1. A Mind Spread Out on the Ground by Alicia Elliott
2. The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book by Neil Gaiman
3. We Are Grateful: Otsaliheliga by Traci Sorrell
Wednesday, September 30, 2020
Thursday, September 17, 2020
The amount of money that can change your life vs. the amount of money you can afford to lose
I recently saw a random internet stranger say "If I had $[specific dollar amount] it would solve all my problems."
If I were handed that specific amount of money, it wouldn't change anything for me. I'd throw it at my mortgage, my mortgage payments would become marginally smaller next time I renew, life would continue as usual.
But, even though receiving that amount of money wouldn't make a difference to me, I couldn't afford to give that amount of money away, even if it would solve all of someone's problems. Even if the person whose problems it would solve were someone I love, not some random internet stranger. It's just not an amount I could scrape together.
There's . . . something in there. Thinking about my previous post about socioeconomic classes, there's something informative or useful about the gap between the amount of money it would take for a positive change to be felt in your life and the amount of money you can afford to lose. There might even already be a word for this, but I can't think of it.
If I were handed that specific amount of money, it wouldn't change anything for me. I'd throw it at my mortgage, my mortgage payments would become marginally smaller next time I renew, life would continue as usual.
But, even though receiving that amount of money wouldn't make a difference to me, I couldn't afford to give that amount of money away, even if it would solve all of someone's problems. Even if the person whose problems it would solve were someone I love, not some random internet stranger. It's just not an amount I could scrape together.
There's . . . something in there. Thinking about my previous post about socioeconomic classes, there's something informative or useful about the gap between the amount of money it would take for a positive change to be felt in your life and the amount of money you can afford to lose. There might even already be a word for this, but I can't think of it.
Monday, September 14, 2020
Cutex Nourishing nail polish remover
I've been doing my own nails at home for 25 years, and every nail polish remover I've tried takes a few scrubs and leaves my nails feeling naked and hungry for base coat.
Cutex Nourishing nail polish remover doesn't do this. Polish comes off at a single wipe, and my nails are significantly less hungry - if, for whatever reason, it wasn't possible to put base coat on immediately, I think I could adjust easily.
I've never before had nail polish remover brand loyalty, but I think I do now.
Monday, August 31, 2020
Books read in August 2020
New:
1. Margot and the Moon Landing by A. C. Fitzpatrick
2. Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
Reread:
1. Imitation in Death
1. Margot and the Moon Landing by A. C. Fitzpatrick
2. Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley
Reread:
1. Imitation in Death
Monday, August 24, 2020
Would it help if we had more discrete socio-economic classes?
We tend not to like to talk about class (in the socioeconomic sense) here in Canada. We tend to be more comfortable thinking of ourselves as an egalitarian society that's beyond that sort of thing.
If you ask a typical Canadian to name the classes we have here in Canada, they'll hem and haw and, eventually, if pressed, probably come up with "middle class", "working class/poor", and "rich". We sometimes have sub-classes like "upper middle class" or "lower middle class", but essentially we have just the three basic classes.
I think it would serve us better - and, ultimately, lead to a more egalitarian society - if we had more.
For example, consider someone who makes $100,000 a year.
Are they rich?
Most people would say "yes". (Some people would quietly think to themselves "Well, not that rich!" but publicly would say "yes" so as not to seem out of touch.)
And someone who makes $100,000 a year is rich. They're close to the top 5% of income in the country. Most of us will never make that much.
But, at the same time, they still have to work. Unless they're very close to retirement age already and have an excellent savings and investment strategy and don't have any strokes of bad luck, a person who makes $100,000 a year could still run out of money if they never earned another dollar.
They also have to get a mortgage. Unless they've been saving very aggressively for many years and are in an area with lower housing prices, a person who makes $100,000 a year still can't afford to buy a house outright.
Despite being rich, they could have some bad luck that would result in them being poor.
Now consider a person with a billion dollars in wealth. That's $1,000,000,000. That's ten thousand (10,000) years' salary for the person who makes $100,000 a year.
The billionaire doesn't have to work. They could easily live on the money they already have. If their remaining life expectancy is 50 years, they would have to spend more than twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) a year before they could run out of money.
They don't need a mortgage. They could easily buy a house outright - they could buy close to a thousand (1,000) detached houses here in Toronto outright.
But both these people fall into the basic class category of "rich". When someone utters the words "rich people", that encompasses both these examples.
So why is this an issue?
Because a lot of people, even if they don't make $100,000 a year and don't have a clear line to making $100,000 a year, can identify with it. Maybe if you luck into a better-paying job, or get promoted into management, or get a lot of overtime one year. If you look at the Sunshine List, you can see jobs like police officers and high school principals - regular, everyday jobs that your neighbour might have or your childhood friend's mom might have had when you were growing up.
So when there's talk of taxing the rich, meaning billionaires, people who can identify with maybe possibly one day if they're super lucky making $100,000 think "Oh no, that could be me one day! But I don't actually have that much financial leeway!" and then end up opposing taxing the rich.
It happens on the other end of the economic spectrum too.
Making a below-average income in a stable full-time job is different from being caught in the gig economy is different from being on welfare where your monthly benefits are less than your rent, but they all fall under the label of "poor".
There are all kinds of nuance that make a real difference in socioeconomic quality of life.
Making $X a year and having your mortgage paid off is a very different situation from making $X a year and being fully leveraged, or just barely making rent.
Making a million dollars a year is very different from having a million dollars in total wealth, but we use the word "millionaire" for both.
Having wealth in the market value of your primary residence is very different from having the same amount of wealth liquid, or in a number of different assets that are less important than your primary residence.
Making below the poverty line for a few years when you're starting out is different from being below the poverty line for your entire life, and both of these are different from being below the poverty line after several years of having significantly more money.
Having no money readily on hand is different from having no money unless you tap your retirement fund, both of which are different from having no money and having no available credit.
Being evicted and having to go back to your parents' house and live in your childhood bedroom is different from being evicted and having to crash on someone's couch is different from being evicted and having literally no one who will take you in.
Maybe if we had discrete names for these different situations, discourse would be improved?
If you ask a typical Canadian to name the classes we have here in Canada, they'll hem and haw and, eventually, if pressed, probably come up with "middle class", "working class/poor", and "rich". We sometimes have sub-classes like "upper middle class" or "lower middle class", but essentially we have just the three basic classes.
I think it would serve us better - and, ultimately, lead to a more egalitarian society - if we had more.
For example, consider someone who makes $100,000 a year.
Are they rich?
Most people would say "yes". (Some people would quietly think to themselves "Well, not that rich!" but publicly would say "yes" so as not to seem out of touch.)
And someone who makes $100,000 a year is rich. They're close to the top 5% of income in the country. Most of us will never make that much.
But, at the same time, they still have to work. Unless they're very close to retirement age already and have an excellent savings and investment strategy and don't have any strokes of bad luck, a person who makes $100,000 a year could still run out of money if they never earned another dollar.
They also have to get a mortgage. Unless they've been saving very aggressively for many years and are in an area with lower housing prices, a person who makes $100,000 a year still can't afford to buy a house outright.
Despite being rich, they could have some bad luck that would result in them being poor.
Now consider a person with a billion dollars in wealth. That's $1,000,000,000. That's ten thousand (10,000) years' salary for the person who makes $100,000 a year.
The billionaire doesn't have to work. They could easily live on the money they already have. If their remaining life expectancy is 50 years, they would have to spend more than twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) a year before they could run out of money.
They don't need a mortgage. They could easily buy a house outright - they could buy close to a thousand (1,000) detached houses here in Toronto outright.
But both these people fall into the basic class category of "rich". When someone utters the words "rich people", that encompasses both these examples.
So why is this an issue?
Because a lot of people, even if they don't make $100,000 a year and don't have a clear line to making $100,000 a year, can identify with it. Maybe if you luck into a better-paying job, or get promoted into management, or get a lot of overtime one year. If you look at the Sunshine List, you can see jobs like police officers and high school principals - regular, everyday jobs that your neighbour might have or your childhood friend's mom might have had when you were growing up.
