Books read in December 2022

New:

 

1. How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practical Guide by Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay 

2. Children of Virtue and Vengeance by Tomi Adeyemi

3. Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

4. The Grammarians by Cathleen Schine

 

Reread:

 

1. Calculated in Death 

2. Thankless in Death

Things Organized Labour Should Invent

Imagine a centralized directory of all unionized employers - where they are located, what kinds of jobs they hire for, whether they have remote work, what their pay and benefits are like, etc.

 

For that matter, imagine a comparable centralized directory of all employers, which you can robustly sort and filter based on compensation or benefits or working conditions. Kind of like Glassdoor, but comprehensive, accurate, and constantly updated.

 

So you could search for exactly what you need, e.g. full-remote jobs that pay at least $X and have drug coverage. If there are zero such jobs, you'll know at a glance. If better than you imagined is available, you'd know.

This would make it easier for workers to find the right job for them, and for strong employers to attract the best talent.

This would greatly benefit labour, so maybe organized labour could organize it?

Horoscopes

Star:

You never turn down the chance to try something new. You've got an adventurer's spirit; though, it's not just for the fun of it. You enjoy learning and exploring because it has its practical uses, too. You're loyal and kind, and you don't mind going out of your way to help people in need. You've got a big heart and an even bigger sense of humour. You find comfort and camaraderie in unique and interesting people, just like you. This year, a romantic connection or an exciting creative project might find you when you least expect it.

 

Globe: 

Domestic issues will be in the spotlight over the coming year and if you want to maintain a friendly atmosphere on the home front you may have to do things for loved ones that seem silly to you. Don’t worry, it will be more than worth it.

 

Both of these sound ridiculously inaccurate. My birthday horoscopes have been ridiculously inaccurate for several years (I don't remember if it's since the pandemic started or if it's since the head injury - time has no meaning) but I record them anyway

I do not recommend front fill coffee makers

I had to buy a new coffee maker last year, and ended up with a 5 cup Hamilton Beach front fill, basically because that was the first one available to me. (Mine is smaller than the one shown in the image, but the image makes it clear how much of the lid does and does not open.)

Hamilton Beach front fill coffee maker

Occasionally, I find a small puddle of water under it, as though it's leaking somewhere.

The problem is the front fill structure makes it difficult (or perhaps even impossible) to get into the reservoir and see what might be leaking. 

Googling around the idea (stymied by interference from AI-generated content, which is a whole nother blog post), I found that there might be a hose or gasket that's developed build-up or come loose or cracked, which would most likely be apparent from inside the reservoir. But, unlike every other coffee maker I've owned, it was impossible to get inside to see.

I could maybe, maybe, maybe get in there by unscrewing the base of the coffee maker (right where it says "DO NOT OPEN, NO USER-SERVICEABLE PARTS"), but I'm less than certain that it would work, or that it would be safe to operate the coffee maker after my amateur attempt to open it up and close it again.

The instructions that come with the coffee maker claim it has a five-year warranty to I might follow up on that (and if I do, I'll blog about it), but I'm not sure if it will work or will just get me another coffee maker that will leak again in a year, or if they'll require me to take the device in to a repair shop (which would mean a subway ride, time, potential COVID exposure, etc.)

My immediate solution was to order a $9 coffee maker on clearance from walmart (looking through my records, I see that my last cheap walmart coffee maker last me 7 years!) and then figure out what, if anything, to do once I have a backup and can be confident in the availability of my morning coffee.

 

(I really want to be a person who buys quality products and gets extensive use out of them, but it's a real struggle to find quality small coffee makers. The brands Consumer Reports lists as most reliable are dramatically different than what I'm used to  - different shapes, non-identical brewing mechanisms, in some cases reusable mesh filters - and I'm reluctant to pay $100+ for something that may or may not make me happy.)

But in general, I recommend avoiding front fill coffee makers because they hinder what should be standard user servicing, making what may well be a simply 10 second repair into a whole ordeal.

