Archive

This morning, T and I sat in the den, me reading and her knitting, as snow peacefully but steadily fell, filling the roads, paths, and trees around us with a sign that winter is pretty well here. The solstice is a few weeks away yet, but the first weekend of December seems as good a time as any to mark the season.

I was continuing The Farmer’s Wife, which I mentioned briefly last week. The last chapter (ish) is set in a snowstorm on the Rebanks’ hill farm, a storm whose steady snow cuts them off from most infrastructure. The family steps up, each playing their part (as best they’re able) to keep the family and farm in good health through the snow. Though all our modern conveniences were in order, it felt fitting and relatable, as our world was also slowly blanketed in white.

A conversation between Sara Hendren and Krista Tippett was a good discussion of the in/inter/dependence theme I touched on in last week’s issue, albeit from another angle. It had me thinking quite a bit about independence, something that’s prized in Western culture (particularly its North American flavour), but is really maybe not all it’s cracked up to be.

It’s been a good weekend—full of the right activities, in the right proportion. T and I are rewatching Ted Lasso for probably the fifth time while hosting her mom for a few days, and it’s one of those shining lights in gloomy November.

(Though November hasn’t been too gloomy this year, honestly—yesterday was so sunny and lovely, I got out for a long bike ride along the river and Canal paths. They ranged from snow and ice in the shady bits to stretches with so much salt I couldn’t avoid it, worried for my poor bike’s frame.)

Looking forward to wintering in the months ahead.

After a very days-and-nights-busy work week, it was nice to have things a bit more normal this week. T and I are getting ready to host our first overnight visitor in the new place, which has been an effective impetus for me to finally finish unpacking and tidying the office / spare bedroom—it’ll feel good to have it in order, to have all the things in (more or less) a proper spot and all the boxes folded away.

Escaping the stress of things to do at home, we joined S and V for a recital this afternoon. The performances by Kathryn Patricia Cobbler and Sonya Sweeney were excellent—there’s something to beautiful music and a beautiful space reinforcing each other, making it all so much more pleasant.

Links from this week (ish):

• How might we prepare ourselves to handle inevitable uncertainty, change, even disaster, in our personal lives? I particularly liked the reframe from “How do I make the right decision?” to “What’s the potential harm that might emerge from this decision, and what structures might protect us from that harm?”
• Martha wrote up her reflections and memories from FWD50. Martha’s talk was a highlight of FWD50 for me, and here she shares a few of her own.
• Luddites weren’t against technology—they were against the inequitable and oppressive distribution of its gains. (Yes, that’s a second link from Mandy Brown today. I can’t point you enough toward her reading and writing.)
• Kudos to Signal for sharing the true cost of running a global messaging service, and for explaining how their policy choices directly impact their operating costs. (via a great “take out the tabs day” post by Matt Jukes)

It’s been a very full week! We hosted our first few meals in the new place—none fancy, but we’re not particularly fancy people anyhow. We also got in some nice time outdoors and away from home, which hasn’t happened as much since the move (though we’re now much closer to opportunities for “daily outdoors”, so that balances out nicely).

A huge chunk of the week, in terms of time and headspace, was spent at FWD50! It’d been a few years since I last attended in-person, and was there as a speaker this year.

Our talk likely won’t be released in recorded form, but if we know each other I’m happy to give you an informal version :) The main point, on my end, was sharing a more nuanced appreciation and respect for the significance of compliance. For digital government work, I think this means paying a close attention to why rules and processes have evolved, and seeing if it’s possible (and reasonable) to satisfy their intent, maybe in a new or different way—but not to blithely ignore them.

Good morning!

Yesterday was one of those lovely “maintenance” days. Both in the broadest sense—getting groceries, making sauce for the week ahead, going for nourishing walks in the sun, unpacking and organizing—and the literal sense—I had some new tools to tend to. When cooking an acorn squash, something I’d never done before, I was reminded of Tamar Adler’s excellent advice for testing if a vegetable’s done cooking: when you automatically go for a second bite, it’s done (or, at least, done enough). There are probably some bigger lessons to draw from that—an exercise for the reader.

For any in town attending, I’ll be at FWD50 this week! Vanessa and I are giving a talk, which should be good fun. If you’re around, reach out or say hi!

• Public inquiries may have limited impact in the moment, but are key tools to generate evidence for future historians. Unsurprisingly, I love this. The Public Order Emergency Commission (“Convoy Inquiry”) generated a trove of insightful documents (not to mention the detailed testimony into how government works nowadays), to which I hope future historians retain access (and, to dream a little dream, get more access to, that they may one day be declassified / unredacted).
• One of those life tips that it’s sad to need but also good to read: no phones in the bedroom! As ever, you can also read this as a reminder to have a good think about our relationship to tech!
• Jack Cheng, on following your interests and how it might relate to career(s) / work—oh, and gardening.

Another weekend of juggling too many things—one day I’ll be sensible about what I can actually accomplish in a day, a year, a life! There’s a long list from having moved, though huge thanks and kudos to the hard work T’s done to already make this place feel like home. That said, it’s my turn to do some home-y things—reflecting that, a quick round-up of observations and links from the week:

• Finished our hallway bench this week! Was fun to work with Martin on it over the last few weeks—it’ll make a great addition to the front hall. It was a quintessential woodworking project: designing it partially in advance, partially on the fly; fixing several mistakes that didn’t make sense, but needed fixing anyhow; retrofitting the structure a bit after testing it out, to strengthen a flex-y bit; practicing different techniques just for the fun of it. Thanks also to Jason for some tips on chamfering with a block plane, a fun little touch for the bench’s stretcher.
• I haven’t been able to get out as much as I’d’ve liked this fall, but am looking forward to a few more long bike rides, inspired by routes from Hans on the Bike.
• A thoughtful piece on all this waves hands at the complexity of the term AI stuff, starting with a reflection on two ways of using digital maps (like Google Maps) that was worth reading just on its own.
• Actually last weekend, but I didn’t share which books I picked up in that first Perfect Books run:
  • Deb Chachra’s How Infrastructure Works—I’ve had it on preorder since it was announced, and am thrilled it’s finally here. Deb’s newsletter and other writing have always hit a chord for me, so picking up a whole book on infrastructure was a no-brainer. Also, I really admire and appreciate that her recent book launch event included a request to mask up!
  • Nick Offerman’s Where the Deer and the Antelope Play—I’ve been on a bit of an Offerman kick this year, so I was keeping an eye out for this one to come out in paperback. His interview with Krista Tippett touches on this book a fair bit, and is an excellent introduction to his very well-rounded life and personality.
  • Tasmyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth—I read Gideon with my book club, Harrow on my own (what a mind trip), and eagerly awaited Nona’s release in paperback. It’s a wonderfully constructed world, one I’m excited to continue exploring.

All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas

Whew. It’s been a week—a month—a season—a year. Fall’s a third over, but it’s flown by. A month ago we returned from Japan, and turned in short order to packing up the apartment. We moved this week, and we’re so glad for it.

Byward was wearing us down. I love the area, but the city seems determined to keep it from its potential as a dense, livable core. We couldn’t go anywhere without crossing a river of cars, and the noise—SO MUCH NOISE—, the worst of it vehicular, had seeped deep into us. Our building and unit were lovely, but it was time to go. (To be clear, that makes me really sad! I really do love the area, and its potential. But it’s getting neither the vision nor support it and its residents—all its residents—need, and I don’t see that changing for a while. Relatedly / unrelatedly, it doesn’t even have a produce market anymore!)

