Reread:
1. Reunion in Death
Sunday, May 31, 2020
Friday, May 29, 2020
Top 10 petty things I hope come out of the pandemic
Many, many people who are smarter than me have commented on major policy and social changes that they hope come out of the pandemic - a robust system of sick days! Stronger income security! An end to just-in-time supply chains!
I'm going to let the smart people comment on those important things. Meanwhile, I have some less-important things that I hope come out of the pandemic:
1. Touch screens that can be operated with a stylus
Back in the Palm Pilot days, touch screens could be operated with a stylus or some other object. Since the iPhone came along, the trend on everything from self-checkouts to microwaves has been towards screens that require a human finger, which makes it harder to have a no-contact experience. Even if we don't take hygiene into account, screens that can be operated with either an object or a finger are more versatile than those that absolutely require a human finger. Hopefully we can get that versatility back.
2. Longer hair becoming popular
I find longer hair more attractive. Even when people wear their hair short, I prefer longer short hair. Frodo Baggins rather than Forrest Gump. For purely superficial reasons, I would enjoy if this temporary haircut moratorium leads to longer hair becoming popular. (Unfortunately, I think the opposite will ultimately happen as people rejoice in haircuts.)
3. Baggy pants coming back in fashion
Skinny jeans have been in style for over a decade. It's high time for loose-fitting pants to come back in style! I'm hoping the combination of so many people staying home (and therefore likely wearing comfy pants) and so much bread being baked (which someone has to eat) will lead to societal intolerance of skinny jeans, and a move towards a roomier (and, on my figure, more flattering) silhouette.
4. Handwashing right inside the door
When I walk into my apartment, I know I need to wash my hands. But I also have to take my shoes off, which means touching the shoes with my dirty hands. (Yes, I know some people can remove their shoes without using their hands. I'm not one of them.) If I walk into the kitchen or the bathroom before removing my shoes, I'm tracking outdoor dirt (which might include germs) into the apartment. So far I've been addressing this by wiping down the parts of my shoes that I touch, but it would be convenient to have a sink for hand-washing right inside the door, so you can wash your hands right away, then remove your outerwear with clean hands. I hope home design evolves in this direction.
5. Touchless public washrooms
You know those useless public washroom taps where you need to hold the button down the entire time in order to make water come out? They need to be GONE! This pandemic should be the warning everyone needs to design public washrooms so they can be completely touchless, including opening the door on the way out of the washroom.
6. Homes designed for privacy from other household members
As someone who lives alone, I actually find my open-concept apartment convenient - I can keep watching the TV or the computer screen while I putter around in the kitchen! - but it is not the right design for a multi-person household. People - even people who love each other - need privacy from each other, and I suspect quarantine is driving his point home for many people. I hope home design evolves in a way that gives people visual, auditory and psychological privacy from the other members of their household.
Sometimes in advice column comments, I see people who think your romantic relationship is broken if you need privacy from each other, and/or think it's appalling and materialistic to plan your family and your housing so that each of your kids can have their own room. I'd be very happy if being quarantined with their household makes them change their mind on these questions, although I suspect it will instead make the other members of their household value their privacy even more.
7. Parent-neutral schooling
This is something I've been thinking about long before the pandemic but never got around to blogging about. Schooling seems to be evolving in a direction of requiring more and more parental involvement. For example, I often hear parents talking about their children's homework as though it is absolutely essential for parents to be involved in helping kids with their homework, and it is in no way reasonable to expect kids to be able to do their homework themselves based on what they learned in the classroom.
This creates a situation where students are put at a disadvantage if their parents, for whatever reason, don't meet the school's expectations.
Which is completely bass-ackwards. Schools should be mitigating any disadvantages or lack of advantages brought by parents, not exacerbating them.
The curriculum should be rethought so that students are not at any disadvantage if their parents do not contribute sufficiently. In fact, the curriculum should be even more drastically rethought so that parental contribution cannot put kids at an advantage - kids succeed on their own merits, regardless of what their parents bring to the table.