Books read in November 2022

New:

 

1. Still Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton

2. Land of Roar by Jenny McLachlan

Reread:

1. Delusion in Death

What to do if you don't like hearing your daughter-in-law's surname

 From a recent Carolyn Hax:

Hello Carolyn: Our son’s wife of several years chose to hyphenate our last name with her maiden name. Whenever we are with them, she always identifies herself with her maiden name, from setting up reservations to public places requiring identification. It can be hurtful to us. Are we being too sensitive?

— J.

A simple solution would be to take the lead on making reservations and otherwise interacting with others on behalf of your party. That way, the only name you'll have to hear in these contexts is your own.

Explicio via absurdum

There is a logical fallacy called reductio ad absurdum, meaning attempting to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.

Sometimes I find that the opposite of reductio ad absurdum is actually helpful - using an utterly absurd or extreme example to explain a concept.

With my complete lack of Latin knowledge, I've been calling this "explicio via absurdum", but I welcome any corrections to my Latin!
 

This is particularly useful when trying explain something mathematical by a solely verbal medium, where you can't put numbers in front of your interlocutor's eyes and doing the math with plausible numbers would get you bogged down in arithmetic.

 

It's also useful when you don't know how the real numbers work, but you're trying to make the point that there's a range in which the numbers would work.

 

 

For example, I recently saw a discussion where some people seemed to think that interest rates were the major barrier to housing affordability, and didn't seem to recognize that housing prices themselves could be a barrier regardless of interest rates.

 

So here's how I would explain this via absurdum:

 

 

Imagine the house you want costs $1, and interest rates are 1000%. Can you afford the house? (Probably! You almost certainly have a dollar, and therefore could buy the house outright without a mortgage, thus rendering interest rates irrelevant.)

 

Imagine the house you want costs $1 billion, and interest rates are zero. Can you afford the house? (Probably not! Your monthly payment would be in the millions, which is well outside the scope of anyone who might be paying attention to me)

Now, I am well aware that there aren't any houses costing $1, there aren't any 1000% interest rates, there aren't any 0% interest rates, and if there are any houses costing $1 billion they're irrelevant to our reality.

However, these absurd examples help illustrate how it's possible for a price to be so cheap that interest rates are irrelevant, and to be so expensive that interest rates are irrelevant. Once people see this, they can see that there is in fact a range at the top and bottom of the scale (Could you buy the house outright if it cost $2? $50? $1,000? $10,000?  Would the house be unaffordable even without interest if it cost $500 million? $50 million? $5 million?)

 

Then you gradually move from absurd to reality, with the point made.

"Good morning" is the email salutation you're looking for

Dear Miss Manners: Or should I say “Hi, Miss Manners!”?

I have noticed that all email, and lots of snail letters, even business ones, start with “Hi” instead of “Dear.” I don’t like it, especially from strangers or when it concerns business. But if I continue to write “Dear,” will people think I am sending them love letters?

Or spam. Miss Manners has noticed that spammers have adopted versions of “Dear one” as a salutation, sometimes ratcheting it up to “Beloved.”

They, too, seem to be interpreting it as ingratiating affection, rather than a neutral convention.

Miss Manners is not quite ready to let go of the conventional “Dear” salutation, and agrees with you that “Hi!” seems cheeky. But she is open to ideas if anyone can think of something simple and dignified.

 

The answer Miss Manners and her correspondent are looking for is "Good morning" (or "Good afternoon" or "Good evening"). 

It is simultaneously formal enough (you could totally say "Good morning" to the Queen) and informal enough (you could totally say it in any casual verbal conversation). 

It doesn't have any connotations of affection, or of any emotion stronger than "polite greeting".

For some audiences, acknowledging the time of day can do the same general type of interpersonal work as "How was your weekend?"-type small talk, so it might add a soupçon of warmth to the interaction.