So when there's talk of taxing the rich, meaning billionaires, people who can identify with maybe possibly one day if they're super lucky making $100,000 think "Oh no, that could be me one day! But I don't actually have that much financial leeway!" and then end up opposing taxing the rich.
It happens on the other end of the economic spectrum too.
Making a below-average income in a stable full-time job is different from being caught in the gig economy is different from being on welfare where your monthly benefits are less than your rent, but they all fall under the label of "poor".
There are all kinds of nuance that make a real difference in socioeconomic quality of life.
Making $X a year and having your mortgage paid off is a very different situation from making $X a year and being fully leveraged, or just barely making rent.
Making a million dollars a year is very different from having a million dollars in total wealth, but we use the word "millionaire" for both.
Having wealth in the market value of your primary residence is very different from having the same amount of wealth liquid, or in a number of different assets that are less important than your primary residence.
Making below the poverty line for a few years when you're starting out is different from being below the poverty line for your entire life, and both of these are different from being below the poverty line after several years of having significantly more money.
Having no money readily on hand is different from having no money unless you tap your retirement fund, both of which are different from having no money and having no available credit.
Being evicted and having to go back to your parents' house and live in your childhood bedroom is different from being evicted and having to crash on someone's couch is different from being evicted and having literally no one who will take you in.
Maybe if we had discrete names for these different situations, discourse would be improved?
Thursday, August 13, 2020
Current status
My Babcia (my grandmother) died last week. I'm still processing.
I've never not had a Babcia before.
She didn't die of COVID, but the pandemic still fucks everything up. No one could sit with Babcia and hold her hand. She never got to meet her two youngest great-grandchildren, both of whom were born during the pandemic.
I don't know when I'll be able to hug someone.
Even without the pandemic considerations, this is completely different from other bereavements I've had. It's a completely different emotional arc. I think maybe every bereavement is different. No one talks about this.
I've never not had a Babcia before.
She didn't die of COVID, but the pandemic still fucks everything up. No one could sit with Babcia and hold her hand. She never got to meet her two youngest great-grandchildren, both of whom were born during the pandemic.
I don't know when I'll be able to hug someone.
Even without the pandemic considerations, this is completely different from other bereavements I've had. It's a completely different emotional arc. I think maybe every bereavement is different. No one talks about this.
Saturday, August 01, 2020
Mask braindump: my struggles, what I've learned, and how some mask advocacy has been unhelpful
I have a lot of trouble wearing masks. I've learned some things that make it easier, and I've seen some people trying to promote mask-wearing in ways that are unhelpful and counterproductive. So I thought I'd blog it all here for future reference.
I've already tweeted most of this as I was experiencing it, so if you follow me on Twitter there's nothing new here.
Caveats
1. I am not a medical professional. My explanation of any medical concepts is my own understanding and is not necessarily a perfectly accurate and comprehensive account of every medical consideration. I'm including it because my own understanding helps me figure out how to wear masks better and longer.
2. Portions of this post describe ways that I misunderstood medical concepts en route to learning more. I'm including them because describing how I misunderstood things is important to understanding how some kinds of mask advocacy were unhelpful. If you read or excerpt only these portions, it's possible you might come away with incorrect information.
My mask-wearing experience
I'd never worn a mask before COVID-19 came along, but I'd never heard of anyone experiencing adverse effects from them either. So when I got my first cloth mask (thank you, Mommy!) I put it on expecting everything to go smoothly.
I was surprised to discover that my body was working harder than it should have been - I was breathing harder, and occasionally getting light-headed. There was even a time or two where I think my judgement was affected!
When the fabric of the mask touched my mouth, I started outright panicking, feeling that I was suffocating even though I knew I wasn't, but even when the mask didn't touch my mouth (and my mother tried multiple variations specifically designed to keep the fabric away from my mouth!) I was always in some degree of distress.
The mask usually becomes untenable after 40 minutes. My irreproducible personal best was one hour, but just the other day (even after I'd proven to my own satisfaction that I get enough oxygen as described below) I could only manage 15 minutes. It's unpredictable, and the unpredictability is an additional worry.
My original (erroneous) self-diagnosis
The problems occur when I wear a mask, in other words when my nose and mouth are covered. Oxygen gets in through our nose and mouth. If you don't get enough oxygen, you die. Falling unconscious is en route to dying. Feeling light-headed is en route to falling unconscious. Therefore, I concluded, I wasn't getting as much oxygen when I wore a mask, because the mask was blocking some of it.
Seemed like a perfectly logical extrapolation from available evidence, and I couldn't imagine any other explanation.
My concern wasn't that I'd die from lack of oxygen. (I mean, I might, but then I'd be dead so I wouldn't have to worry about it.) My concern was that I might faint from lack of oxygen. I've only fainted once in my adult life, and that resulted in my head injury, from which I've never fully recovered. I certainly can't risk it happening again!
The pulse ox selfie problem
As I was struggling with all this, a trend emerged of doctors posting selfies of themselves wearing a mask and a pulse oximeter showing a good, high oxygen level, with the general thesis that wearing a mask doesn't decrease your oxygen level, often suggesting or outright stating that if you think it does, you're ignorant or a liar or anti-science.
All of which is very annoying to have saturating your twitter feed when you've just come back from a grocery run of struggling to breathe in a mask!
From this, I saw several possible conclusions:
- If I went to a doctor with this mask breathing problem, I wouldn't be believed.
- Maybe my body works differently than their bodies, and therefore anything they have to say is inapplicable to me.
- Maybe people who struggle with masks simply don't make it through medical school, and then doctors forget they ever existed.
- Maybe I have an unprecedented problem that medical science has never heard of, but mid-pandemic isn't a time to go down the diagnostic rabbithole that would entail.
- Obviously, from all these pulse oximeters, oxygen level was the crucial issue. I couldn't imagine any other issue, no one was talking about any other issue, so the cause of my problems must be low blood oxygen levels.
Low blood oxygen isn't the cause
All these pulse ox selfies gave me the idea that I might be able to use a pulse oximeter to detect when I was on the verge of fainting, or to convince myself that I wasn't going to faint. I ran the idea by a friend with medical training, who told me it doesn't work that way - because your blood oxygen could be normal and you could still faint!
She went on to tell me that was what likely happening is I'm hyperventilating from anxiety at wearing the mask (shortly afterwards I learned this is called false suffocation alarm) which is lowering my blood pressure, which is making me light-headed. She also told me about counterpressure - clenching and tensing muscles to temporarily increase blood pressure and possibly prevent fainting.
So I tried counterpressure the next time I had an early glimmer of mask light-headedness, and the effect was immediate. About 80% of the light-headedness vanished instantly, and I could move about safely without fear of fainting.
This immediately proved two things to me:
1. The mask doesn't affect my oxygen levels - if it did, counterpressure wouldn't get immediate results.
2. The light-headedness, and therefore the risk of fainting, is real - if they weren't, the counterpressure wouldn't get results.
Improved, but not cured
Having effectively proven to myself that it isn't lack of oxygen that's making me light-headed, I soon became less uncomfortable in the mask. However, the false suffocation alarm persists, and my body still fights the mask. I counterpressure, my head usually clears, I move forward. If the counterpressure isn't immediately effective, I sit down, get my head down to heart level, regain equilibrium. I've gotten really good at doing this in a way that makes it look like I'm just examining the items on the bottom shelf, so people in the grocery store don't think I'm in distress and approach me.
I've had moments where I completely forgot I was wearing a mask and days where it took an hour for me to feel any symptoms, but I've also had moments where I feel like I'm suffocating even though I know I'm not and days where I feel symptoms after 15 minutes.