The switch to learning at home during the pandemic is exacerbating all these issues. Students whose parents aren't able to do what the school expects are at even more of a disadvantage. I'd like to see this result in a switch to a parent-neutral approach. However, I fear that it might do the opposite - especially if we are pushed onto an austerity footing after the pandemic, schools might be pressured to say "the parents can help the students with this - after all, they did so during the pandemic!"
8. More lenient parenting
One pandemic problem is teens sneaking out to hang out with their friends, and therefore breaking quarantine and failing to comply with social distancing.
A contributing factor is that "don't hang out with your friends because global pandemic" is not terribly persuasive in a world where the grownups are always telling you not to hang out with your friends anyway - because they read a parenting article or because they heard your friend use a swear word or because there might be a boy there.
But this time it's different. This time it's really important. And I hope, when this is over, that parents remember that.
In recent years, is has become less and less socially acceptable to leave kids unsupervised, even in their own home. The age at which kids are allowed to be unsupervised seems to be significantly higher than the age at which they can actually handle it.
The pandemic rule is that only one person from each household is supposed to go grocery shopping, which is a problem in cases where there's only one adult in the household - especially since babysitters from outside the household are not an option.
In some cases, depending the kids' ages and personalities, the most reasonable thing to do is to leave the kid home alone while grocery shopping. I hope the pandemic makes that socially acceptable as well, and that it sticks.
Early into the pandemic, I saw a lot of stuff circulating about How To Quarantine Optimally - and, especially, The Optimal Quarantine Schedule For Your Kids - and I found myself thinking how much it would suck to have that imposed on you regardless of your own needs and temperament. I hope the challenges of quarantine make these parents see the folly of optimizing their kids and accept a more go-with-the-flow way of living, and that this happens without too much trauma for the kids.
9. Check real-time store inventory
When you're supposed to minimize trips into stores and have to wait in line to get into each store, it's a particular bother to discover that the item that was the underlying reason for your trip isn't available. If we could check real-time store inventory online, that would save all these failed trips, thereby reducing line-waiting time and contacts for everyone.
10. Normalize grey hair
I'm currently rocking my natural colour, greys and all, and I intend to turn 40 with my natural colour as a matter of principle, but the amount of visible grey is getting to the point where I don't feel my overall appearance is sufficient if I keep it natural. However, I have no desire to spend any more time in the hairdresser's chair.
Since so many people have gone so long without getting their hair coloured and skunk stripes abound, I hope greying naturally comes back in style. Unfortunately, I suspect this is another area where the opposite happens as people rejoice in finally getting their hair coloured.
I'm going to let the smart people comment on those important things. Meanwhile, I have some less-important things that I hope come out of the pandemic:
1. Touch screens that can be operated with a stylus
Back in the Palm Pilot days, touch screens could be operated with a stylus or some other object. Since the iPhone came along, the trend on everything from self-checkouts to microwaves has been towards screens that require a human finger, which makes it harder to have a no-contact experience. Even if we don't take hygiene into account, screens that can be operated with either an object or a finger are more versatile than those that absolutely require a human finger. Hopefully we can get that versatility back.
2. Longer hair becoming popular
I find longer hair more attractive. Even when people wear their hair short, I prefer longer short hair. Frodo Baggins rather than Forrest Gump. For purely superficial reasons, I would enjoy if this temporary haircut moratorium leads to longer hair becoming popular. (Unfortunately, I think the opposite will ultimately happen as people rejoice in haircuts.)
3. Baggy pants coming back in fashion
Skinny jeans have been in style for over a decade. It's high time for loose-fitting pants to come back in style! I'm hoping the combination of so many people staying home (and therefore likely wearing comfy pants) and so much bread being baked (which someone has to eat) will lead to societal intolerance of skinny jeans, and a move towards a roomier (and, on my figure, more flattering) silhouette.
