New:
1. No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail our Private Needs by Lezlie Lowe
Reread:
1. Survivor in Death
New:
1. No Place to Go: How Public Toilets Fail our Private Needs by Lezlie Lowe
Reread:
1. Survivor in Death
Latest pandemic malfunction: my 18-year-old TV finally gave up the ghost.
I bought a new TV easily enough, but it's a bit too big for my existing TV stand. So I'm shopping for some kind of TV stand or table or cart or something to put it on.
Problem: the products that catch my eye keep being heavier than I can lift.
Under normal circumstances this isn't so much of a problem. Normally, we can have furniture delivered. Normally, it's not a huge imposition to ask someone to pop by and help me move or assemble something.
But during a global pandemic, this isn't an option. My building's pandemic rules prohibit delivery people from coming up to apartments, instead telling them to leave the deliveries at the concierge desk and residents will bring them up. My building's pandemic rules also prohibit visitors, and public health rules are also telling me not to have contact with other households. (Sometimes public health rules let single people bubble with another household, but there are zero people in my life whose risk factors permit visiting me and aren't already bubbled with another household.) So during the pandemic, I'm limited to what I can lift myself and assemble myself.
Online shopping sites could help me with this by letting me filter products by weight, so I only see those that are light enough for me to bring up to my apartment myself and assemble myself.
The websites already have this information - it tends to be listed right under dimensions.
The websites already let you filter by various variables, such as price and size. I can already tell the website "show me all the TVs under 35 inches", so why not "show me all the TV stands under 40 pounds"?
Building on this, they really should let you filter by any characteristic that is listed on the site. Country manufactured, inseam length, number of USB ports, anything. People have all kinds of oddly specific requirements, so, especially in this pandemic era where more shopping is being done online than ever before, why not let us pinpoint exactly what we need?
During the pandemic, I've been reading the epaper versions of the my newspapers rather than getting my usual home delivery, and I've noticed an annoyance: links to further information on the Toronto Star site are provided as a QR code, without a corresponding URL provided.
This is an annoyance by itself in the print version, because it only gives you the option of opening the link on a mobile device, even if you'd prefer to read on a computer.
But it's all the more annoying in the epaper version, because epaper readers are already reading on their preferred device for reading a newspaper electronically! If I'm reading on my computer like I usually do, I could, theoretically, grab my phone and scan the QR code. But what if I was already reading on my phone? Surely there are many households that don't have extra mobile devices just sitting around unused for every time you want to click a link!
If the Star would simply print URLs next to (or instead of) QR codes, everyone could access the links by the means most convenient to them, thereby maximizing the number of eyeballs on the Star's website. Using the QR code alone is inconvenient to many and impenetrable to some. There's no reason not to continue printing URLs, like they have since the advent of URLs.
One of the delights of childhood is jumping on the bed.
But you can't jump on the bed as an adult, because you'll break the bed.
This is a marketing opportunity!
Someone should invent beds that are sturdy enough for adults to jump on! Bonus points for them being sturdy enough for two or more adults to jump on! Extra bonus points for those two or more adults being in the 80th percentile of weight! Super duper bonus points for somehow working out a way to do this without disturbing the people in the apartment downstairs!
I have no idea how to figure out what kind of bed to buy, and I would totally buy a bed I could jump on solely on the basis that I can jump on it.
I'm sure there would also be a market among people whose bedroom activities are particularly athletic, and an additional market among people who want to give the impression that their bedroom activities are particularly athletic.
New:
1. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if your Life Depended on It by Chris Voss with Tahl Raz
2. Feeding My Mother: Comfort and Laughter in the Kitchen as My Mom Lives with Memory Loss by Jann Arden
Reread:
1. Divided in Death
If I were to assemble the elements of the current situation into a conspiracy theory, that theory would be that people in positions of power were contributing to the spread of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and/or not working to debunk these theories to create conditions where those in positions of power would have to be at the front of the line for any vaccine roll-out in order to set an example.
If vaccine reluctance wasn't a thing, there would be no reason to vaccinate politicians and public figures ahead of front-line workers, health workers, food workers, etc. But now that vaccine reluctance is a thing, politicians and public figures can very publicly go straight to the front of the vaccine queue, be photographed getting their vaccine, and be lauded for setting a good example.
I hadn't been planning on making a resolution, but a simple and useful one came to me a couple of weeks ago:
While the coffee brews, I'll do something I've been procrastinating.
Normally, while the coffee is brewing, I stare blankly at the internet doing nothing - after all, I can't do anything productive when I haven't had my coffee yet!
So now, instead of doing nothing, I'll do something I've been procrastinating. Something small, because it doesn't take that long for coffee to brew. Empty the dishwasher. Break down a cardboard box for recycling. Make an online purchase.
Since it doesn't take very long for coffee to brew, I might not finish my task. I might just empty one rack of the dishwasher, or just manage to remove the tape from the box, or just add one item to my cart. That's okay. I can stop when the coffee is ready. Or I can keep up the momentum, whatever feels right in the moment.
This works well for me for several reasons:
1. I respond well to "sprints" - working full-out at a task until some external phenomenon interrupts me. (Yes, I've heard of the pomodoro method. No, it hasn't solved all my life problems.) Coffee brewing time is the perfect length for a sprint.
2. This doesn't require any additional time commitment. Not even the infamous "just 15 minutes a day!" Coffee brewing time was previously unused dead time, and I've found a way to make use of it.