Disposable masks might be easier
As I was in the midst of writing this all up, I tried a disposable mask (sold in the grocery store, marked non-medical) for the first time, and found my body didn't panic in it. I haven't figured out how to keep it from fogging up my glasses (the nose wire is less effective than in cloth masks), but I only rarely have to fight my body or get light-headed, which is a vast improvement! And even when I do have to fight my body, it's glaringly obvious to my brain that I can breathe, so I'm able to better psych myself out of panicking.
Which makes me realize - all the pulse ox selfies I saw were wearing (presumably medical) disposable masks. What if the thing they were insisting is easy is a completely different thing from the thing I was struggling with???
What mask advocates could have done better
The pulse ox selfies were intended to convince people to wear masks, but they were absolutely counter-productive in my case and, I'd imagine, for anyone else who is struggling with masks.
The emphasis on blood oxygen level led me to believe that blood oxygen is the only possible problem, thereby preventing me from finding my way to useful coping mechanisms. The strong "masks are easy and there's no difficulty at all" (or, at most, handwaving it with "masks can be uncomfortable", which is a word I'd apply to skinny jeans and the seats at Massey Hall - getting light-headed in the middle of crossing Yonge St. calls for a stronger adjective) sometimes made me think medical professionals wouldn't believe me and therefore couldn't help me, sometimes made me think I had to just push through my light-headedness (bad idea - the risk of fainting is real, even if the cause isn't low blood oxygen), and sometimes made me think I was experiencing some unprecedented medical problem.
What would have been far more useful would be talk about actual real-life problems that people sometimes have with masks, and how to actually address them in real life.
For example, the fact that I'm not experiencing low blood oxygen isn't relevant, the fact that I'm feeling light-headed is. So it would be useful for doctors advocating for mask usage to talk about how feeling light-headed is something that happens to some people, here's what it means, here's what to do, here's when to worry.
And do the same thing for any other issues people might have with wearing masks.
It would also have been far more useful to talk about different kinds of masks or mask-wearing options and how they address different issues. For example, I find disposable masks significantly easier. Maybe other people with other issues would find other kinds of masks easier.
"Masks are easy" harms your credibility in the eyes of people who struggle with masks, people who haven't tried masks yet themselves but know people who struggle with masks, and people who are afraid of masks. "Here's how to handle mask issues that may arise" is far more credible and useful, and will get more people wearing masks more often.
I've already tweeted most of this as I was experiencing it, so if you follow me on Twitter there's nothing new here.
Caveats
1. I am not a medical professional. My explanation of any medical concepts is my own understanding and is not necessarily a perfectly accurate and comprehensive account of every medical consideration. I'm including it because my own understanding helps me figure out how to wear masks better and longer.
2. Portions of this post describe ways that I misunderstood medical concepts en route to learning more. I'm including them because describing how I misunderstood things is important to understanding how some kinds of mask advocacy were unhelpful. If you read or excerpt only these portions, it's possible you might come away with incorrect information.
My mask-wearing experience
I'd never worn a mask before COVID-19 came along, but I'd never heard of anyone experiencing adverse effects from them either. So when I got my first cloth mask (thank you, Mommy!) I put it on expecting everything to go smoothly.
I was surprised to discover that my body was working harder than it should have been - I was breathing harder, and occasionally getting light-headed. There was even a time or two where I think my judgement was affected!
When the fabric of the mask touched my mouth, I started outright panicking, feeling that I was suffocating even though I knew I wasn't, but even when the mask didn't touch my mouth (and my mother tried multiple variations specifically designed to keep the fabric away from my mouth!) I was always in some degree of distress.
The mask usually becomes untenable after 40 minutes. My irreproducible personal best was one hour, but just the other day (even after I'd proven to my own satisfaction that I get enough oxygen as described below) I could only manage 15 minutes. It's unpredictable, and the unpredictability is an additional worry.
My original (erroneous) self-diagnosis
The problems occur when I wear a mask, in other words when my nose and mouth are covered. Oxygen gets in through our nose and mouth. If you don't get enough oxygen, you die. Falling unconscious is en route to dying. Feeling light-headed is en route to falling unconscious. Therefore, I concluded, I wasn't getting as much oxygen when I wore a mask, because the mask was blocking some of it.
Seemed like a perfectly logical extrapolation from available evidence, and I couldn't imagine any other explanation.
My concern wasn't that I'd die from lack of oxygen. (I mean, I might, but then I'd be dead so I wouldn't have to worry about it.) My concern was that I might faint from lack of oxygen. I've only fainted once in my adult life, and that resulted in my head injury, from which I've never fully recovered. I certainly can't risk it happening again!
The pulse ox selfie problem
As I was struggling with all this, a trend emerged of doctors posting selfies of themselves wearing a mask and a pulse oximeter showing a good, high oxygen level, with the general thesis that wearing a mask doesn't decrease your oxygen level, often suggesting or outright stating that if you think it does, you're ignorant or a liar or anti-science.
All of which is very annoying to have saturating your twitter feed when you've just come back from a grocery run of struggling to breathe in a mask!
From this, I saw several possible conclusions:
- If I went to a doctor with this mask breathing problem, I wouldn't be believed.
- Maybe my body works differently than their bodies, and therefore anything they have to say is inapplicable to me.
- Maybe people who struggle with masks simply don't make it through medical school, and then doctors forget they ever existed.
- Maybe I have an unprecedented problem that medical science has never heard of, but mid-pandemic isn't a time to go down the diagnostic rabbithole that would entail.
- Obviously, from all these pulse oximeters, oxygen level was the crucial issue. I couldn't imagine any other issue, no one was talking about any other issue, so the cause of my problems must be low blood oxygen levels.
Low blood oxygen isn't the cause
All these pulse ox selfies gave me the idea that I might be able to use a pulse oximeter to detect when I was on the verge of fainting, or to convince myself that I wasn't going to faint. I ran the idea by a friend with medical training, who told me it doesn't work that way - because your blood oxygen could be normal and you could still faint!
She went on to tell me that was what likely happening is I'm hyperventilating from anxiety at wearing the mask (shortly afterwards I learned this is called false suffocation alarm) which is lowering my blood pressure, which is making me light-headed. She also told me about counterpressure - clenching and tensing muscles to temporarily increase blood pressure and possibly prevent fainting.
So I tried counterpressure the next time I had an early glimmer of mask light-headedness, and the effect was immediate. About 80% of the light-headedness vanished instantly, and I could move about safely without fear of fainting.
This immediately proved two things to me:
1. The mask doesn't affect my oxygen levels - if it did, counterpressure wouldn't get immediate results.
2. The light-headedness, and therefore the risk of fainting, is real - if they weren't, the counterpressure wouldn't get results.
Improved, but not cured
Having effectively proven to myself that it isn't lack of oxygen that's making me light-headed, I soon became less uncomfortable in the mask. However, the false suffocation alarm persists, and my body still fights the mask. I counterpressure, my head usually clears, I move forward. If the counterpressure isn't immediately effective, I sit down, get my head down to heart level, regain equilibrium. I've gotten really good at doing this in a way that makes it look like I'm just examining the items on the bottom shelf, so people in the grocery store don't think I'm in distress and approach me.
I've had moments where I completely forgot I was wearing a mask and days where it took an hour for me to feel any symptoms, but I've also had moments where I feel like I'm suffocating even though I know I'm not and days where I feel symptoms after 15 minutes.
Disposable masks might be easier
As I was in the midst of writing this all up, I tried a disposable mask (sold in the grocery store, marked non-medical) for the first time, and found my body didn't panic in it. I haven't figured out how to keep it from fogging up my glasses (the nose wire is less effective than in cloth masks), but I only rarely have to fight my body or get light-headed, which is a vast improvement! And even when I do have to fight my body, it's glaringly obvious to my brain that I can breathe, so I'm able to better psych myself out of panicking.
Which makes me realize - all the pulse ox selfies I saw were wearing (presumably medical) disposable masks. What if the thing they were insisting is easy is a completely different thing from the thing I was struggling with???