We’ve moved to a familiar neighbourhood. Still close to our favourite spots (we’ve already done a Perfect Books run!), but a bit out from the hustle and bustle. It’s been a load off the mind and body to take morning and evening walks, enjoying the changing leaves and taking the area in from a new perspective.

We’re living in an older house now, a little one from the 40s. Renting, to be clear—we don’t have anywhere near the kind of money to buy a house these days. I struggled with a few things, saying goodbye to the familiar and hello to the new, one of them being how an older house isn’t nearly as sealed up as the fifth-floor, concrete-encased, 20-year-old apartment we’d been living in. We’re not the only being living in and around it, in other words. My therapist had a good perspective on this, though, pointing out how the house “grows” things, versus the sterile nature of an apartment at a remove from the ground—with greater potential for us to grow here, too, I hope.

Hello! Things have been quite busy here the last few weeks, but the end is in sight, with quieter, calmer days ahead. T suggested—whether she realized it or not—that I capture some of the activities and routines that have kept us going as we’re been juggling so much. A, however, is passionately expressing his hunger, so I’m on the clock as I write this!

• Date squares at Planet Coffee, best enjoyed under the trees as they slowly change colour (the leaves are taking their time this year, thank goodness!)
• Friendship walks to Moo Shu, always sampling at least one new / seasonal flavour in my two-scoop waffle
• Catching up with old CDS colleagues, a good reminder of how lovely the folks there were, and a chance to realize a few of us would all be in town in a few weeks for FWD50
• Hanging out at Ottawa City Woodshop, whether plugging away at a personal project or working on a course (and discovering you’re the only person in a course and having a blast with the ever-generous Martin Thornell)
• Watching M*A*S*H on a quiet evening
• Perusing my favourite feeds and newsletters via Feedbin (that page needs updating, but much of it still holds up)

Any activity or routine you’ve been returning to lately, to keep going? I hope you get to do it soon, if you need or want to. All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas

Was feeling down today—a rainy weekend, a Thanksgiving in Ottawa instead of with family (but for very good reasons!), distressing imagery and news from Israel and Palestine. Still am, in many ways, but an afternoon cooking comfort food helped (root vegetables, ribs, and pasta sauce, in case you were wondering). Also, declaring that port season is here.

Some snippets from the week (no promises as to their noteworthiness):

• I finally had a chance to head back to the woodshop and putter about. I had some ash I’d previously started bringing to size, before deciding I’d use it for a different project (a seeeeecret!). Even had a chance to start sawing and chiseling away at one piece before it was time to bike home—a darker, colder ride than I’ve had for quite a while. It was nice to be back, nice to have the space to do something different with my brain and hands, and nice to be in motion on the way there and back. I signed up for another course, this one a bit more involved, so at least there’s some structure / incentive to get me there despite all the busy-ness with life right now.
• Yesterday, riding transit, I had a thought: why does transit run less frequently on evenings and weekends? Sure, yes, there are fewer people commuting then, less need to go to / from work—but those non-working hours are all the more precious for their scarcity, relative to the work hours. Why do our transit schedules prioritize office / normal work-week employers—by making sure their employees get there (reasonably, ish, maybe) on time—and not people trying to make the most of their free time? It’s hardly a new thought, nor one that takes much to answer.
• This article on sketchiness in some CBSA procurement has gone around this week, and whew it’s a doozy. More attention to government procurement in general, please! Two things I’d toss in the ring: procurement is hard for both vendors and public servants to navigate, and that creates really difficult—problematic, even!—incentives around who gets government business; many of the problems in procurement come from a desire—an understandable one, even!—to be able to pay for the certainty—real or illusory, take your guess—that someone else will fix your problem, and as long as processes and people optimize for certainty, we’ll fall into traps like these.
• Strong agree with this pitch for learning basic sewing skills to better shop and clothe yourself.

All the best for the week ahead.

Hello from a mostly-not-jet-lagged Lucas! It was quite a time adjusting to Ontario, uh, time, but I far preferred being awake early to always wanting to sleep in.

There’ll be more on Japan another time, but Craig Mod’s latest Ridgeline captured well some of our experiences in Tokyo: sweltering in the late summer heat, exploring Yanaka and nearby neighbourhoods, and marvelling at all that can be found between two stops on a train line.

For this week, though, some good links:

• Erin Kissane has written an in-depth series on Meta / Facebook’s role in Myanmar and the genocide of the Rohingya people. I particularly appreciate the piece I link there, which explains Erin’s methodology and writing conventions, important when dealing with such a traumatic topic from another part of the world.
• I’m glad a deputy minister spoke, frankly and on the record, about the changes they’re bringing to their organization.
• No More Noise Toronto is advancing an important issue that I wish cities would pay better attention to: urban noise as a health issue (found via Code for Canada’s newsletter).
• I can definitely see nostalgia for a particular experience of suburbia as a kind of political ideology.
• Dan Bouk’s “Making Up Numbers” captures well a whole field of study I find fascinating: the social underpinnings of data.
• There should be a spot held in this newsletter for a Maria Popova / Ursula K. Le Guin link every week, as with this one on “Change, Menopause as Rebirth, and the Civilizational Value of Elders”.

Hello!

T and I are back from a few weeks in Japan. Mindboggling to write that, not least because my brain’s in another timezone and suffering from yesterday’s 24 hour travel day (which, thanks to timezone trickery, was less than 12 hours of time on the clock!), but also because I’d never seen myself traveling much before meeting T, who’s encouragingly expanding my horizons with each great trip we take together.

Scrambled observations:

• It was hot!
  • Low to mid 30s most days, and humid to top it off. This scared me, as we were gearing up to go! It got to us one way or another every day, but was also not as bad as I expected. We ate/drank electrolyte-y things, so we actually absorbed water, which definitely helped.
  • Japan’s also a country that knows and accepts that it gets hot! It felt very fine and normal to be sweating buckets (though mad respect to folks who can wear long shirts / pants and layers in that heat), and air conditioning was never far off (spilling directly onto the street from nearly every store, which was a bit odd from an energy efficiency perspective).
• It was quiet!
  • Even amidst many people—whether on the train or in bustling neighbourhoods—the sound level was comfortably muted. There are a bunch of written and unwritten rules in place to help this along—and, helpfully, these rules are actually followed.
  • This was reinforced coming home, whether on Ottawa’s LRT or while walking through our (admittedly busy) neighbourhood. There was much noise! Even as I write this, the street noise is noticeably louder than it was at and around our busiest Tokyo accommodations.
• Reliable transit is such a gamechanger. Even when taking buses to get around, it was always more or less trustworthy enough to plan around. Contrasting the start of our journey home to the end is illustrative (see the annex at the end of today’s issue for those points of comparison), but it has a huge impact on your ability to conceive of doing things—even far away things!—when you trust you can get yourself there when you mean to.
• Another refreshingly reliable service was luggage forwarding. Overnight delivery to nearly anywhere in Japan, for a very reasonable price. And it just worked, whether going through your hotel or dropping off at a nearby service centre directly!
• Fun interactions included:
  • 7/11 clerk in Asakusa, who we saw daily for breakfast and who asked us about what we were seeing, while also excitedly telling us the history of the imagery on a souvenir we’d bought.
  • Couple in their 70s sitting beside us at a sushi spot, who gave us tips on what to try while eating an astonishing amount of food themselves (and laughing uproariously the entire time).
  • The kind and enthusiastic server at an Uji teahouse, who taught us how to make and enjoy different types of tea.
• We saw some cool things:
  • Kanazawa is such a lovely city. We only really saw its historical downtown, but what a place that is. We didn’t plan for it, but there was a jazz festival on while we were in town, with loads of free gigs at neat venues, like shrines and parks. Kenroku-en was also a wonderful garden escape in the middle of it all—we visited multiple times and found so much to love (it lives up to its designation as a “National Site of Special Scenic Beauty”). Though it was really hot, we had a great time bopping between spots and listening to jazz along the way.
  • Uji was a neat trip out of Kyoto. While the teahouses and leafy streets were great fun, I also enjoyed the park describing historical methods of water management on the river, and their connection to the area’s tea industry.
  • Exploring the D&DEPARTMENT store in Kyoto and eating at their cafe / restaurant in an old temple building—the food, atmosphere, and view were all superb. Reading about and seeing their application of “long-life design” made me nod my head a bunch.