And, at the same time, it comes across as so utterly neutral that your correspondent is almost certainly not going to give it any thought, instead moving right on to the business of the email, which is what you want them to be doing in the first place!

Why I'm more worried about COVID now than I was in 2020

Sometimes I hear people say they're less worried about COVID than they were in previous years. That surprises me, because I'm more worried.

Here's why:

1. I now know more about Long COVID, in particular its potential cognitive effects. In 2020 and 2021, my biggest COVID-related fear was spreading it asymptomatically and inadvertently infecting someone more vulnerable than I am. Now my biggest fear is expediting my dementia.

2. I now know that reinfection is possible. And each reinfection increases the risk of Long COVID. In 2020 and 2021, I figured if I caught it, I'd be in for a couple of weeks of misery and then either die or get on with life. Now I know that it's a perpetual risk.

 

3. With the removal of the required isolation period, the likelihood of any random person being contagious has increased. Unlike 2020 and 2021, people are now far more likely to be incentivized to work while contagious, thereby increasing the risk of contracting COVID in any random interaction or contact.

 

4. With the removal of mask mandates, these contagious people who are out and about are far more likely to be unmasked.

 

5. I now know that COVID is aerosols, not droplets, which means that the virus exhaled by these unmasked contagious people who are out and about can linger in the air for long after they have left the room. I now know that I have no way to tell whether a space is safe. 

 

6. Hospitals are under more pressure now. We didn't have ERs and ICUs closing in 2020 or 2021! We didn't have 41-hour ER wait times in 2020 or 2021! This puts everyone at risk in ways that go far beyond contracting COVID - what if you get hit by a car? What if your appendix bursts?

 

7. There's no more feeling that those in power want us to be safe, or even want society to continue functioning. There's no more "All in this together", there's no more "We'll get through this". Which is even more disheartening when we know what to do, we just have to do it! 

 

8. Given the uncontrolled spread and potential for reinfection and increased risk of Long COVID and its potential cognitive effects - and given the dearth of treatments and supports for people with Long COVID - I fear a world where people with brain fog are driving trucks and performing surgery and important things like that. 

 

9. 90% of the people I love in the world are high risk. 90% of the people I love in the world have already had COVID at least once. There is significant overlap between the two groups. Not everyone got through it okay. I fear being the last one standing. Maybe with dementia myself, and no one left who cares about me. 

 

10. In 2020, we hardly knew anything, but we took a bunch of measures. It felt like things could only improve as we learned more. Now we know way more, and we aren't doing any of it. A world where we haven't figured out how to solve the problem is nowhere near as scary as a world where we have figured out how to solve the problem, but refuse to do so.

Books read in October 2022

New:

 

1.  Working with Difficult People: Handling the Ten Types of Problem People Without Losing your Mind by Amy Cooper Hakim and Muriel Solomon

2. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid 

Reread:

 

1. Delusion in Death

In which I do unspeakable things to sushi

As I've blogged about before, spicy food doesn't work for me. It's physically painful in a way that drowns out the underlying flavours, so I feel nothing but discomfort and experience none of the pleasure of the food.

An example of a food that is painfully spicy for me this way is wasabi.

But whenever I mention that wasabi is too spicy for me, pedants come swooping out of the woodwork saying "Wasabi isn't a spice, it's a mustard!!" (Often as though they're trying to make the argument "Wasabi is a mustard and you like mustard, therefore you actually like wasabi!")

After hearing this pedantry one too many times, I had an idea: if wasabi is so important to the sushi experience and wasabi actually is a mustard, maybe my sushi experience would be enhanced with one of the many other mustards I actually enjoy? 

 

So the next time I had sushi, I tried it with various mustards I have on hand. Regular yellow French's mustard, honey mustard, dijon mustard, that mustard in the jar from the Polish deli...

And in each case, it tasted like the mustard. With gentle undertones of the sushi.