What mask advocates could have done better
The pulse ox selfies were intended to convince people to wear masks, but they were absolutely counter-productive in my case and, I'd imagine, for anyone else who is struggling with masks.
The emphasis on blood oxygen level led me to believe that blood oxygen is the only possible problem, thereby preventing me from finding my way to useful coping mechanisms. The strong "masks are easy and there's no difficulty at all" (or, at most, handwaving it with "masks can be uncomfortable", which is a word I'd apply to skinny jeans and the seats at Massey Hall - getting light-headed in the middle of crossing Yonge St. calls for a stronger adjective) sometimes made me think medical professionals wouldn't believe me and therefore couldn't help me, sometimes made me think I had to just push through my light-headedness (bad idea - the risk of fainting is real, even if the cause isn't low blood oxygen), and sometimes made me think I was experiencing some unprecedented medical problem.
What would have been far more useful would be talk about actual real-life problems that people sometimes have with masks, and how to actually address them in real life.
For example, the fact that I'm not experiencing low blood oxygen isn't relevant, the fact that I'm feeling light-headed is. So it would be useful for doctors advocating for mask usage to talk about how feeling light-headed is something that happens to some people, here's what it means, here's what to do, here's when to worry.
And do the same thing for any other issues people might have with wearing masks.
It would also have been far more useful to talk about different kinds of masks or mask-wearing options and how they address different issues. For example, I find disposable masks significantly easier. Maybe other people with other issues would find other kinds of masks easier.
"Masks are easy" harms your credibility in the eyes of people who struggle with masks, people who haven't tried masks yet themselves but know people who struggle with masks, and people who are afraid of masks. "Here's how to handle mask issues that may arise" is far more credible and useful, and will get more people wearing masks more often.
Friday, July 31, 2020
Books read in July 2020
New:
1. The Ward Uncovered: The Archaeology of Everyday Life Edited by John Lorinc, Holly Martelle, Michael McClelland, and Tatum Taylor
2. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
Reread:
1. Portrait in Death
1. The Ward Uncovered: The Archaeology of Everyday Life Edited by John Lorinc, Holly Martelle, Michael McClelland, and Tatum Taylor
2. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore
Reread:
1. Portrait in Death
Friday, July 03, 2020
Things They Should Invent: grocery pickup edition
1. Mark items as "essential"
The first time I tried grocery pickup (in this case, PC Express at Loblaws), I was making the purchase because I had immediate need of a specific item.
In keeping with the pandemic mindset of minimizing trips and keeping two weeks of provision on hand, I didn't just buy that one item, I bought everything I expected to need for the next two weeks, regardless of whether it was on sale.
Then, shortly before pick-up time, I got an email saying that my order was ready - except they didn't have that one specific item in stock! There was no way to cancel the order at this point, so I had to put on my mask, wait in line, go into a store, talk to an employee, pay for a bunch of stuff that wasn't even on sale, lug it all home and wipe it all down - all for nothing!
Proposed solution: users should have the option of marking one or more items in their cart as "essential". If the essential item is unavailable, the order is cancelled. When the user marks more than one item as essential, they can either mark them as "ALL" or "ANY". If the essential items are marked "ALL", then the order only goes through if all the essential items are available. If they essential items are marked "ANY", the order goes through if any one of the items is available.
This should certainly be programmable - it's basically a set of IF/THEN statements - and it would certainly help during the pandemic when we're supposed to be minimizing trips and contacts.
2. "Your cart contains # bags of groceries"
Another problem with grocery pickup is that ordering groceries online is much easier than carrying those groceries home - I'd almost bought more than I can carry!
Solution: tell users how many bags of groceries their cart contains, measured in the standard grocery bags found at the checkout.
People who are accustomed to grocery shopping have a good sense of how many bags of groceries they can carry and how many will fit into their tote bag or bundle buggy or bike basket or car trunk or whatever they might be using, so this would make it easier to avoid over-ordering, and thereby finding yourself at the store faced with more groceries than you can get home in one trip.
The ideal implementation would calculate the number of bags in terms of both mass and volume, because both of those are factors in how much people can carry. But I'd imagine an immediate implementation would be possible based on mass alone. Grocery stores already have a database of the mass of all their products, since the self-checkouts have a built-in scale to make sure you're not stealing. Surely someone in human history has quantified how many grams/pounds/kilograms a grocery bag will carry, so it's a simple question of division.
The first time I tried grocery pickup (in this case, PC Express at Loblaws), I was making the purchase because I had immediate need of a specific item.
In keeping with the pandemic mindset of minimizing trips and keeping two weeks of provision on hand, I didn't just buy that one item, I bought everything I expected to need for the next two weeks, regardless of whether it was on sale.
Then, shortly before pick-up time, I got an email saying that my order was ready - except they didn't have that one specific item in stock! There was no way to cancel the order at this point, so I had to put on my mask, wait in line, go into a store, talk to an employee, pay for a bunch of stuff that wasn't even on sale, lug it all home and wipe it all down - all for nothing!
Proposed solution: users should have the option of marking one or more items in their cart as "essential". If the essential item is unavailable, the order is cancelled. When the user marks more than one item as essential, they can either mark them as "ALL" or "ANY". If the essential items are marked "ALL", then the order only goes through if all the essential items are available. If they essential items are marked "ANY", the order goes through if any one of the items is available.
This should certainly be programmable - it's basically a set of IF/THEN statements - and it would certainly help during the pandemic when we're supposed to be minimizing trips and contacts.
2. "Your cart contains # bags of groceries"
Another problem with grocery pickup is that ordering groceries online is much easier than carrying those groceries home - I'd almost bought more than I can carry!
Solution: tell users how many bags of groceries their cart contains, measured in the standard grocery bags found at the checkout.
People who are accustomed to grocery shopping have a good sense of how many bags of groceries they can carry and how many will fit into their tote bag or bundle buggy or bike basket or car trunk or whatever they might be using, so this would make it easier to avoid over-ordering, and thereby finding yourself at the store faced with more groceries than you can get home in one trip.
The ideal implementation would calculate the number of bags in terms of both mass and volume, because both of those are factors in how much people can carry. But I'd imagine an immediate implementation would be possible based on mass alone. Grocery stores already have a database of the mass of all their products, since the self-checkouts have a built-in scale to make sure you're not stealing. Surely someone in human history has quantified how many grams/pounds/kilograms a grocery bag will carry, so it's a simple question of division.
Wednesday, July 01, 2020
The mystery of the disappearing desks
I blogged before about how people keep saying "things you have around the house" for things that I don't have around the house.
One thing I do have around the house is a desk. And, with the pandemic, I was surprised to learn just how many people don't have a desk.
My high-school graduation gift was a computer - a desktop computer, because that's what my father thought was most suitable. Laptop computers did exist in those days, but in the days before wifi you were tethered to a wall if you want to use the internet anyway, so desktops were a lot more common.
I set up my computer on my desk in my childhood bedroom, and subsequently on the desk in my dorm room and, being an internet addict, I spent most of my waking hours there, talking on the internet to other people who were also at their desktop computers tethered to the wall.
When I got my first apartment, I brought in my furniture from my childhood bedroom (my parents had the foresight to furnish our childhood bedrooms with regular grownup furniture rather than small/cutesy child-specific furniture). It was a small apartment, but my computer was still my top priority in my waking hours, so I set up my desk right in the living room, so I could continue my habit of spending time on the internet talking to other people also sitting at their desks.
Around this time I learned about ergonomics at work, so I applied the same principles to my desk at home. My set-up in student housing had been unergonomic and caused me a lot of neck pain, so I wanted something more sustainable for my adult life.
Then, when I got a laptop, I saw no reason not to continue with my comfy, ergonomized desk. I connected the laptop to my ergonomic peripherals, and kept right on spending my days at my desk, talking to people on the internet who, I had every reason to believe, were also at their desks.