Hello!

In the midst of vacation, trying to channel Rach Smith’s “no inputs day”. It’s… hard! Changing context helps, of course, but those inputs are always just a tap away. That said, this week, in a moment where I just wanted some familiar things to read, I enjoyed this interview with a power duo in Welsh antiques (lol), on how they’ve made their life interests into their life’s work (and an integral part of their lives together).

Okay, back to no (little?) inputs—more soon! All the best for the week ahead!

Lucas

Thank you to everyone who wrote in about my break email last week. I’ll likely keep going, but relieve myself of the stress of titling these posts for the next few weeks (a surprisingly big part of the weirdness!), and just share a little vignette or a few links.

Links links links!

• https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/labor/ and https://everythingchanges.us/blog/work-work-balance/
• 

  
  

  On productivity metrics and management consultants – Surfing Complexity

  The management consulting firm McKinsey & Company recently posted a blog post titled Yes, you can measure software developer productivity. The post prompted a lot of responses, such as Kent Bec…

• 

  
  

  Never Look Down the Road Not Taken

  On financial regrets and why life never turns out the way you think it should.

• https://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2023/09/06/memories-of-molly/ and https://rachelandrew.co.uk/archives/2023/09/07/why-are-we-not-still-using-tables-for-layout/

All the best for the week ahead!

Hello!

Ah, September—what a pleasure! Though it’s been a while since the academic year shaped my life, I’m still keenly aware of it—the rhythm of thirds has a better feel than quarters, and the change from the beginning to the end of each set of four months is real, tangible, appreciable. This week is delivering a classic September heat spell, but with luck we’ll soon be snuggled in sweaters.

• I’m a fan of “vibes” posts (call them what you will, but they’re round-ups of what someone did / read / saw / thought / etc over the last week / month / arbitrary period of time). Two I read recently: Susan Jean Robertson and Tom MacWright.
• Props to Doug Keefe for doing what TBS doesn’t by making GC rate of pay data publicly available in an open data format (plus an API!). (And hat-tip to Chris Allison and Sean Boots for their prior art in this space.)
• This week, I picked up Jhumpa Lahiri’s Translating Myself and Others from Perfect Books. Essays on reading and writing are a favourite genre of mine, and I really enjoyed Lahiri’s In altre parole (In Other Words)—reading and writing takes a whole other feel when moving between languages.
• T and I also picked up Gardening Naturally, a delightful book by Laurie Perron and Sarah Quesnel-Langlois of Jungle Fleur—next year, we’re looking forward to slowly growing (haha) into gardening, and this book has a “just enough info and encouragement” approach that really resonates with us (similar to How to Sew Clothes, which we also love).

Posts the next few weeks will be brief, or… not at all!? This newsletter is now six years running (!!), a fact I largely missed last week. The fifth anniversary issue remains a good signpost to the archive, and the accompanying data analysis is a bunch of fun. (Solid Lucas sentence there.) While I don’t feel quite ready to shut it down entirely, issues this summer have been a bit slower to materialize—I’m reading and doing differently these days, in ways that don’t quite lend themselves to what I write here. Which is fine! But that, coupled with a very busy few weeks ahead, has me pondering a pause. We’ll see.

Folks! The evenings are cool and the mornings crisp! Fall is coming! This is not a drill!!

Very full days behind and ahead of us—with some exciting news to share in weeks ahead—so will just share some links, while hoping you’re getting chances to enjoy beautiful weather and quiet days.

• Noticed over the last few weeks two “lite” versions of news sites: CBC Lite and NPR’s text-only version. They’re lightweight designs with minimal data usage (only loading images when you choose to, for example), with few if any ads—as a result, they’re blazing fast to load and interact with. Everything a website should be.
• On what makes a healthy place to live and be.
• Lorin Hochstein’s writing often shifts my view of the world slightly but profoundly (so, too, with Marianne Bellotti). Two posts from Lorin that kept chipping away at that view: “Why LFI [Learning from Incidents] is a tough sell” and “Normal incidents”.
• When archivists smell vinegar, it’s time to act.

All the best for the week ahead!

Folks, I took that advice I shared in the last two issues—Mandy Brown’s energy makes time—and hoo boy does it ever work! Spent the afternoon in the woodshop today, thinking I’d do a project, but instead prototyping said project and practising a bunch of skills in the process.

It’s humbling to be such a beginner and surrounded by people with much more experience—the discomfort, which is very real, is good for me, I think. And, once I get past the “oh goodness I don’t belong here” each time, things feel pretty great.

Much attention this week has been on the fires—it’s frightening to realize, in writing that, that “the fires” can refer to any number of ongoing climate catastrophes. Sean wrote a post about the fires chock-full of links and references that I think are worth reading. I, too, +1 Lyn’s call for better.

Hello!

Bit of an off day energy-wise—trying to fit in too much, not doing a great job cutting myself slack when I can’t fit all that, and wallowing over all of it. I know I should heed advice I shared just last week, Mandy Brown’s “Energy makes time”—and yet, and yet, and yet.

Some recent brightspots included sunny afternoons in parks with T, quality time with family and friends visiting town (S and C yesterday, along with S and V!), morning bike rides, and plenty of summer ice cream. Quality go-tos, regardless of whatever else is going on.

I’ve also been enjoying Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I’m sure others have put this better, but it’s a good example of how Trek could become / is becoming an archetypal universe, where different performers can play Kirk, or Uhura, or Spock, or so on, each bringing new dimensions to a familiar character—and, perhaps, helping us re-nuance misunderstandings of characters we think we know through and through. The musical episode was also a delight, and I look forward to continued Trek oddness. (Also to Women at Warp’s review of said musical episode, once the writers / actors strike concludes.)

Ah, August—the good part of summer. Still hot, yes, but less consistently so. Cooler nights, the occasional balmy day, little treats to make the heat more bearable, comfortable and nice before we again give up the heat for so many months.