Which was delicious, because mustard is delicious! But the flavours didn't enhance each other or harmonize in any particular way that was greater than the sum of its parts.

So I see no need to put mustard (or wasabi) on my sushi, but I wouldn't object if, somehow, my sushi arrived with mustard (but not wasabi) on it.

And if you're thinking "But sushi isn't sushi without wasabi," you can have my share of the wasabi.

Things that are getting worse

A strong narrative early in the pandemic was also if we do the right things, we'll be okay. Mask up, stay home, be kind, we'll get through this.

 

I've been noticing lately that this element of reassuring people it will be okay is gone from the narrative. They're removing protections, but there's no "It's okay now" to it.

 

I fully realize there was a propaganda element to the messaging that everything will be fine, but now it isn't even an element of propaganda. There seems to be no more interest by those in power in having people think we'll be okay. Early in the pandemic, much of my translation work was morale-related. I haven't seen any attempt to boost or maintain morale in a very long time.

***

A similarly strong narrative when I was growing up was the idea that if you do what you're supposed to, things will turn out well. Go to school, get good grades, get a good job, you'll be able to support yourself and build a better life for your family. 

 

I'm not seeing this narrative around lately. I've even seen some voices acting like it's unreasonable to expect to be able to raise a family or even support oneself on a given job. Those in power complain that no one wants to work, while disavowing the employer's end of the bargain.

Again, I know there's an element of propaganda to the messaging that if you work hard you'll be successful. I know from Thomas Piketty that the economic success this messaging promises is specific to a brief period in the mid-20th century. But, again, it's telling that they aren't even attempting this messaging any more, aren't even hinting that there might be something better or different. It's just "Work or you're Bad and Wrong."

***

Another mid-20th-century narrative, often used in WWII, was the notion of sacrificing for the greater good. I keep thinking about this, thinking about how they used a sort of WWII narrative early in the pandemic, and how that contrasts with the current state of removing protections and asking people (especially school children!) to sacrifice for . . . nothing. 

 

Nothing is gained by allowing COVID to rip through society. It doesn't make anything better for anyone. Some people say that they're doing this for the economy, but it doesn't help the economy to have millions ill or disabled (or dead). They're actively removing protective measures that actually help the greater good, and instead making people sacrifice for nothing.

***

As a second-generation Canadian, the very premise of the origin story I was raised with was a better life for one's children. My grandparents' jobs were worse, my parents jobs were better. My grandparents' houses were smaller and older, my parents' house was bigger and newer.

But that dream stopped with my parents' generation. I've never been able to afford a house like my parents', even out in the small town where we lived. I was, for a brief period of time, able to afford a house like my grandparents', but in today's market I no longer can.

In fact, in today's market, I could no longer afford my actual condo that I actually live in if I didn't already own it. My salary is 25% higher than it was when I bought my condo preconstruction 10 years ago, but the prices of condos in my building have nearly doubled in the same period of time.

I was looking at a Twitter thread about this - people who can no longer afford to live in places where they previously lived, even though they now make more money. And there were some comments - which, as far as I can tell, were from regular people, not, like, real estate speculators - to the effect of "Welcome to real life, suck it up and get roommates."

So not only is a better life for one's children implausible, but a not-constantly-getting-worse life for oneself is so implausible that there are regular people who think it's unreasonable to be able to afford the same home you lived in when you were making less money.

***

Years ago, after I missed an unprecedented and never-since-repeated Eddie Izzard work in progress show here in Toronto, I set up a Google Alert for Eddie Izzard. I deliberately have it set to "all results" rather than "best results", which means the signal to noise ratio is not so good - it includes casual passing mentions of Eddie, not just items about her. (This blog post will probably show up in it.) But it only takes a second to scroll through in my feed reader, and I now don't have to worry about missing anything.

Recently, there has been a massive surge in transphobia in this Google Alert feed. When I started out, it often went months without any transphobia whatsoever. Now I'm seeing transphobia almost every day. Same transgender public figure, same wide-scope Google Alert, but tons more transphobia than a decade ago.