4. Handwashing right inside the door
When I walk into my apartment, I know I need to wash my hands. But I also have to take my shoes off, which means touching the shoes with my dirty hands. (Yes, I know some people can remove their shoes without using their hands. I'm not one of them.) If I walk into the kitchen or the bathroom before removing my shoes, I'm tracking outdoor dirt (which might include germs) into the apartment. So far I've been addressing this by wiping down the parts of my shoes that I touch, but it would be convenient to have a sink for hand-washing right inside the door, so you can wash your hands right away, then remove your outerwear with clean hands. I hope home design evolves in this direction.
5. Touchless public washrooms
You know those useless public washroom taps where you need to hold the button down the entire time in order to make water come out? They need to be GONE! This pandemic should be the warning everyone needs to design public washrooms so they can be completely touchless, including opening the door on the way out of the washroom.
6. Homes designed for privacy from other household members
As someone who lives alone, I actually find my open-concept apartment convenient - I can keep watching the TV or the computer screen while I putter around in the kitchen! - but it is not the right design for a multi-person household. People - even people who love each other - need privacy from each other, and I suspect quarantine is driving his point home for many people. I hope home design evolves in a way that gives people visual, auditory and psychological privacy from the other members of their household.
Sometimes in advice column comments, I see people who think your romantic relationship is broken if you need privacy from each other, and/or think it's appalling and materialistic to plan your family and your housing so that each of your kids can have their own room. I'd be very happy if being quarantined with their household makes them change their mind on these questions, although I suspect it will instead make the other members of their household value their privacy even more.
7. Parent-neutral schooling
This is something I've been thinking about long before the pandemic but never got around to blogging about. Schooling seems to be evolving in a direction of requiring more and more parental involvement. For example, I often hear parents talking about their children's homework as though it is absolutely essential for parents to be involved in helping kids with their homework, and it is in no way reasonable to expect kids to be able to do their homework themselves based on what they learned in the classroom.
This creates a situation where students are put at a disadvantage if their parents, for whatever reason, don't meet the school's expectations.
Which is completely bass-ackwards. Schools should be mitigating any disadvantages or lack of advantages brought by parents, not exacerbating them.
The curriculum should be rethought so that students are not at any disadvantage if their parents do not contribute sufficiently. In fact, the curriculum should be even more drastically rethought so that parental contribution cannot put kids at an advantage - kids succeed on their own merits, regardless of what their parents bring to the table.
The switch to learning at home during the pandemic is exacerbating all these issues. Students whose parents aren't able to do what the school expects are at even more of a disadvantage. I'd like to see this result in a switch to a parent-neutral approach. However, I fear that it might do the opposite - especially if we are pushed onto an austerity footing after the pandemic, schools might be pressured to say "the parents can help the students with this - after all, they did so during the pandemic!"
8. More lenient parenting
One pandemic problem is teens sneaking out to hang out with their friends, and therefore breaking quarantine and failing to comply with social distancing.
A contributing factor is that "don't hang out with your friends because global pandemic" is not terribly persuasive in a world where the grownups are always telling you not to hang out with your friends anyway - because they read a parenting article or because they heard your friend use a swear word or because there might be a boy there.
But this time it's different. This time it's really important. And I hope, when this is over, that parents remember that.
In recent years, is has become less and less socially acceptable to leave kids unsupervised, even in their own home. The age at which kids are allowed to be unsupervised seems to be significantly higher than the age at which they can actually handle it.
The pandemic rule is that only one person from each household is supposed to go grocery shopping, which is a problem in cases where there's only one adult in the household - especially since babysitters from outside the household are not an option.
In some cases, depending the kids' ages and personalities, the most reasonable thing to do is to leave the kid home alone while grocery shopping. I hope the pandemic makes that socially acceptable as well, and that it sticks.
Early into the pandemic, I saw a lot of stuff circulating about How To Quarantine Optimally - and, especially, The Optimal Quarantine Schedule For Your Kids - and I found myself thinking how much it would suck to have that imposed on you regardless of your own needs and temperament. I hope the challenges of quarantine make these parents see the folly of optimizing their kids and accept a more go-with-the-flow way of living, and that this happens without too much trauma for the kids.