Several links from this week:

• “I don’t want students to be able to finish each other’s sentences. I want the ethics layer to be sufficiently thorny that a variety of design approaches would have to be considered.” (Sara Hendren, “shearing layers and finishing sentences”)
• “But more often than not, organizations are completely incapable of executing on any plan whatsoever and they hire the consultant as if that’s a magic cure that will fix whatever is keeping them from changing on their own. Consultants are really bad at doing that. They don’t have the authority to fix what’s broken for you.” (Marianne Bellotti, “The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Consultants”)
• Why transparency in municipal finances can help win support for funding from other levels of government. (Neil Saravanamuttoo and Catherine McKenney are on a good roll with Fix Your City.)
• “They had assumed, wrongly, that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do their art, because they assumed (because we’re conditioned to assume) that every thing we do costs time. But that math doesn’t take energy into account, doesn’t grok that doing things that energize you gives you time back. By doing their art, a whole lot of time suddenly returned. Their art didn’t need more time; their time needed their art.” (Mandy Brown, “Energy makes time”)
• Ethan Marcotte gathers a number of thoughtful posts on social media, relationships, and internet culture in the wake of Twitter’s continued demise.
• Jeremy Keith, a few years back, shares his experience crossing the Atlantic on an old-style ocean liner. Turning back the clock each day (almost) was one of the coolest bits for me!
• “This is the Phone Challenge: to use my phone as little as possible without sacrificing its real utility. … The point isn’t to limit my contact with the internet — I still get to use my laptop as much as I want. But my laptop use is more deliberate than the way I used to pull out my phone for no reason, and my laptop doesn’t go everywhere with me.” (Elizabeth Lopatto, “Let’s all play the Phone Challenge”)
• “We've let ourselves get away from building websites that can do normal web things. … In the end, it's usually because we've JavaScript'ed our way out of these things.” To the great bit about letting links be links, I’d add making links functional—that a link I bookmark or share should bring me back to the same information (more or less). (Heather Buchel, “Just normal web things.”)

Okey, time for some rest and fun this long weekend. C’s in town, we’re having a picnic with S and V later today, and tomorrow is gloriously unplanned. All the best for the week ahead!

Hello!

A happy Sunday to you :) Writing, again, at the end of a full but fulfilling weekend. This weekend featured hours in parks, enjoying the grass and the scenery and the quiet—yesterday, visiting some dear friends back in town for a visit with their baby; today, imagining the future and reading with T. Really enjoying this cool weather break—here’s to August, the better part of summer.

• Our devices, software, and mindsets quantify and incentivize growth, but don’t know what to do with rest.
• “Working, humanely” isn’t something that feels possible some days, and yet there are little pockets of goodness out there—even if only for a time.
• Sharing a post on learning from incidents, Mandy Brown applies its lessons to retrospectives in general.
• A helpful framework for thinking about financial investments: the “return on hassle spectrum”.
• Studies on the link between CO2 and cognition are all over the map, suggesting the need for more research—well-explained science interpretation, thank you!!
• I’ve been slowly enjoying the second season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds—episodic content, thank you!!—and don’t have a link to share about it, just to say, it’s good.

All the best for the week ahead!

Hello!

Writing after an unexpectedly full weekend, tired but thankfully not drained:

• Yesterday morning was an awesome hand tools course at Ottawa City Woodshop (great fun, dicing up a pine board with a long list of tools).
• This morning and afternoon was spent securing a very-nice-but-has-tricky-physics set of shelves to our how-in-the-world-did-they-build-this apartment wall.
• This evening with a host of friends, new and old alike, whiled away in Strathcona Park (itself an old friend), eating and catching up and blind contour drawing and the like.

Our get together was to celebrate a host of July birthdays, a lively and lovely way to enjoy a summer night. (A was unimpressed with the lateness of his dinner, but that cat’s stomach runs on a 22-hour clock or something).

Hi!

Exciting things afoot, but I’m low on energy and brainspace this afternoon. I don’t have anything in particular to say or share this week, but am pleased to report that moving (inside or outside), tending to little bits of earth (in my case, watering plants), and “Grandparent hobbies” continue to be great ways to fill you up. In case you didn’t follow that link, here’s how Anne Helen Petersen defines Grandparent hobbies:

No one told me that aging would include gradual and then overwhelming obsession with Grandparent hobbies. What is a Grandparent hobby? Broadly conceived: Woodworking. Needlework. Specialty baking. Unscheduled comfy chair napping. Puzzles. Scheduled walks. “Visiting.” Golfing poorly. Block printing. Bridge or canasta or Mahjong. Smoking in the backyard. Word games. “Tinkering.” Fiber Arts. Driving people to medical appointments. Birding. Listening to baseball on the radio. Reading large-print history books.

A Grandparent hobby doesn’t have to have done by your Grandparent. It just has to be something that you do without mind towards optimization.

Here’s to Grandparent hobbies. All the best for the week ahead!

Hello!

Coming off a lovely weekend full of T time, family time, friend time, and hobby time—very glad for all the people I get to share life with. It’s left me quite tired, though, so I’ll just share some links with light annotation. T and I are finishing The Terminal and an ice cream cake tonight, so there’s much to save my brain for!!

• Commentary, history, and links to more history on Ethernet, which just turned 50 years old.
• I didn’t know the Ontario Food Terminal is publicly owned, nor that it primarily serves the not major brands.
• On the use (or not) of secret intelligence in government, and what it says about political-bureaucratic incentives.
• I am shocked but not at all surprised to learn that Pimisi station—one of the Ottawa LRT stations likeliest to host large crowds—is not built for large crowds.
• To rebuild Notre Dame, they have to first reforge the medieval axes that dimension the timber. I find the expense and extravagance poured into restoring this church to be mindboggling, but if you’re going to go all out, I guess you really need to go all out.
• Morning routines, yes, but also being more chill about said routines. Rach Smith, thank you for this.

Thank you for being a wonderful part of my week, every week. If I haven’t replied to an email from you recently, I hope to soon! All the best for the week ahead!!

Hello!

We’re just wrapping up a really lovely visit from my family, which included a brunch today with our closest Ottawa family, S+V. Very glad for the chance to visit these past few days.

On that note—it’s halfway through the year, somehow! The weather has not done much for my desire to be outside (rainy or hot or smoky, pick two!), but we’re plugging along nonetheless. Since goalmaking is generally arbitrary, but public accountability can be helpful, sharing here some things I’d like to do with the six months ahead of us:

• Do more woodworking: make some frames, make something usable for around the house (a handy box or shelf thingamajig? a lil furniture? who knows!).
• Ship a [redacted] project about the federal government’s HR system.
• Sew one piece of (basic! functional!) clothing.
• Do a joint project of some sort with T—maybe combining woodworking and sewing, or something like that!?
• Go on some fun trips with T (these are already booked / in the process of being booked, so pretty sure these’ll happen!).
• Do one consciously “active” activity a week, and one “stretching” activity a week (stretching is definitely active, but I’m thinking “elevated heart rate” for the first).

Hello!

It’s been a very full week, and I don’t have much in the tank to write today. I hope you’re all doing well, and taking care, especially if you live somewhere (like Ottawa) where the air quality is so manifestly bad.

I was saying to T this morning, it’ll be interesting to see if/how people learn about air quality in future years—wearing a mask seems so negatively identified with COVID for some, I wonder how many will just continue defiantly not wearing one, even with wildfire smoke (which is so clearly bad!!). Sadly, it seems we’ll be reckoning with this more and more often.

All the best for the week ahead,

Hello!

Sunny, blue skies have emerged from an overcast morning (though I like the gloom, some days—it encourages a general feeling of quiet, a welcome break from noise and hubbub). My brain is full of project ideas, and I’m looking forward to the slow days of summer for a chance to make those projects a reality.

Links links links!