In 2010, advice columnist Dan Savage started the It Gets Better Project, with the goal of preventing suicide in queer youth by talking to them about how life will improve in adulthood. I agree with his thesis and it aligns with my experience (I can walk down the street and people ignore me!), but it also seems like it isn't happening any more, at least not on a societal/longitudinal level. Discourse is reaching me where queerness is being equated with pedophilia, which is not something I've heard since the 20th century.

This kind of thing should be an appalling horror story of the olden days that Kids Today cannot fathom, not an actual thing that's actually happening in reality!

 

***

There's a conventional wisdom that people's mental health is worsening. Some people are quick to blame remote work or online school, as though proximity to random people without regard for compatibility is some kind of mental health panacea.

But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the root of worsening mental health is that so many things are getting worse that the idea of things getting better has become so implausible that it isn't even part of propaganda.

Books read in September 2022

New:

 

1. Dancing Through the Snow by Jean Little

2. City of Dragons: The Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis & Vivian Truong

3. In the Silhouette of Your Silences by David Groulx

Reread:

1. Celebrity in Death

Books read in August 2022

New:

 

1. How To: Absurd Scientific Solutions for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe

2. The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny

3. Peter Lee's Notes from the Field by Angela Ahn

Reread:

1. New York to Dallas

2. Chaos in Death

Defining the intersection of walkable and accessible

I keep running up against the problem of not being able to find a good word for the overlap between "walkable" and "accessible". So I'm writing it down in a whole lot of words here, so I can point to it next time I'm trying to articulate the concept.

 

Why won't the word "walkable" do?

 

Some people interpret "walkable" as "accessible only to people who can walk, and therefore inaccessible to people in wheelchairs etc." That is never what I mean, so I clearly need a better word.

Why won't the word "accessible" do?

Some people interpret "accessible" in a way that doesn't necessarily include walkable. For example, they might say the grocery store is accessible if you can drive up, park in the disabled parking spaces right in front of the door, and roll your wheelchair in the door unimpeded - even if the only way to get to the store is by driving on a highway that has no sidewalks.

What concepts does this word need to encompass?

 

- Proximity: Things need to be close enough that walking/wheeling/otherwise going without a vehicle is easy. Your destination is close enough to your point of origin that you don't need a vehicle. (Q: Close enough for whom? A: The end users, whoever they might be.)

- Safety: You aren't going to get hit by a car. You aren't going to slip and fall on the ice. You aren't going to get harassed by creeps on the street.

- Lack of obstacles: There are no cobblestones that would make it difficult to use a wheelchair. You don't have to go out of your way to find a crosswalk. There is a clear, suitable path to wherever you are going.

- The "no-brainer" factor: I walk to the grocery store because it's across the street - using any sort of vehicle (even a bike) would be ridiculous. If you're going to multiple stores in an indoor mall, you aren't going to go outside and get into your car and drive your car to the next store. If you're going to multiple destinations on the same city block, you aren't going to drive between them - even if you drove to the city block, you're going to park your car once and head to all your destinations on foot or in a wheelchair or otherwise without a vehicle.

Anyone know a word that does all this and is clear and common enough for me to use in translations?

How the universe is mocking me

From time to time, charities I've donated to send me a fundraising letter with a small free gift, in an attempt to entice me to donate more. Usually the gift is something I can use, like a pen or address labels. But a while back, a charity sent me this reusable shopping bag.

Somehow, every single aspect of this shopping bag was irritating! It was too big to fit in my purse, while somehow also being too small to carry a package of toilet paper. The handles were simultaneously too short to comfortably put over my shoulder and too long to comfortably hold in my hand. The material had a particularly icky plasticky feeling while also not being properly waterproof. And the design contained butterflies that were unpleasantly realistic and detailed. In short, it had no redeeming qualities and I was rather resentful of the charity for sending me such an unhelpful object.

