beet red, Paprika extract, Salt, Beeswax, Spirulina concentrate, Fruit & vegetable concentrates (black carrot, black currant), Mixed carotenes, Shellac, Potassium sorbate, Sorbic acid, Safflower concentrate, Coconut oil.

Bat guitar

Batman, having been reunited with his Batguitar, launches into a rendition of Free Bird as an homage to Robin...

It's the 1970s

Not many knew what a computer was. The only phones were in buildings or booths by the side of the road. They were all tied to the system by a wire, so you could only take the phone so far away from its normal resting place. We swapped the short handset cord for long ones so that we could roam up to 50 feet from the phone’s base. Milk might have been delivered right to your house. Sometimes bread, pop and chips too. If you wanted a coffee outside of work and a restaurant, you had to make it at home and your only two options were a percolator, which took a long while to brew, or instant coffee, which still required boiling water. There were no stores that just sold coffee and tea. Convenience stores didn’t sell hot food. Porn magazines were on a rack in the middle of the store and for the longest time, they weren’t sealed. The produce section of the grocery store had whatever was in season and there was nowhere near the range of items we have today. If you wanted vegetables as a side, you probably got it out of a can. There was no such thing as packages of pre-sliced or shredded vegetables, lettuce or other salad makings. There was absolutely no gluten-free anything. The word vegan had no meaning. A diet simply meant you were consuming less food. Atkins, Keto, Paleo, etc. diets didn’t exist. 

Women had only secured the right to open a bank account without their husband’s signature in the past decade. This became the first time a woman could get a credit card in their own name, instead of their husband or father. The Criminal Code had just been amended to legalize the distribution of information on methods of contraception and their prescription, as well as sexual acts between two consenting members of the same sex. Women earned 57 cents to every dollar earned by a man. Paternal Authority was abolished, eliminating a husband having more legal rights with regard to judicial matters concerning their children. Women could not serve in combat roles nor be pilots in the military. Just under half of children had moms who stayed home all day as housewives. The Canadian Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Maternity benefits were finally standardized and made part of EI. 

Gas had lead in it. Paint too. You could buy a single family home for under $20,000, sometimes way under. Very few people locked their doors. For the most part, parents had no idea where their kids were, and they rarely had any concern about their safety. If you wanted to listen to music, you played a record at home and maybe put an 8-track cassette in your car stereo. Otherwise, mobile audio was restricted to radio only. FM radio had only been around a decade. Very few kids actually liked their parents’ music. Even if you lived in a big city, you had at most six TV channels to choose from. If you didn’t live close to the American border, you had much less than that, because there were only two Canadian networks at the time. The TV got its signal from an antenna and mast on the roof, and sometimes you needed a motor control to point the thing more toward the direction of the transmitting station you were trying to receive. If you wanted to get information about something you had to rely on a set of encyclopedias. Not everybody had them, because they were expensive, and the information contained within them was only as current as when they were printed. The next best option was your local library. Everyone wore a watch. 

There were maybe three or four flavors of potato chips. There was no such thing as ready made popcorn in a bag, with the exception of pink candy popcorn. People made popcorn using a Jiffy Pop pie plate thingy with a handle that you heated on the stove and the aluminum foil expanded as it popped. The closest thing there was to single serve, frozen dishes was the TV dinner on a compartmentalized aluminum tray, sealed with aluminum foil that you baked in the oven. There were no microwave ovens, those people that had them called them radar ranges, and they were exorbitantly expensive. McDonald’s had no chicken items on the menu. The Big Mac was under 75 cents. There were a lot of different kinds of bubblegum, and they weren’t sold as small pieces, they were made into fat sticks of flavored gum that you broke off into pieces. There were no diet soft drinks. Soft drinks were sold in glass bottles. 