• For so many reasons, I am very happy to see the depth and breadth of coverage coming out of the Globe’s Secret Canada project, which last week launched a database of Canadian freedom of information requests. (The “behind the scenes” pieces in their blog are also excellent.) There have been many pieces published under the Secret Canada banner this year—a favourite from the last week discusses the connection between federal information requests, immigration policy, and the service approach of the federal immigration department. Brilliant stuff that I’m glad to see discussed publicly.
• Vass Bednar with two great issues of regs to riches this week: one on interoperability through the lens of strollers and another on the quiet power of legislating labeling requirements.
• L.M. Sacasas contrasting care to control, particularly in the raising (and surveillance) of children.
• Justin Ling with some interesting discussion on “retreating” in debate, as a method to advance discussion instead of wedging extremes. Not easy!
• But I think that’d appeal to Paul Wells, who’s been writing a lot about having better conversations (individually and nationally). This week, he wrote about one such conversation—or series thereof—that took place in Ottawa, a conference he describes as an “amiably chaotic event” reflecting on how Canada responded to the pandemic, not seeking to establish a position, but simply to allow its participants to confer. Ottawa Civic Tech used to offer a similar, though much lower key, type of “amiably chaotic” space to meet and get to know folks you might not otherwise—a type of space that definitely feels missing as various groups re-find their footing.
• On the predictable increase of unpredictable turbulence due to climate change.
• Finally, for yet more links, I never regret dipping into Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter—the latest has a collection I really enjoyed this week.

Hello!

Writing, very (very) full with food, after a full day visiting family. We’ve had a busy few weeks, with lots of emotional ups and downs, but are glad to be able to spend time with loved ones.

• Looking outside or breathing this week felt a little different, a little more difficult—wildfire smoke flipped the pandemic logic of “outside air is safest” on its head, pushing us to seal windows and limit external circulation. CBC published a frightening chart of hectares burned over time by year—this year’s is a vertical line, with more hectares burned already in 2023 than we’ve burned in the entirety of any of the last seven fire seasons (which usually end in November). It does not bode well.
• One way we get through difficult times, like fires, is through community—an inherently social act. Apple this week shared its, er, vision of the future of computing, a tech that would undoubtedly facilitate content consumption, but in a pretty isolated way. I appreciated commentators who critiqued it on the latter count. To be clear, I also get the appeal!! But, I’ve been trying to go out and do more things with people—people I don’t know, even!—and appreciating more and more the brain rewiring that such time together can offer. So, uh, deep skepticism that this is what we really need, as our challenges become ever more about our ability to relate and get along.
• Finally, a moving message from Sameer in memory of a close friend of his who recently passed away. “Tell your friends you love them”—some of the best advice out there.

All the best for the week ahead. May it be filled with great love.

Hi!

A very happy Sunday to you. We’ve had a whirlwind few days, but in a way that feels as relaxing as it’s been full: a woodworking course yesterday morning (such fun!), checking out some Doors Open spots today (the greenhouse at Rideau Hall, excellent as always), visiting with friends in Strathcona park (another spot that’s consistently great, especially with friends).

As I look up at “Issue #300”, I realize happily that those activities exemplify some of the principles I shared 200 issues ago, when this newsletter switched from the double to single digits. Thank you, as ever, for being along for this ride.

Briefly, some links, as I’m itching to do more things off-screen, before a week with loads of staring at screens:

Hello!

I spent the morning as a biking kit man to T and T’s mom, who ran the Ottawa marathon today. CONGRATS BOTH!! It was so awesome to see their accomplishment, gruelling as it was at times, and to share it with S and V at some key points along the route. We’re all thoroughly zonked, so I’ll just leave some links and head off to rest.

• This entertaining annotation of some legal back and forth over an inquiry requesting access to Boris Johnston’s journals taught me that there’s a full-on, proper inquiry “to examine the UK’s response to and impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and learn lessons for the future”. Talk of an inquiry is all the rage in Canada at the moment—and with good reason!—but not with how we responded to the pandemic as its object. As I’ve written about previously (“Learning in crisis”, August 2022; “Broken social scene—wait, I mean, contract”, July 2022), this is the kind of serious endeavour I desperately wish this country would take on.
• Huge congrats to all in Nova Scotia’s new Department of Cyber Security and Digital Solutions, including Nova Scotia Digital Service friends. Matt Jukes recently reflected on his ten years in digital government, to which Matt Edgar recently responded—movement in Nova Scotia is a bright spot in the Canadian landscape, one I’m glad to see.
• “Why do [US] prison emails cost so much?” Concise, impactful depiction of prison as an industry. Canada has its own issues here, too, lest you thought this was a distinctly American thing.
• “Make all cars electric” is not the panacea some think it is, as heavy batteries will probably make those cars much more dangerous for those sharing the road. Not to mention the immense difficulty—primarily in water volumes, but not exclusively—of putting out an electric vehicle that’s caught fire. So, public transit anyone?

All the best for the week ahead!

Hello!

I smelled manure from the Experimental Farm while out biking this morning, and it gave me a great smile—manure’s a smell that reminds me of home, growing up near where suburban Waterloo gives way to farmer’s markets and fields.

Three quick links for you, as I’m enjoying a long weekend away from screens and focused on making things with my hands—and I hope the same for you!

• An interactive news story to surface and contextualize how often your personal information has been breached online.
  • A good example of how digital security is much more than just “use a password manager” (but my goodness, please do—I happily use 1Password and am happy to chat about it).
  • AND of how there’s so much we can’t opt out of in the digital sphere, hence the need for genuine attention to and action on data brokers, among other actors, who enable this wild ecosystem.
• La Niña has wrapped, El Niño is coming—and it’s about to get that much hotter. We thought it was hot the last few years and Alberta is having a very intense fire season unseasonably early, and yet the El Niño heat doesn’t even start until next year!!
• A calculator to see the salary impacts of the EC tentative agreement announced this week.
  • As various waves of collective bargaining produce agreements, I’ve been frustrated with how salary changes are presented: %, %s simply summed, %s compounded, and so on—so much room to imply one position or another. When the tentative agreement for my group came out this week, I realized I could build a calculator to show the tangible impacts of the proposed agreement.
  • It’s a good demonstration case for Observable notebooks, which I’m increasingly using to explore JavaScript’s impressive in-browser computation and visualization capabilities (this is just a calculator, nothing really impressive under the hood, but more to come from another project soon).
  • One piece I’d love to add: a “tithe” calculator, to show what CAPE-represented employees could contribute of their salary to compensate the lost salaries of PSAC-represented employees who went on strike to get, essentially, this very deal, for themselves and the rest of the public service (but PSAC’s wasn’t even as good, in some dimensions, which tells you a lot about bargaining dynamics). That’d be something closer to real solidarity. That is, if CAPE were, y’know, something closer to a robust union.

Hello!

I was already a few minutes from home during a walk earlier today, when I realized I hadn’t taken an antihistamine. Miraculously, I emerged mostly un-irritated—a sign, perhaps, of my slowly adapting to this pollen-y season, or of its slowly fading in intensity. Either way, no complaints!

I’ve been grappling lately with “how best to fill my free time”—an urge to relax well, to not waste my free time, as it were. I don’t have a particular goal or vision in mind for how best to spend my life—work can’t be the whole thing, I’m convinced of that, but I don’t have an excellent answer to “So what about the rest of your time?”

Time with friends and family is usually excellent, but I’ve been struggling more often than not lately with a gnawing sense that I should be up to more. In one attempt to grow and challenge myself, I’ve been exploring new hobbies, fumbling through unfamiliar motions and wondering if it’s really worth it. This leaves me grappling with “not knowing”, a sure sign of growth, but no less comfortable for being so.