Then, when the pandemic came along and everyone who can work from home started doing so, I was shocked to discover that the internet was full of people who . . . don't own a desk!!! All these people whom I'd always pictured as being at their desks were suddenly setting up makeshift workstations at kitchen tables and on couches and in bed . . .
Where did all the desks go??
I do understand intellectually that you can internet on laptops and mobile devices, but I've always found working at a desk more comfortable and convenient.
I also understand that many people live in small homes - I do myself! It's just my desk has always been so important to me that it's my second priority, after a bed.
So it's quite astonishing to me that it's such a low priority for so many people that "how to work from home when you don't have a desk" was a major topic of conversation in the early days of the pandemic!
But in addition to the question of "Why don't people have desks?" there's also the question of "What happened to the desks that people used to have?"
A lot of the "no desk, now what?" that's reaching me is coming from people who have been on the internet (in a personal capacity, not just for work or school) for at least as long as I have. Which means that, once upon a time, they almost certainly must have had a desk in their home - even if not a literal desk, then a designated table where a computer could be set up.
And now they don't. They must have, at some point, gotten rid of the literal desk. Which is so bizarre to me - they looked at what I consider the second most important piece of furniture in a home, and thought "I don't anticipate ever needing to fulfill this function again."
Or what if they never had them in the first place? What if, for all these years, all these people on the internet I thought were sitting at their desks actually weren't?
That would be interesting to study - survey people who were caught out without a desk in the pandemic and ask them if they've ever owned a desk.
If you had asked me, back in the 90s when I was setting up my very own computer at my very own desk, to predict what will happen in the world in the year 2020, I would never have come up with "A lot fewer people own desks"!
One thing I do have around the house is a desk. And, with the pandemic, I was surprised to learn just how many people don't have a desk.
My high-school graduation gift was a computer - a desktop computer, because that's what my father thought was most suitable. Laptop computers did exist in those days, but in the days before wifi you were tethered to a wall if you want to use the internet anyway, so desktops were a lot more common.
I set up my computer on my desk in my childhood bedroom, and subsequently on the desk in my dorm room and, being an internet addict, I spent most of my waking hours there, talking on the internet to other people who were also at their desktop computers tethered to the wall.
When I got my first apartment, I brought in my furniture from my childhood bedroom (my parents had the foresight to furnish our childhood bedrooms with regular grownup furniture rather than small/cutesy child-specific furniture). It was a small apartment, but my computer was still my top priority in my waking hours, so I set up my desk right in the living room, so I could continue my habit of spending time on the internet talking to other people also sitting at their desks.
Around this time I learned about ergonomics at work, so I applied the same principles to my desk at home. My set-up in student housing had been unergonomic and caused me a lot of neck pain, so I wanted something more sustainable for my adult life.
Then, when I got a laptop, I saw no reason not to continue with my comfy, ergonomized desk. I connected the laptop to my ergonomic peripherals, and kept right on spending my days at my desk, talking to people on the internet who, I had every reason to believe, were also at their desks.
Then, when the pandemic came along and everyone who can work from home started doing so, I was shocked to discover that the internet was full of people who . . . don't own a desk!!! All these people whom I'd always pictured as being at their desks were suddenly setting up makeshift workstations at kitchen tables and on couches and in bed . . .
Where did all the desks go??
I do understand intellectually that you can internet on laptops and mobile devices, but I've always found working at a desk more comfortable and convenient.
I also understand that many people live in small homes - I do myself! It's just my desk has always been so important to me that it's my second priority, after a bed.
So it's quite astonishing to me that it's such a low priority for so many people that "how to work from home when you don't have a desk" was a major topic of conversation in the early days of the pandemic!
But in addition to the question of "Why don't people have desks?" there's also the question of "What happened to the desks that people used to have?"
A lot of the "no desk, now what?" that's reaching me is coming from people who have been on the internet (in a personal capacity, not just for work or school) for at least as long as I have. Which means that, once upon a time, they almost certainly must have had a desk in their home - even if not a literal desk, then a designated table where a computer could be set up.
And now they don't. They must have, at some point, gotten rid of the literal desk. Which is so bizarre to me - they looked at what I consider the second most important piece of furniture in a home, and thought "I don't anticipate ever needing to fulfill this function again."
Or what if they never had them in the first place? What if, for all these years, all these people on the internet I thought were sitting at their desks actually weren't?
That would be interesting to study - survey people who were caught out without a desk in the pandemic and ask them if they've ever owned a desk.
If you had asked me, back in the 90s when I was setting up my very own computer at my very own desk, to predict what will happen in the world in the year 2020, I would never have come up with "A lot fewer people own desks"!
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Books read in June 2020
New:
1. A Better Man by Louise Penny
2. Tilly and the Bookwanderers by Anna James
Reread:
1. Purity in death
1. A Better Man by Louise Penny
2. Tilly and the Bookwanderers by Anna James
Reread:
1. Purity in death
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Flaws in my education: treating anti-racism readings like any other literature
I blogged before about how the books used in the anti-racism unit in my Grade 9 English class didn't serve us well.
Another aspect that didn't serve us well was that they treated it like any other English class unit. We did discuss racism (I don't think we managed to get as far as anti-racism, given that I didn't know the nuance until I was well into my 30s), but there was a lot of writing and talking about symbolism, "compare and contrast", etc., and that got in the way of learning actual anti-racism.
An educational trend in that time and place was letting students arrive at conclusions themselves (in either Grade 9 or Grade 10, I had a whole-ass science textbook that used the socratic method FFS!), but a bunch of ignorant white 14-year-olds who may or may not be able to name a racial stereotype are not going to arrive at any sort of useful conclusion about anti-racism without a lot more guidance and context! (And having to sit in the classroom while we fumbled around trying to do so probably wasn't a very safe experience for the few racialized students in our school!)
Literature is an excellent tool for teaching students about all manner of people and lives and experiences and ideas, and English class seems like the sensible place for some literature. But anti-racism isn't just a regular old English unit like "poetry" or "Shakespeare". It's meant to equip us to function in society and right the wrongs of our ancestors and overcome the negative influences around us that we, at the age of 14, might not even recognize as negative influences. We certainly need a lot more structure and guidance than "what do you think?" and "Discuss themes!"
I wonder if approaching anti-racism in a way that's parallel to other, more abstract literature topics might also be exacerbating the unfortunate trend of some people think it's a good idea to "debate" or ask for documentary evidence of others' lived experiences, or trying to broadly apply philosophical theory to others' lived experiences, and then saying their lived experiences are inapplicable when they don't fit into the theory. When anti-racism is presented as though it's up for exactly the same kind of theorizing as things like the symbolism of the green light - and when ignorant white kids like me are specifically asked to write about it this way - the students might come away with the idea that their theorizing is useful and welcome.
There's also the fact that, like it or not, literary analysis is rather esoteric, with not so many direct, immediate applications to the practicalities of everyday life. And, because of that, it's seen as useless by many people who aren't huge fans of it. Treating anti-racism so similarly risks leading students who are less fond of literary analysis to see anti-racism as esoteric and inapplicable, rather than being a crucial part of living ethically in the world.
Some people will point out that students "should" be able to do both literary analysis and anti-racism.
But the fact of the matter is that, in that Grade 9 classroom 25 years ago, being new to the concept of literary analysis and being new to the concept of anti-racism, we weren't all able to do both effectively.
If our curriculum and our teachers had prioritized the anti-racism aspect, even if it meant we didn't read the readings like we did our other English class readings, perhaps I and others like me would be better people today.
Another aspect that didn't serve us well was that they treated it like any other English class unit. We did discuss racism (I don't think we managed to get as far as anti-racism, given that I didn't know the nuance until I was well into my 30s), but there was a lot of writing and talking about symbolism, "compare and contrast", etc., and that got in the way of learning actual anti-racism.