Playgrounds were filled with things that could seriously harm you. Swings with wooden slat seats you could stand on, merry-go-rounds that spun fast enough to launch you many feet, slides that were long and high, monkey bars that were way too high off the ground. Suntan lotion (it wasn’t called sunscreen back then) had an SPF2 rating. Boxer shorts weren’t common. Most suitcases didn’t have wheels. Most people had at least a flower garden. The majority of cars on the road were made in North America. Cars were huge - a car with a width of 77 inches and a length of 210 inches (5.3 metres) wasn’t uncommon (A Honda Fit was 161 inches long). Pickup trucks were not a common family vehicle. There was no such thing as an SUV. Vans were big in the 70s and single guys liked to customize the paint job but especially the interior, turning them into psychedelic party / sex pads. The walls and floor would often be covered in thick shag carpeting. Car mechanicals were simple enough that most people could do their own minor repairs. Every car had a cigarette lighter and many ashtrays. There was no such thing as a sunroof in a car. Very few people wore seatbelts and most cars only had a lap belt in the front seat. Only sporty cars had individual seats in the front, most of the time it was one big long, bench seat. If kids were in the car, they basically sat wherever they felt like, unbelted, and it wasn’t uncommon to find them sprawled in the back of the station wagon. People rode in the back of a pick up truck like it was nothing. 

A lot of people smoked. There were still cigarettes with no filters on the end. Cigarette packages had cool designs and no glaring warnings at all. You could smoke everywhere, on a plane, on the train, in the workplace, at your desk, walking the hallways, anywhere. Cocktail lounges and bars would be thick with smoke. Cooks often had a smoke dangling out of their mouth while they prepared food. Every desk and most tables had an ashtray. The ashtray could even be on its own pedestal stand next to your chair in your living room. The shorts that men wore were very short, tight, revealed a lot of thigh and would’ve looked very strange today. Jean jackets were a common item of clothing. Bell bottom jeans too. Some young women liked to show their feminist side by not wearing a bra. Condoms existed, but not many people used them. There was no such thing as metal or plastic recycling, same with paper and cardboard. You didn’t have to visit the dump as often as we do today. If you had something to throw and it was smaller than a loveseat, you pretty much just put it out with the rest of the garbage, and it got compacted with all the rest of the garbage bags by the truck. Mercurochrome, the brand name of merbromin, was an antiseptic used to treat minor wounds and cuts that contained mercury. 

There were no ice makers in fridges, you had to fill metal ice cube trays with water and freeze them. Outdoor ice rinks outnumbered indoor rinks. Most airports didn’t have security screening. Handicapped people were still being sterilized. The Human Rights Act became a thing. The Canada Labour Code was amended to eliminate pregnancy as a basis for lay-off or dismissal. A dollar bought a movie ticket and snacks with money left over. Sometimes we went to see a movie in our car, at a drive-in theatre. You hung a speaker on your window and everybody parked facing the screen. Most of the grocery store brands don’t exist anymore. Steinberg’s, Dominion and A&P anyone? Most of the department stores don’t exist anymore. Zellers, K-Mart, Simpson’s, Eaton’s, Woolworth, Towers, Ogilvy’s. Newspapers were subscribed to by a lot of people and kids made a decent wage from delivering them every day. The newspaper was thick on Saturdays, with a built-in comics section, and loads of flyers with coupons. If you wanted something professionally printed on paper, you typed the document by hand using a typewriter. There were no ‘fonts’, just whatever type set was installed on the typewriter. If you needed copies of a document or copies of signatures or a filled out form, you put carbon paper between multiple sheets of paper and the copies were created by the pressure of typing or writing on the top sheet. The only way to take pictures was with a standalone film camera with interchangeable lenses. They made compact film cameras, but they took lousy quality pictures. Your webcam could take a better picture. You paid for everything with cash or wrote a cheque. Stores might not accept a cheque if they didn’t know you. Only wealthy folks or businessmen used credit cards. Paying with a credit card was not an electronic transaction, they used a special imprinter machine nicknamed a knuckle-buster to imprint the raised number from the card onto a carbon paper form, which was signed by the customer. That’s why you had to sign the back of the card, so the merchant could compare signatures. I don’t recall experiencing violent weather growing up. But after I left home, they experienced microbursts, tornados, ice storms, etc.