Whew! We made it through a dreary week of April showers, and are now truly treated with May flowers.

I’ve had Springsteen’s “Glory Days” going through my head (and, on the not so rare occasion, my vocal chords). Perhaps it’s from seeing videos of Michelle Obama’s appearance singing the song with Springsteen in Barcelona.

But I’ve also been yearning for the simple pleasures of my childhood—getting lost for hours in a world (whether outside, or in a book, movie, game, or so on), having a broad sense of possibility (rolling hills always seem to come to mind), always learning so much (encountering things for the first time, more on average than later in life, will do that!)—and perhaps “Glory Days” is also about that, even if the lyrics aren’t really.

I chalk it up to our emergence from dreary weather to spring- and summer-like days, with all the feelings that evokes.

Hello!

It’s been—finally—a mostly chill, restful weekend. Long overdue, and grateful for it. We read, ate ice cream, did some light shopping, caught up with family (including Oma!), and later today will catch up with friends. No travel, nor trips to the hospital, nor much distress. I even had a chance to write some data parsing code! (To get a breakdown of my Communauto trips from PDF invoices, so thrilling are my interests.)

Part of the chill-ness, external factors aside, has also come from not reading too much on screens—I’ve had plenty of screen time (coding, gaming, accounting), but tried to focus my reading time on paper. Good for the eyes, yes, but also a good way to escape the onslaught of the feeds. To that end, I’ve been reading City of Illusions (Ursula K. Le Guin) and Pastoral Song (James Rebanks), both fitting books for a quiet, rainy weekend.

Because of this, I haven’t got many links to share, but that’s okay. More time for all of us to tend to things offscreen, whether books or plants or life outdoors or something else. Still, though, I’ve two brief notes, on Ottawa things that aren’t just Ottawa things:

It’s an overcast Sunday and there’s a mariachi band playing outside, which, much to T and A’s chagrin, means I’m trumpet-mouthing along (I suppose we should all be glad I haven’t yet broken out my actual trumpet). It’s not been quite the relaxing weekend either of us were expecting (not because of the mariachi band, but because of various continued health adventures), but we’re hanging in nonetheless.

Ottawa’s been thrumming this week with the PSAC strike. For those who wonder why office workers ought to unionize and, yes, strike—though not all PSAC workers are office workers, they make up a significant portion—Anne Helen Petersen offers a compelling argument, grounded in many of her previous pieces on precarity, class, and honest living. A +1 to Sean’s thoughts on the strike.

Hi folks!

Hope you’re all doing well. Two interesting links, as I slowly get back into a groove:

• Land trusts as a growing player in housing (along with all the pieces in The Local’s Rent Series)
• Erin Kissane has started up a new one of those ol’ internet sites, with a characteristically thoughtful, thought-provoking opening post

I’ve got some nice time with friends planned for the days ahead, followed by some calm days at home with T and A. The past few days of summery weather have been nice, but also a reminder to revel in the joys of spring while they’re here—in refreshing rains, rapid regrowth, and the buds of new flowers. I’m grateful to everyone who’s reached out since my note last week, and look forward to sharing this spring weather with you soon.

Some issues are links, others are reflections—this one’s a snapshot, of the last month. It’s been a long one, full in ways good and bad. I share it with you both for my own record, and because I sometimes find it helpful to read about arcs like these, to put my own into context. Maybe you do, too.

Four weeks ago, around this time, T, S, V, and I were on our way to the airport. The next week would bring us to Porto and Brussels. There are many happy moments from that week, but a few come to mind:

• Seeing flowers blooming in March (a welcome change from the snow that awaited us at home)
• Looking for the best pastel de nata in Porto (for once I wasn’t the one keeping the spreadsheet!)
• Hearing a club remix of Because the Night blasting from a beer tent in suburban Brussels (and then joining the party for a few moments!)

Two weeks ago, T and I were in Washington, DC. Some happy moments from that week:

Folks, it’s been a day—a week—a month. In hard ways, yes, though also in good ways! But I am thoroughly tired. The kind of tired where you’re waiting for the tears to come, but they don’t, then they show up at the most unexpected of moments. We’re back in Ottawa now, after a long stretch mostly on the road, but there’ll be more travels, soon enough.

I’m not following much outside my world right now, with few thoughts to offer there, either. Next week, I hope to have the energy to catalogue a few cool things from the last month, but we’ll have to see. (Maybe there’ll even be… photos!?)

• Good thoughts on privacy tradeoffs in “Personal Apps” (e.g., journalling tools): “The best ones start with private spaces and then add features from there, instead of starting with a mountain of collaborative features and integrations and then tacking on a privacy policy after the fact. They tend to be subscription-based, which can help align their business with their customers. Many also tend to not be venture capital-backed: several developers I’ve talked to went out of their way to mention refusing to take VC money because taking that money means growing fast and growing fast means making compromises. It’s hard to make a good Personal App when it’s mostly being sold to IT managers.”
• Commit, then make it fit: ‘Earlier this year, I found myself in a funk with side projects, so I threw my arms up, went to the Makeville website, and booked a class without thinking twice. I knew that if I thought too hard about making the class work around my schedule, it wouldn’t happen, but if I booked it and worked around the class’s schedule, it might work out—and it has! … Rather than waiting for the right time to take a class or go somewhere and end up only thinking about it, I need to just book the class or trip and work the rest of my life around it. This makes me want to fill almost every evening or weekend with something. Then, my day-to-day is less “what do I want to do?”, but instead “what’s next?”—always learning, making, and experiencing.’
• adrienne maree brown with some incredibly helpful (topical) advice about where to put our attention: on joy, not suffering.

All the best for the week ahead.

Hello!

Another weekend spent checking out cool places and visiting with friends. (I’ll stop vaguebooking in a week or two, I promise.) I heard a mockingbird this morning, which was super exciting. More on that another time, though—it’s time soon to head back out!

In the meantime, three links I found interesting in the last bit:

• Mandy Brown, responding to the hype around AI, by unpacking the idea of “intelligence”. As ever, a concise, provocative piece, that returns you (or, me, at least) to consider some core values.
• Interesting account—and argument for the merit—of trying to archive “householders” from Members of Parliament, the newsletters MPs can send using parliamentary (public) funds.
• Inflation is causing ice cream producers to reduce the size of their containers, which triggers taxation, as they’re now considered “single serving”. Gotta love (“love”) unintended consequences.

Hi there!

It’s been a lovely week travelling with T and friends (hi S and V!), but I’m pretty wiped and don’t have much to say otherwise. (Other than, I was glad to miss the news this week, it seems to have been pretty wack??) I’ll spare you the trip highlights, but suffice to say, it’s nice to get away to a different (head)space now and again. And especially to do that with T and good friends.

I’ve also got some personal things going on that may shorten these over the next few months—we’ll see what emerges. I hope you’ve had a good week, with some happy moments at the least, and wish you all the best for the week ahead.

Lucas

Hi!

Writing after a fairly hectic week, wrapping some things at work before some time off.

Because of that hectic week, I haven’t had much time to speak to, or reflect on, a really generous honour from Thursday. If you’ll forgive the indulgence, I’m touched to say that, as part of Open Data Week, the Canadian Open Data Society jury voted—uh—me as the 2022 Canadian Open Data Leader of the Year. The jury statement captures their kind reasoning, and we recorded a video where I explained a bit about my main open data project last year. If you were reading along in late November, the project may sound familiar—I previously wrote about the POEC Explorer, a tool to make it easier to access the transcripts of the Public Order Emergency Commission.