9. Check real-time store inventory
When you're supposed to minimize trips into stores and have to wait in line to get into each store, it's a particular bother to discover that the item that was the underlying reason for your trip isn't available. If we could check real-time store inventory online, that would save all these failed trips, thereby reducing line-waiting time and contacts for everyone.
10. Normalize grey hair
I'm currently rocking my natural colour, greys and all, and I intend to turn 40 with my natural colour as a matter of principle, but the amount of visible grey is getting to the point where I don't feel my overall appearance is sufficient if I keep it natural. However, I have no desire to spend any more time in the hairdresser's chair.
Since so many people have gone so long without getting their hair coloured and skunk stripes abound, I hope greying naturally comes back in style. Unfortunately, I suspect this is another area where the opposite happens as people rejoice in finally getting their hair coloured.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Things They Should Invent: pandemic shopping edition
1. Glassdoor for the pandemic
With some jurisdictions permitting businesses to reopen, I wonder whether the employees of those businesses feel safe going back to work, or if they have no choice.
I do need to buy more things as the pandemic stretches on (so many things, ranging from my kettle to my mesh laundry bag, have broken somehow!), but if I have the option, I'd rather buy from somewhere that respects their employees' health and safety.
I'd very much like to have a single centralized website where workers post information about how well their employer actually is keeping them safe, so customers can make informed decisions about where to spend their money.
I mean, they could do this on Glassdoor too, but I haven't seen it yet for the businesses I've searched for.
2. Shopping search engine for boycotters
There's a lot in the news lately about how Amazon is making tons of money from the pandemic, but has horrible working conditions.
I've found that if I search the internet for a product description without having a specific brand or source in mind (for example, light cotton pyjamas or 4-cup coffee filters), I get results primarily from Amazon, and to a lesser extent from Walmart (which also has bad working conditions). If I exclude Amazon from the results, I most often get wholesalers, retailers from other countries, and other such unsuitable sources.
This happens even when I use search engines other than Google. It's way harder than it should be to find an ethical place to buy things when you don't already know where to buy them!
As I've mentioned many times before for many other reasons, I'd very much like to have a single comprehensive search engine of all online shopping. But I'd also like to have it set up to help people boycott.
You could boycott a specific retailer by excluding them from your search, but it would be even more helpful to be able to boycott by cause. For example, search for light cotton pyjamas and exclude sources with bad working conditions.
"But what if they all have bad working conditions?" Then you've done everything you can and don't have to knock yourself out looking for the ethical source that doesn't exist.
Of course, the complexity is that this would only work if they could index literally all retailers.
With some jurisdictions permitting businesses to reopen, I wonder whether the employees of those businesses feel safe going back to work, or if they have no choice.
I do need to buy more things as the pandemic stretches on (so many things, ranging from my kettle to my mesh laundry bag, have broken somehow!), but if I have the option, I'd rather buy from somewhere that respects their employees' health and safety.
I'd very much like to have a single centralized website where workers post information about how well their employer actually is keeping them safe, so customers can make informed decisions about where to spend their money.
I mean, they could do this on Glassdoor too, but I haven't seen it yet for the businesses I've searched for.
2. Shopping search engine for boycotters
There's a lot in the news lately about how Amazon is making tons of money from the pandemic, but has horrible working conditions.
I've found that if I search the internet for a product description without having a specific brand or source in mind (for example, light cotton pyjamas or 4-cup coffee filters), I get results primarily from Amazon, and to a lesser extent from Walmart (which also has bad working conditions). If I exclude Amazon from the results, I most often get wholesalers, retailers from other countries, and other such unsuitable sources.
This happens even when I use search engines other than Google. It's way harder than it should be to find an ethical place to buy things when you don't already know where to buy them!
As I've mentioned many times before for many other reasons, I'd very much like to have a single comprehensive search engine of all online shopping. But I'd also like to have it set up to help people boycott.