An educational trend in that time and place was letting students arrive at conclusions themselves (in either Grade 9 or Grade 10, I had a whole-ass science textbook that used the socratic method FFS!), but a bunch of ignorant white 14-year-olds who may or may not be able to name a racial stereotype are not going to arrive at any sort of useful conclusion about anti-racism without a lot more guidance and context! (And having to sit in the classroom while we fumbled around trying to do so probably wasn't a very safe experience for the few racialized students in our school!)
Literature is an excellent tool for teaching students about all manner of people and lives and experiences and ideas, and English class seems like the sensible place for some literature. But anti-racism isn't just a regular old English unit like "poetry" or "Shakespeare". It's meant to equip us to function in society and right the wrongs of our ancestors and overcome the negative influences around us that we, at the age of 14, might not even recognize as negative influences. We certainly need a lot more structure and guidance than "what do you think?" and "Discuss themes!"
I wonder if approaching anti-racism in a way that's parallel to other, more abstract literature topics might also be exacerbating the unfortunate trend of some people think it's a good idea to "debate" or ask for documentary evidence of others' lived experiences, or trying to broadly apply philosophical theory to others' lived experiences, and then saying their lived experiences are inapplicable when they don't fit into the theory. When anti-racism is presented as though it's up for exactly the same kind of theorizing as things like the symbolism of the green light - and when ignorant white kids like me are specifically asked to write about it this way - the students might come away with the idea that their theorizing is useful and welcome.
There's also the fact that, like it or not, literary analysis is rather esoteric, with not so many direct, immediate applications to the practicalities of everyday life. And, because of that, it's seen as useless by many people who aren't huge fans of it. Treating anti-racism so similarly risks leading students who are less fond of literary analysis to see anti-racism as esoteric and inapplicable, rather than being a crucial part of living ethically in the world.
Some people will point out that students "should" be able to do both literary analysis and anti-racism.
But the fact of the matter is that, in that Grade 9 classroom 25 years ago, being new to the concept of literary analysis and being new to the concept of anti-racism, we weren't all able to do both effectively.
If our curriculum and our teachers had prioritized the anti-racism aspect, even if it meant we didn't read the readings like we did our other English class readings, perhaps I and others like me would be better people today.
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Sanditon fanfic bunny, free for the taking: "I Will Toil and You Can Blossom"
This post is a full spoiler zone for the Sanditon miniseries.
I recently finished the Sanditon miniseries, and was pleased to see that my ship of Charlotte/Arthur is still a possibility.
I have a massive fanfic bunny and lack the skills to write it, so I'm posting it here in case someone else wants to write it. Steal this idea!
Premise:
Charlotte and Arthur enter by mutual consent into a companionate marriage (in the sense of companionate love as opposed to consummate love.)
This puts Charlotte in a good position to continue her work with the Parker family's business, which she found so self-actualizing in canon. (After all, it's much more respectable for a Mrs. Parker to be acting on behalf of the Parker family than a Miss Heywood.) She gets to be married to someone who is pleasant and harmless and respects her.
Meanwhile, Arthur gets to continue enjoying the simple pleasures of life without having to work too hard, because Charlotte is pulling their share of the weight in the family business. He gets to be married to someone who is pretty and personable and accepts him for who is he is without playing games. He can spend his days enjoying his port wine and buttered toast and getting down on the floor to play with the children.
(Despite it being a companionate marriage, I do imagine that Charlotte and Arthur would consummate their marriage. They've both shown themselves eager to try new experiences (e.g. sea-bathing) and sex is a new experience that's now available to them. And they may well continue to make sex part of their lives, either to have children, simply because they think it's fun.)
So where's the conflict in this scenario? From the whole rest of the town of Sanditon! Nearly everyone we've met in canon has some kind of drama, and with Sanditon being a resort town all kinds of personalities could pass through. And meanwhile, Charlotte and Arthur build themselves an oasis of peace in the midst of all the drama.
Interesting notions this fic would explore:
- A mutually-satisfying and mutually-respectful companionate marriage. In fiction, we see explorations of passionate marriages, unhealthy marriages, abusive marriages, bickering marriages. I've never seen a portrayal of a marriage between two people who like each other and respect each other and get along well, but aren't in love with each other and are okay with that.
- Sex as fun, but not passionate. I do think if Charlotte and Arthur were married, they would explore sex. They've both shown themselves game to try new experiences (sea bathing, horseback riding), and I think they would have a go at consummating their marriage in a similar spirit. After all, they're allowed - even encouraged! And if it turns out to be an enjoyable experience for both, they'd probably make it a regular part of their life. Sex in fiction tends to be portrayed as imbued with great emotion and meaning (as it often is in real life) - either positively or negatively depending on the character being portrayed. But some people must find it just...fun. (After all, friends with benefits is a thing.) It would be interesting to see that explored in fiction.
- The value of a harmless husband. We normally see the notion of a "safe option" in marriage portrayed negatively, or as a person in a safe marriage yearning for something more. But in a historical era where a wife is entirely at her husband's mercy socially, legally and financially, a harmless husband like Arthur would be quite the catch! He's cheerful and happy to be pleased, he's happy to cede the floor to Charlotte when she knows better, and he's not going to bankrupt them (c.f. he's hardly touched his inheritance).
(Charlotte is also harmless and I'm sure that has value for Arthur, but given the realities of the era, I'm more interested in how Arthur's harmlessness enhances Charlotte's life.)
- Young newlyweds growing up together. Once upon a time, I read something that said that in the 21st century, people expect to finish growing up and then to get married. But in the past, when people married younger, they'd get married and expect to finish growing up together. I haven't a clue whether that's true as a general societal attitude (I've only heard it once from a source that is lost to history), but it must have happened in some cases, and it would be an interesting thing to explore. Charlotte and Arthur, while of marriageable age in their historical context, are both very young and both still have some growing up to do. At the same time, living and working within the extended Parker family would give them a context in which they can safely do this growing up together.
I recently finished the Sanditon miniseries, and was pleased to see that my ship of Charlotte/Arthur is still a possibility.
I have a massive fanfic bunny and lack the skills to write it, so I'm posting it here in case someone else wants to write it. Steal this idea!
Premise:
Charlotte and Arthur enter by mutual consent into a companionate marriage (in the sense of companionate love as opposed to consummate love.)
This puts Charlotte in a good position to continue her work with the Parker family's business, which she found so self-actualizing in canon. (After all, it's much more respectable for a Mrs. Parker to be acting on behalf of the Parker family than a Miss Heywood.) She gets to be married to someone who is pleasant and harmless and respects her.
Meanwhile, Arthur gets to continue enjoying the simple pleasures of life without having to work too hard, because Charlotte is pulling their share of the weight in the family business. He gets to be married to someone who is pretty and personable and accepts him for who is he is without playing games. He can spend his days enjoying his port wine and buttered toast and getting down on the floor to play with the children.
(Despite it being a companionate marriage, I do imagine that Charlotte and Arthur would consummate their marriage. They've both shown themselves eager to try new experiences (e.g. sea-bathing) and sex is a new experience that's now available to them. And they may well continue to make sex part of their lives, either to have children, simply because they think it's fun.)
So where's the conflict in this scenario? From the whole rest of the town of Sanditon! Nearly everyone we've met in canon has some kind of drama, and with Sanditon being a resort town all kinds of personalities could pass through. And meanwhile, Charlotte and Arthur build themselves an oasis of peace in the midst of all the drama.
Interesting notions this fic would explore:
- A mutually-satisfying and mutually-respectful companionate marriage. In fiction, we see explorations of passionate marriages, unhealthy marriages, abusive marriages, bickering marriages. I've never seen a portrayal of a marriage between two people who like each other and respect each other and get along well, but aren't in love with each other and are okay with that.