I’m particularly touched by this, since it acknowledges a broader definition of open data than we sometimes use, and an activity that I think is really important: not necessarily opening data (these transcripts were already on the web), but making it more available and accessible than it otherwise might be (now, the transcripts are available as both HTML and CSV, facilitating both reading and analysing the transcripts—treating the words as data, while also respecting their form as testimony).

Hello!

It’s been a lovely day, hosting S and V for brunch (Dutch babies are the best!), followed by time in the sun and springlike weather. Yes, there’ll be more snow and ice—and slush, loads of slush—to come, but we’ll enjoy the upbeat moments when they come.

Speaking of snow, T and I made a snowwoman yesterday. When we went back today, there was no trace, though it didn’t seem like there was any destruction—more like she’d walked off, on some private adventure. Happy for her!

• Krista Tippett recently interviewed Nick Offerman, and what an interview it was. Debbie Millman’s interview with him is also excellent—he brings a joyful humility and self-ease, a personality that’s lovely to spend time with.
• That reminds me of when Debbie Millman and Roxane Gay were interviewed by Brené Brown about their relationship, the infectiousness of their joy and love for each other. Gay recently wrote about a trip she and Millman took to Antarctica, with characteristic understated hilarity. She has a paragraph contrasting her and Millman’s approaches to travel, and T is very much my Debbie Millman in this respect—for which I’m glad. (And I’d be remiss if I didn’t re-surface the most excellent of ongoing Antarctica blogs, brr.fyi, with its delightful focus on infrastructure.)
• I’m enjoying Observable notebooks for data visualization and interaction. A few weeks ago, I shared a post by Ben Schmidt on the possibilities for web visualization—fittingly, it’s through many of his public notebooks that I’ve learned about and explored Observable.
• Finally, thank you to Sameer for sharing his reflections on turning forty-one. Plenty to quietly chew on when pondering the year ahead. (Don’t miss out on the poem and many links Sameer shares—always worth spending time with his newsletter.)

Hello!

Having a lovely cosy morning, after a lovely cosy day, which leaves me in more of a reading mood than a writing one. And that’s great! Rest, rest, rest, needs to be the rule of the day more often than it is.

Just really briefly, then, some links (for your reading, if you’d like)!

• “Put your name on it” by Lynn Fisher
• “Why governors put this over here, with the rest of the fire” by Waldo Jaquith
• “Researchers working on First Nations claims say Ottawa has made accessing archival records more difficult” by Patrick White
• “My Lifelong Quest for Silence” by Ted Gioia

Hello!

I’ve spent much of the weekend working on an exciting data-y side project. Been having fun learning about graph theory (just enough learning, that is, to torque the numbers I need from a graph) and pondering organizational structures. Awesome as that is, it’s seriously thrown off my adherence to the “best rest is no screen” principle, so, here we are, me a bit drained and various things still to do today.

So, then, some links!

• Speaking of graphs, the Open Syllabus Galaxy is a fascinating interactive visualization of relationships between different assigned readings in syllabi. And it’s accompanied by a detailed write-up of its data structure and creation—not sure which I love more!
• That led me (through a few clicks) to a reflection from a few years ago by Ben Schmidt on the evolution of different tools in the “data programming” landscape, and the increasing prominence of JavaScript—which is only truer today. As someone wrestling with how best to publicly visualize a large-ish dataset, lots to chew on here.
• Anne Helen Petersen on how exploitation and precarity are so increasingly common.
• Mandy Brown, in a similar theme, on how relationships can—should!—outlast working together.
• Apparently the 15-minute city concept has become a conspiracy theory about freedom of movement and I just really worry about the ability to have substantive policy conversations these days.
• Finally, the intrepid Antarctic blogger at brr.fyi has hunkered down for winter, sharing the details on how the base prepares for a long wait.

Hello!

T and I were talking last night about hospital doctors (particularly residents) who work 24-hour shifts. (If you hadn’t heard about this, there’s a good interview with a resident from ten years ago—though it’s very much still a thing—and there continue to be calls to abolish the practice, to little avail.) You can imagine different reasons for this, including the “physician god complex”, despite the huge incongruity of physicians doing something they’d never recommend to their patients.

I got to wondering whether it’s a legacy practice, grounded in assumptions that no longer hold: of lower patient volumes, higher staff numbers, fewer and simpler procedures, and technology that speeds rather than slows (the speedy technology would be paper, to be clear). In that world, there was at least a chance of using the bunks commonly found in hospital break rooms—24 hours didn’t meant 24 hours of work, but 24 hours of presence. The assumptions have changed, the status quo unjustified—yet 24-hour shifts persist.

Similarly, it’s increasingly likely the Rideau Canal will not open this year. This is a shame: the Canal is an iconic part of Ottawa’s winter landscape, the sounds and sights of people skating a cheery break from midwinter doldrums. It’s also… somewhat inevitable? Average temperatures pursue a stubborn course “up and to the right”, which, while great for many graphs, is not great for ice.

Hello!

Yesterday was one of varying degrees of angst and worry—the kind that, though not entirely gone, dissipates gradually with solitude and sleep. So, feeling (somewhat) better today. T was quick to remind me of environmental influences: it’s been frigid the past few days, and overcast or snowing otherwise; the extra friction (layers, steeling yourself, and so on) to a good outdoor experience has been part of bringing me down. Perhaps I need to embrace being dormant (or read Austin Kleon’s other posts on seasons).

Of course, another way to cope is by distracting yourself with interesting links—of which this week yielded plenty:

• Was a major budgeting error in Virginia the result of Excel? It’s entirely possible! Despite mindboggling investments into fancy ERP systems like SAP, so much decision-making and calculation happens with Excel, which is then manually re-entered into the ERP system. An early project at CDS dove into the idea that spreadsheets were the “human API” gluing together otherwise automated(ish) systems—Waldo lays out the many risks with such an approach.
• A thoughtful, practice-informed piece on access to born-digital archives like email. Found the privacy and ethics considerations—especially the cultural differences between, e.g., the US and the UK on the question—particularly interesting. Ryan has long shared the idea of analysing a department’s power structures not through its org chart, but through a network analysis of its email—if only government email was sufficiently preserved and accessible to enable something like that!
• Summary and reflection on an interview with Maryanne Wolf about reading—with helpful reminders about all the ways reading is not inevitable, of its myriad forms, and more.
• Some fun posts on the history and workings of the financial system, by Patrick McKenzie, with a few interesting tidbits on approaches in different countries: credit cards as a legacy system (with link to an account of the first major general purpose American credit card); the infrastructure behind ATMs.
• Julia Evans, following her post on floating point problems, listing some common problems with integers.

Hello!

T and I spent the day in Montreal with family—a last minute decision, but a nice change of scenery (even if much of the scenery was obscured by blowing snow). It’s been a lovely weekend, spent happily with people I love very much. (Montreal friends, I’ll be sure to come for longer next time, and give you a heads-up!)

To the links!