So I put it at the back of my pile of unwanted reusable bags, and proceeded with life.

Fast-forward to yesterday.

I had a few things that I wanted to take over to the charity box, and they didn't fit in the kind of plastic bag I'd normally put them in. So I dug into my pile of unwanted reusable bags, and came up with this one.

Perfect! I'd put my charity stuff in it, carry it over to the charity box, and dump the whole thing in the box, bag and all!

So I loaded up the bag, irritated once again at how it managed to have such an inconvenient shape and size and such an unpleasant texture. I carried it over to the charity box, irritated once again at how the strap is exactly the wrong length. And I dumped the whole thing into the box, bag and all, and returned home, rejoicing in the fact that I'll never have to deal with these irritants again!

 

On my way back up to my apartment, I detoured into the mailroom to check my mail. It contained a large envelope from a charity I'd recently donated to, likely containing another fundraising letter. But I opened the letter on the off-chance they'd sent me some address labels, and found...

...another reusable shopping bag, identical to the one I'd just gotten rid of!

 

(🎵 The bag came back, the very next day...🎵)

Books read in July 2022

New:

 

1. When Stars Are Scattered by Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson

2. The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell

 

Reread:

 

1. Indulgence in Death

2. Possession in Death 

3. Treachery in Death

How to get people to have more children

Recently in the news: a proposal to tax the childless in order to incentivize people to have children. 

 

That will never work.

 

Here are some things that will work:

1. Fix the formula shortage, and prevent it from ever happening again. Less than 100% of parents can produce enough breast milk to meet 100% of their baby's needs, and you can't be certain that you'll produce enough milk until you're actually doing it. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the child won't end up spending their whole short life starving to death.

2.  Stop COVID, and/or cure Long COVID. We're in a pandemic with a novel airborne virus that causes a post-viral syndrome that turns out to be worse than we thought with every study that's released, and public health protections are constantly being removed despite surging case numbers. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident the child will live a healthy and comfortable life, rather than spending their whole life stymied by fatigue and vascular damage.

3. Stop climate change. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the world will remain habitable for the child's entire life.

4. Fix the ratio of salaries to housing costs to education costs. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that they will always be able to provide the child with a suitable home and suitable education - and that the child will be able to afford those themselves when they grow up.

5. Make family life affordable on a single paycheque. If you aren't able to provide a good life for a child on your paycheque alone, then you have to wait to have a child until you find someone who a) would make a compatible lifelong partner for you, b) who is compatible not just as a partner but as a housemate and c) makes enough money to make up for your paycheque shortfall. Each of these alone is a major challenge - it's a wonder anyone in the world can find anyone who meets all three requirements! However, if it's feasible to provide a good life for your child singlehandedly, you can have a child without having to worry about your partner's earning potential, or with a partner who wouldn't make a compatible housemate, or even with someone who wouldn't make a compatible lifelong partner. That would open up a lot more options for people who wouldn't otherwise be willing to bring a child into the world!

6. End hatred. Things like racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. are on the rise, with the haters becoming bolder and more influential. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the child isn't going to be subjected to hate crimes!

7. Make sure the terms and conditions of existence never get worse. After Roe vs. Wade was overturned in the US, a lot of people were talking about how shocking it is to suddenly live in a world where your children have fewer rights than you did at their age. Many people who chose early in the pandemic to carry a pregnancy to term likely did so on the assumption that those in power would continue doing what was necessary to protect us from COVID. When my parents made the decision to have kids, they had no idea that their children would not be growing up in the same economy they'd lived in their entire life.

   Like many people, I grew up constantly being told that everyone wants a better life for their children, so the idea that the terms and conditions of existence can change for the worse like this is terrifying. If those in power could prioritize preventing the terms and conditions of existence from changing for the worse, a lot more people would be willing to bring children into the world.