- Sex as fun, but not passionate. I do think if Charlotte and Arthur were married, they would explore sex. They've both shown themselves game to try new experiences (sea bathing, horseback riding), and I think they would have a go at consummating their marriage in a similar spirit. After all, they're allowed - even encouraged! And if it turns out to be an enjoyable experience for both, they'd probably make it a regular part of their life. Sex in fiction tends to be portrayed as imbued with great emotion and meaning (as it often is in real life) - either positively or negatively depending on the character being portrayed. But some people must find it just...fun. (After all, friends with benefits is a thing.) It would be interesting to see that explored in fiction.
- The value of a harmless husband. We normally see the notion of a "safe option" in marriage portrayed negatively, or as a person in a safe marriage yearning for something more. But in a historical era where a wife is entirely at her husband's mercy socially, legally and financially, a harmless husband like Arthur would be quite the catch! He's cheerful and happy to be pleased, he's happy to cede the floor to Charlotte when she knows better, and he's not going to bankrupt them (c.f. he's hardly touched his inheritance).
(Charlotte is also harmless and I'm sure that has value for Arthur, but given the realities of the era, I'm more interested in how Arthur's harmlessness enhances Charlotte's life.)
- Young newlyweds growing up together. Once upon a time, I read something that said that in the 21st century, people expect to finish growing up and then to get married. But in the past, when people married younger, they'd get married and expect to finish growing up together. I haven't a clue whether that's true as a general societal attitude (I've only heard it once from a source that is lost to history), but it must have happened in some cases, and it would be an interesting thing to explore. Charlotte and Arthur, while of marriageable age in their historical context, are both very young and both still have some growing up to do. At the same time, living and working within the extended Parker family would give them a context in which they can safely do this growing up together.
Monday, June 15, 2020
Flaws in my education: using non-contemporary readings for anti-racism
In Grade 9, we had an anti-racism unit in English class. Works studied included To Kill A Mockingbird, Black Like Me, and Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech.
Problem: these were all American works that were decades old.
I don't remember reading anything Canadian in our anti-racism unit. I never read anything about race set in my own lifetime until I was an adult. The only thing about race in Canada that I remember reading in school is Obasan, which is set during the Second World War.
Many white Canadians - including myself until shamefully recently - perceive racism to be a thing of the past, and/or an American problem.
And I strongly suspect this is influenced by the fact that our anti-racism education focused on American works from before we were born.
I often say I'm about 30 years behind where I should be in things like anti-racism. That Grade 9 class was 25 years ago.
Maybe the world would be a better place if I, and others like me, had been equipped for all these years to think of racism as a problem that exists in the here and now. I know I certainly would be a better person if I were now decades into my journey into anti-racism rather than just starting out on the cusp of middle age.
Problem: these were all American works that were decades old.
I don't remember reading anything Canadian in our anti-racism unit. I never read anything about race set in my own lifetime until I was an adult. The only thing about race in Canada that I remember reading in school is Obasan, which is set during the Second World War.
Many white Canadians - including myself until shamefully recently - perceive racism to be a thing of the past, and/or an American problem.
And I strongly suspect this is influenced by the fact that our anti-racism education focused on American works from before we were born.
I often say I'm about 30 years behind where I should be in things like anti-racism. That Grade 9 class was 25 years ago.
Maybe the world would be a better place if I, and others like me, had been equipped for all these years to think of racism as a problem that exists in the here and now. I know I certainly would be a better person if I were now decades into my journey into anti-racism rather than just starting out on the cusp of middle age.
Saturday, June 13, 2020
O'Keeffe's Working Hands: a hand cream like any other
With all the extra pandemic handwashing, I needed to level up my hand cream game, so I decided to try O'Keeffe's Working Hands, which purports to be for dry, cracked hands resulting from manual labour. Surely, I thought, a hand cream designed for working hands will be particularly magical on hands that normally do nothing more demanding than type, and are now being put to the test with a few extra washings a day.
Turned out, it's not particularly magical. It's no better on dry, cracked areas (or on eczema) than any other hand cream I've tried.
It's no worse than any other hand cream either, so if you feel like trying it, there's no reason not to try it.
Turned out, it's not particularly magical. It's no better on dry, cracked areas (or on eczema) than any other hand cream I've tried.
It's no worse than any other hand cream either, so if you feel like trying it, there's no reason not to try it.
Thursday, June 11, 2020
Flaws in my Education: "You should speak up and contribute!"
I was identified as gifted when I was in Grade 5, which meant every year I'd get an IPRC, where I'd meet with my parents and the resource teacher and they'd make a plan for how to get the most out of my education.
The one thing the resource teachers always did (every single resource teacher over the years did this - I can think of at least three individual teachers and I'm sure I'm missing some) was put in the plan that I should raise my hand and answer more questions in class.
Even looking back at it as an adult, I don't understand what that was supposed to achieve. (I knew that I knew the answers, I was just staying quiet to avoid bullying.) But there was very strong messaging that I should raise my hand and give the teachers the answers I already knew I already knew, that doing so would be a good thing, and that failing to do so was a bad thing.
Similarly, as a shy person who doesn't always speak in groups, I've gotten a lot of "You should speak up! You should contribute!" as social skills advice.
As though I necessarily have something not just to say, but to contribute? I can't fathom what that might be!
So for the first 30ish years of my life, I was receiving constant messaging that I should say something, anything. That not putting in my two cents is practically not pulling my weight.
And then, when I was well into my 30s, I was exposed for the first time to the concept of staying in one's lane.
This was literally the first time in my life I had heard that perhaps I shouldn't speak up, perhaps I don't have anything to contribute to a given discussion.
(When I was a kid, adults would tell me to be quiet and not to talk back in a given moment, but on a philosophical/theoretical level they definitely would have said I should speak up and contribute.)
Now, I can't tell you how much of this "you should speak up and contribute" was because I'm white, and I can't tell you whether my non-white classmates were treated differently. My school was fairly small (if you had shown me a photo of any of my classmates, I could have instantly told you their name and something about them) and there were so few non-white students that I could count them without running out of fingers.
I cannot think of/remember a single instance of any of my classmates, of any race, being urged to systematically speak up more or to systematically be quiet. But also, I wasn't paying attention to such things at the time, so who knows what I might have missed?
If there was any difference in how we were treated, I'm sure the adults would have told you they were treating us as individuals, based on our individual needs. And there simply isn't enough data to suggest otherwise - I had too few non-white classmates to identify any sort of pattern.
But the fact of the matter is there were, in raw numbers, a lot of white people around in that time and place, and other times and places like it. I can't possibly have been the only person who was told to speak up and contribute. (I seriously doubt the adults around me would have come up with an all new unprecedented piece of advice just for me!)
Maybe the world would be a better place if more of us were told there are some times and places where you should sit down, be quiet and listen - and not just when those in power and authority are talking.
The one thing the resource teachers always did (every single resource teacher over the years did this - I can think of at least three individual teachers and I'm sure I'm missing some) was put in the plan that I should raise my hand and answer more questions in class.
Even looking back at it as an adult, I don't understand what that was supposed to achieve. (I knew that I knew the answers, I was just staying quiet to avoid bullying.) But there was very strong messaging that I should raise my hand and give the teachers the answers I already knew I already knew, that doing so would be a good thing, and that failing to do so was a bad thing.
Similarly, as a shy person who doesn't always speak in groups, I've gotten a lot of "You should speak up! You should contribute!" as social skills advice.
As though I necessarily have something not just to say, but to contribute? I can't fathom what that might be!
So for the first 30ish years of my life, I was receiving constant messaging that I should say something, anything. That not putting in my two cents is practically not pulling my weight.
And then, when I was well into my 30s, I was exposed for the first time to the concept of staying in one's lane.
This was literally the first time in my life I had heard that perhaps I shouldn't speak up, perhaps I don't have anything to contribute to a given discussion.
(When I was a kid, adults would tell me to be quiet and not to talk back in a given moment, but on a philosophical/theoretical level they definitely would have said I should speak up and contribute.)