You could boycott a specific retailer by excluding them from your search, but it would be even more helpful to be able to boycott by cause. For example, search for light cotton pyjamas and exclude sources with bad working conditions.
"But what if they all have bad working conditions?" Then you've done everything you can and don't have to knock yourself out looking for the ethical source that doesn't exist.
Of course, the complexity is that this would only work if they could index literally all retailers.
Monday, May 11, 2020
Things They Should Invent: tell everyone what information contact tracers need
In this pandemic, we're hearing a lot about contact tracing. We're hearing a lot about how it's a time-intensive and labour-intensive task.
We're hearing about the possibility of apps to help, but, in addition to the privacy issues, those also have a strong risk of false positives (e.g., people in different apartments in the same building) and false negatives (e.g., if one or more parties don't have a phone on their person with the app installed and GPS enabled that is turned on and has a signal at the moment of contact.) So a time-intensive and labour-intensive task still remains.
They could make this easier by telling the public exactly what information the contact tracers will need, so people can keep track if they choose to do so.
For example, with contact tracing in mind, I'm making all my purchases on the same credit card and using my loyalty cards on every transaction. This means that I can pull up my credit card account and tell you at a glance the last time I was in a particular store, and the store also has a record.
On days when I have to talk to the concierge, I make a note of which concierge was on duty and what day I talked to them, in case one of us is later found to have COVID.
But is this the information that contact tracers would need? Or is irrelevant? Is there other information they would need that it hasn't occurred to me to collect? Should I be keeping track of who got in the elevator with me on which day? Should I be keeping track of what streets I walked down on which date and time?
I have no idea! I'm not trained in public health!
They might be able to make the task of contact tracing easier by circulating information about what the contact tracers would need to know. Then anyone who is inclined to do so can keep their own records.
And, if public health ever calls you for contact tracing, you'll be able to give them a list of the specifics they're looking for, rather than having to go through a painstaking interview full of questions you didn't even know would be on the test.
This might also help reinforce in the public consciousness exactly what kinds of contacts we need to be avoiding. If we're told "Keep track of who gets in the elevator with you for contact tracing purposes", that reinforces the idea that getting in the elevator with someone outside your household is a potential for transmission (if it is in fact a potential for transmission - I don't actually know), and maybe more people will wait for the next elevator.
We're hearing about the possibility of apps to help, but, in addition to the privacy issues, those also have a strong risk of false positives (e.g., people in different apartments in the same building) and false negatives (e.g., if one or more parties don't have a phone on their person with the app installed and GPS enabled that is turned on and has a signal at the moment of contact.) So a time-intensive and labour-intensive task still remains.
They could make this easier by telling the public exactly what information the contact tracers will need, so people can keep track if they choose to do so.
For example, with contact tracing in mind, I'm making all my purchases on the same credit card and using my loyalty cards on every transaction. This means that I can pull up my credit card account and tell you at a glance the last time I was in a particular store, and the store also has a record.
On days when I have to talk to the concierge, I make a note of which concierge was on duty and what day I talked to them, in case one of us is later found to have COVID.
But is this the information that contact tracers would need? Or is irrelevant? Is there other information they would need that it hasn't occurred to me to collect? Should I be keeping track of who got in the elevator with me on which day? Should I be keeping track of what streets I walked down on which date and time?
I have no idea! I'm not trained in public health!
They might be able to make the task of contact tracing easier by circulating information about what the contact tracers would need to know. Then anyone who is inclined to do so can keep their own records.
And, if public health ever calls you for contact tracing, you'll be able to give them a list of the specifics they're looking for, rather than having to go through a painstaking interview full of questions you didn't even know would be on the test.
This might also help reinforce in the public consciousness exactly what kinds of contacts we need to be avoiding. If we're told "Keep track of who gets in the elevator with you for contact tracing purposes", that reinforces the idea that getting in the elevator with someone outside your household is a potential for transmission (if it is in fact a potential for transmission - I don't actually know), and maybe more people will wait for the next elevator.
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