• Anne Helen Petersen paints a compelling portrait of the “layoff brain”, a generational psyche borne of constant precarity. I’ve been thinking about this essay all week. (Including, for reasons the section on “Consultant Layoff Brain” and the excerpt about McKinsey. What a broken world.)
• A story of a week spent with Ursula K. Le Guin—on meeting our heroes (gods?), writing, and facing it all with good humour. May we all have something of Le Guin’s clever grace. (via Mita Williams)
• Vass Bednar’s most recent newsletter does some characteristically clever policy thinking with Canada’s anti-spam and (federal) privacy law, imagining versions of control over technology well beyond our current paltry offering. What I perhaps appreciated most, the imagining aside, was Bednar’s pointing out the potential already inherent in the legislation, missed due to lack of enforcement efforts.
• Tom Critchlow points out a web publishing gap: it’s relatively easy to get a webpage online; it’s relatively hard to get a small database online, particularly one that people can contribute to collaboratively. (via Simon Willison)
• The South Pole is a constant process of snow management, to the point where decades-old buildings, though still fully functional, are buried under many feet of snow.

Good afternoon! (That’s me, trying to wake myself up as a small food coma combines with a dreary weather day.)

I’ve got some exciting spreadsheets to make today (cost benefit analyses! travel planning!), so will dive right into the links:

• I ate up this essay on the historical significance of the secretary role, a position of privilege and power once accorded great importance. Some of the observations on recordkeeping and filing are relevant well beyond the “secretary to important person” context: “we use computers, everyone can file their own things, look at the cost savings!” entirely misses the huge productivity costs of self-filing, which is very rarely done well.
• Speaking of recordkeeping and archiving, two Canadian historians (rightly) call out Canada’s absurd process to access historical government records (where little is made open by default, instead requiring an access request and manual review of every file before release), comparing it to the UK’s, which regularly announces new tranches of 20-year-old files automatically opened to the public. We accept such mediocrity.
• An excellent explanation of administrative burdens meant to expand access, by Jordan Kyle. It’s a great explanation of administrative burden generally, where people have to do a bunch to access some benefit or service they’re eligible for, adding a huge (often hidden) cost for (often vulnerable) people to access (often necessary) services.
• Ben Werdmuller gathers a host of research on how ineffective layoffs are—how they give the appearance of doing something economically smart, while devastating workers and hurting the company or organization itself in the long-run.
• Dan Sinker’s experience of not feeling up to trying for the last few years really rings true. Here’s to a year of trying?

All the best for the week ahead!

Hello! Good afternoon—or, well, it feels like afternoon here, as the sun stretches closer to the horizon and the shadows lengthen.

There are two modes we can go by. (There are always more, but let’s pretend there are just two. “Assume a can opener”, and so on.)

1. We can wake up with an alarm, to a schedule of hours and minutes and recorded time. In this mode, I aim to wake up by around 7 at the latest, though without a reason to get out of bed struggle to do so.
2. Or we can wake up with our body’s intuition, usually informed by light and hunger and so on. When on vacation, particularly longer ones, this tends to be more my speed.

The first mode might make you feel like you’re “behind” when you sleep in, that you lost time—you’ve overshot the schedule, time has slipped away, and now there’s simply less of it (because you can’t intrude on the sleep necessary to wake up at your planned hour tomorrow, of course).

Hello!

Been a bit of a week. Returned to Ottawa after a few (pretty full, heavy) weeks away, only for all the stress to dump on me and trigger a sick reaction (life happened, in other words, h/t Tantek Çelik for the link). My body telling me to rest more, even if I didn’t realize it at first—though I’m glad T did. It’s fitting that I read Mandy Brown’s latest, “Reentry”, right after asking for a bit more time to rest, for which I’m grateful to my new team for so graciously accommodating. So here we are, resting—reading, writing, and whatever else comes up (tending to the body’s needs, inseparable from those of the mind, as Winston Hearn’s recent year-end reflection reminded me).

And now for a flood of links:

• Susan Jean Robertson on being thoughtful about reading and favourite makes from 2022. (T and I got ourselves a sewing machine for Christmas, so the latter is particularly neat to see.)
• Ellen Pasternack captures so succinctly the problem I’ve long lived with statistics (and quant methods generally): the enormous gap between intro classes and diving any deeper into the concepts and techniques. Also offers some interesting ideas for how academic units can better support their researchers.
• Two Canadian writers dove into federal government contracting this week, Paul Wells and Justin Ling, following a Radio-Canada report similar in its findings to a Globe and Mail report on McKinsey. It’s all worth reading, if you care about questions like state capacity or whatever we call it—the ability for government to function. McKinsey is in the spotlight here, due to the timing of a trend in contracts with the firm and the firm’s being often in the headlines, but pick any of the Big Four and you’ll find a similar story (though with perhaps a different arc): Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC. Having written about this a few times last year (“Playing for team public”, “Assurance”), I care deeply—and am glad to see journalists and others digging into this.
• Appreciated Wesley Wark’s surfacing of an easily forgotten principle of the federal access to information system: it was never supposed to be the only way that records became public. I’d add a reference to s.2(3) of the act, which reads: “This Act is also intended to complement and not replace existing procedures for access to government information and is not intended to limit in any way access to the type of government information that is normally available to the general public.” The principle was written into the legislation from the start!
• Much of my reading—and linking—these days is to either personal sites or Substack newsletters (as with four of the links above). Patrick McKenzie (patio11) dove into the paid newsletter economy.
• Rach Smith wrote about an amazing regular day—and what made it possible, and why that’s not always possible.

Hello!

It’s been a pretty full day here (Italian families hang out on New Year’s Day, so I’m chock full of lentils and whatnot), after a full few weeks.

2022 was quite a year. The pandemic kept raging, despite an apparent collective effort to ignore it. I grew a fair bit, in ways I’m only just coming to recognize, and look forward to exploring more. Some notable personal changes, for my own (but public) record:

• T and I moved in together (!!)
• T and I adopted Arthur
• I started regular therapy sessions (which have been great! but the great-ness definitely depends on who you’re working with—I used a matching service that helped quite a bit)
• I started planning to get out a bit more (starting with some small concert trips in 2023)
• We went on some nice hikes, particularly during the fall colour season, finally getting to know the trails around us after a few years in the city
• My family maintained our weekly catch-up calls, with T (and Arthur, more often than not!) now a regular fixture
• I said goodbye-for-now to CDS, after contributing to some cool things this year, including amending a law and making an Order in Council
• I actually shipped a civic tech project, versus just creating an undocumented code or data repository (though I made plenty of those, too)
• Folks around me went through the challenges of aging—I did my best to help when I could, or to be a supportive and listening ear when that was the most I could do

Hi there!

Bit of a different situation today: writing this post from my phone, on the road. It’s been quite a week, but things are feeling more or less righted today.

In years past, I’ve used this near-end-of-year issue to discuss some favourite reads. Honestly, it’s been a slow year for reading: again, most of my reading happened through my book club (schedules and accountability!). Briefly, though, some notable books:

• We started the year reading Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel (who, if you didn’t know, is divorced), which is an excellent read for the times—particularly then, when Omicron was first making its ravages known, locking us down. Little did we realize it’d be the last, for many of us.
• The Sentence, by Louise Erdrich, another timely read, for its depiction of the tumultuous year that was 2020. Set in an independent, Indigenous bookstore in Minneapolis, it includes events from 2019 through 2020, including the murder of George Floyd and the pandemic. Shoutout also to the excellent “Totally Biased List of Tookie’s Favorite Books” that accompanies the book, as any book set in a bookstore should have.
• Finally, a nod to Pachinko (with thanks to T for the recommendation), a feat of worldbuilding (or, that term applied to a real setting, to things that’ve happened) that makes accessible a whole history of which I had very little knowledge.