Now, I can't tell you how much of this "you should speak up and contribute" was because I'm white, and I can't tell you whether my non-white classmates were treated differently. My school was fairly small (if you had shown me a photo of any of my classmates, I could have instantly told you their name and something about them) and there were so few non-white students that I could count them without running out of fingers.
I cannot think of/remember a single instance of any of my classmates, of any race, being urged to systematically speak up more or to systematically be quiet. But also, I wasn't paying attention to such things at the time, so who knows what I might have missed?
If there was any difference in how we were treated, I'm sure the adults would have told you they were treating us as individuals, based on our individual needs. And there simply isn't enough data to suggest otherwise - I had too few non-white classmates to identify any sort of pattern.
But the fact of the matter is there were, in raw numbers, a lot of white people around in that time and place, and other times and places like it. I can't possibly have been the only person who was told to speak up and contribute. (I seriously doubt the adults around me would have come up with an all new unprecedented piece of advice just for me!)
Maybe the world would be a better place if more of us were told there are some times and places where you should sit down, be quiet and listen - and not just when those in power and authority are talking.
Sunday, June 07, 2020
Things They Should Invent: express elevators for the pandemic
Most people in my building seem to be voluntarily abiding by a one person/household per elevator rule. I do this myself. I live in the lower half of the building, so often when I'm waiting for an elevator to take me to to the ground floor, there will already be someone in it. I cheerfully wave them on, and wait for the next elevator.
However, not everyone in my building does this. Sometimes I'm taking the elevator down, it stops to pick up someone who has pressed the call button on one of the floors below me, and they get in. And there's not really much I can civilly do to stop them. (I mean, I could scream and argue, or do something gross like cough or something creepy like scratch my ass and smell my finger, but I have few options that allow me to retain what social capital I have.)
I also think, in some cases, the person waiting for the elevator might feel it's rude not to get into the elevator, as though you're suggesting that there's something wrong with the person in the elevator. (Imagine, for example, how declining to get in an elevator with someone else would have read before anyone had ever heard of the coronavirus.)
It would be useful if, for the duration of the pandemic, elevators could be put in express mode. You get in the elevator, press the button for your floor, and it goes straight to your floor without stopping. Then it goes and picks up the next person who has pressed a call button.
This would make elevator use during the pandemic as safe as possible without requiring optimal behaviour or any sort of effort from users. In my own experiences with skipping over occupied elevators and waiting for empty ones, I've never had to wait for more than three (and, about half the time, the first elevator that arrives is empty) so I don't think it would cause undue delays.
The challenge is I'm not sure whether it's technically possible without changes to how elevators work. The elevators I'm familiar with can be put in service mode with a key - you turn the key, the elevator goes your destination floor without stopping and then waits for you there. But if you don't turn the key back to the normal setting, the elevator will sit and wait for you rather than picking up the next passenger. And if you do turn the key back to the normal setting, it will go back to stopping wherever there's a call button pressed.
So I'm not sure if elevators can currently be programmed to take each passenger to their floor then go back for the next passenger without constant intervention. But if they can, they should be. And if they can't, elevator manufacturers should figure out how to introduce this functionality for the next time we need it.
However, not everyone in my building does this. Sometimes I'm taking the elevator down, it stops to pick up someone who has pressed the call button on one of the floors below me, and they get in. And there's not really much I can civilly do to stop them. (I mean, I could scream and argue, or do something gross like cough or something creepy like scratch my ass and smell my finger, but I have few options that allow me to retain what social capital I have.)
I also think, in some cases, the person waiting for the elevator might feel it's rude not to get into the elevator, as though you're suggesting that there's something wrong with the person in the elevator. (Imagine, for example, how declining to get in an elevator with someone else would have read before anyone had ever heard of the coronavirus.)
It would be useful if, for the duration of the pandemic, elevators could be put in express mode. You get in the elevator, press the button for your floor, and it goes straight to your floor without stopping. Then it goes and picks up the next person who has pressed a call button.
This would make elevator use during the pandemic as safe as possible without requiring optimal behaviour or any sort of effort from users. In my own experiences with skipping over occupied elevators and waiting for empty ones, I've never had to wait for more than three (and, about half the time, the first elevator that arrives is empty) so I don't think it would cause undue delays.
The challenge is I'm not sure whether it's technically possible without changes to how elevators work. The elevators I'm familiar with can be put in service mode with a key - you turn the key, the elevator goes your destination floor without stopping and then waits for you there. But if you don't turn the key back to the normal setting, the elevator will sit and wait for you rather than picking up the next passenger. And if you do turn the key back to the normal setting, it will go back to stopping wherever there's a call button pressed.
So I'm not sure if elevators can currently be programmed to take each passenger to their floor then go back for the next passenger without constant intervention. But if they can, they should be. And if they can't, elevator manufacturers should figure out how to introduce this functionality for the next time we need it.
Friday, June 05, 2020
The best things in life and the worst things in life
The April 26 Frazz comic:
The interesting thing is Caulfield has essentially proven that the worst things in life are way worse than the best things in life are good.
There are people in the world who, like Frazz think the beauty of nature is one of the best things in life.
If you find one of these people, ideally at a moment where they haven't just opined on the best things in life, and ask them about the worst things in life, they will, rightfully, come up with something like war atrocities. (Or, if they don't will likely agree that war atrocities are far worse than whatever they just thought of. Unless, of course, there's something worse than war atrocities that I'm not thinking of.)
War atrocities are, by far, many many many orders of magnitude worse than the beauty of nature is good.
(If anyone disagrees, here's a thought experiment: would you rather never be subjected to war atrocities and never experience the beauty of nature? Or would you rather be subjected to war atrocities for the rest of your natural life as the price of admission for experiencing the beauty of nature?)
In fact, Caulfield has just demonstrated that the bad things in life aren't even on the same scale as the good things in life. The absence of a beautiful moon isn't a war atrocity, it's simply nondescript. The absence of war atrocities isn't beautiful, it's simply nondescript.
There's a saying that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Maybe that logic applies to other things in life as well.
 |
| Caulfield: A few weeks ago, you were all but howling at the full moon. Frazz: Beautiful! Enormous, razor sharp and bright enough to hold its own against the rising sun across a vast, cloudless sky. Caulfield: So you remember it. Frazz: Of course! A moon like that is one of the best things in life. Caulfield: Do you remember a week ago? Frazz: I guess I don't. Caulfield: It was inky and overcast, and there wouldn't have been a visible moon anyway. The complete opposite of the best thing in life, if you catch my drift. Frazz: You're overthinking this. Caulfield: Ergo: The worst things in life aren't as bad as the best things are good. Frazz: I like the way you overthink. |
The interesting thing is Caulfield has essentially proven that the worst things in life are way worse than the best things in life are good.
There are people in the world who, like Frazz think the beauty of nature is one of the best things in life.
If you find one of these people, ideally at a moment where they haven't just opined on the best things in life, and ask them about the worst things in life, they will, rightfully, come up with something like war atrocities. (Or, if they don't will likely agree that war atrocities are far worse than whatever they just thought of. Unless, of course, there's something worse than war atrocities that I'm not thinking of.)
War atrocities are, by far, many many many orders of magnitude worse than the beauty of nature is good.
(If anyone disagrees, here's a thought experiment: would you rather never be subjected to war atrocities and never experience the beauty of nature? Or would you rather be subjected to war atrocities for the rest of your natural life as the price of admission for experiencing the beauty of nature?)
In fact, Caulfield has just demonstrated that the bad things in life aren't even on the same scale as the good things in life. The absence of a beautiful moon isn't a war atrocity, it's simply nondescript. The absence of war atrocities isn't beautiful, it's simply nondescript.
There's a saying that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Maybe that logic applies to other things in life as well.
Thursday, June 04, 2020
New Rules: Natural Consequences Edition XIV
19. If you're giving advice on how to make or fix something, and you say you can do it with "things you have around the house", you are required to provide those things to anyone in your audience who doesn't already have them around the house. You aren't allowed access to those things in your own home until everyone in your audience has them.
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