3. It helps me address the things that fall through the cracks in my system. Some things pile up because there isn't a place for them in my system (which I never managed to figure out how to reboot), or because there isn't enough room for them in my system. This lets me make progress on those things without having to figure out how to revamp the system, or having to take the emotional risk of completely disregarding the system.
4. There are no specific "shoulds" or tacit prerequisites on my "to do while the coffee brews" list. Part of the problem with my system is I've inadvertently imposed prerequisites on myself. I keep falling into a trap of "I can't do the thing that really needs doing because the system dictates that I have to do other things first!" (Unfortunately, removing prerequisites isn't sufficient to fix the system and sometimes would bring its own problems.) But while the coffee brews, anything that needs doing meets the requirements.
I've been doing this for a few weeks already, and have made a noticeable dent in my tangible and mental to-do piles. (If you could see my piles, you'd be like "That's an after picture???" and the answer is yes, it is.) We'll see if it's enough to affect my quality of life in the long run.
Recently tweeted into my feed: Courtney Love says that wealthy people have had access to home COVID tests for months.
The article that was tweeted into my feed and others I've been able to google up basically reiterate the content of Courtney Love's original instagram post.
But there a lot of questions here that some mild investigative journalism should be able to answer - or, at least, pinpoint the non-answers.
Who manufactures these tests? Who sells them? Are they out of reach to the general public because of price? Or because the test company will only sell to famous people? Or some other reason? How did Courtney Love and others like her find out about them in the first place? When Courtney Love wants to buy a COVID test, exactly what steps does she take? What would happen if a regular person who isn't rich and famous took those exact same steps? If someone asked Courtney Love where exactly she gets these tests from, what would her answer be? Would she decline to answer because they'd deny her tests if she leaked? Or for some other reason? Is manufacturing capacity limited? If so, what would it take to scale up?
Courtney Love's post flagged a problem, but didn't pinpoint what exactly the problem is. It could be anything from the utterly banal "home COVID tests cannot be produced at a sustainable price point" to the utterly terrifying "some malicious actor is trying to make sure only the rich and famous survive COVID by concealing the existence of convenient tests from the rest of us".
The job of journalism is to tell people what exactly the underlying problem here is, not just to transcribe Courtney Love's instagram posts. With a bit of investigative journalism, this would be a very interesting and probably very important story. But without the investigation, it's nothing but a celebrity gossip feed.
A challenge with video chat is eye contact. We're inclined to either look at our interlocutor's eyes on screen, or to look at ourselves on screen. This means we aren't looking at the camera, and therefore appear shifty and weird to our interlocutors.
Proposed solution: a cover for the webcam made of a one-way mirror. In other words, the webcam can see you, but you see the mirror. If you make eye contact with yourself in the mirror, you're looking directly at the camera, so it looks to your interlocutor like you're making eye contact with them.
This would also make it easier to modulate your facial expression. I know that if I leave my facial expression unmonitored during a video chat, I tend to look like I'm sneering. (Really, my lips are just asymmetrical). But if I monitor my facial expression on the screen, I'm not looking at the camera and therefore look like I'm not paying attention. A mirror over the camera would make it easier to perform up to expectations.
I turn 40 today!
I think I am in a good place in life.
- Apart from the fact that I'm not married, I've done literally everything I imagined doing with my life. I have no bucket list.
- I'm weathering the pandemic well, and sustainably. I was sprinting at first and had to dial it back to a marathon pace, but I can keep this up long-term if necessary.
- So many of the life decisions I made when I was younger - so many of the life decisions people tried to dissuade me from! - have paid off during the pandemic. Obviously luck and privilege also contributed strongly to my coming through the pandemic well, but it's remarkable to me how basically every life decision people tried to dissuade me from paid off during this pandemic.
- My job comes easily to me. It's harder after my head injury, but still doesn't meet the criteria of objectively hard.
- Based on information to date, buying my condo was the right decision.
- My body continues to do what I need it to as well as it ever has. Any issues are head-injury-related, not aging-related. (Of course, I'd also love for the head injury to no longer be a factor.)
- I have social capital, at least in the circles I move in. At work, with family and friends, in the community, I can say "I think we should do X" or "No, I won't be doing Y", and I'm heard and respected. I can also say "I don't know how this works, what do I do?" or "I'm frightened and confused" or "I can't lift this", and people help. (Again, privilege is certainly a factor, but it didn't work this way for me when I was younger.) In non-pandemic times, people I know will let me hold their baby, and even strangers will let me pet their dog.
- I've been following a lot of younger people on Twitter, and it makes me feel confident about the future and quite content to step aside and let the youth lead. They tend to be more radical than people I encounter in the natural course of my life (most of whom are my age or older), and I feel good about this. I like the idea of a world where people like me are dated and old-school and things are growing and evolving beyond what we could even imagine when we were visiting geocities sites with our dial-up modems.
- I've recently stumbled into a new fandom (Good Omens!) and it's really good for me. I'm going through the same kind of growth and evolution as when I fell into Eddie Izzard fandom 13 years ago, and I'm looking forward to seeing who I become when I emerge on the other side.
My birthday horoscopes ceased having any remotely accurate interpretation with my head injury, but I'm still recording them here for my own reference.
Artistic activities must be giving every chance to thrive over the coming year, even if it means having to cut back on work and getting by on less financially. You’ve been promising to create something amazing for as long as you can remember, so get to it!
Profound, patient and prepared, you are in it for the long haul. A project you passionately believe in begins and succeeds brilliantly in 2022. Your strongly controlled emotions will find an outlet this year. If single, you tend to be solitary, but you do fall in love this year, in May. If attached, your relationship adds much richness to your life. GEMINI is light and almost ethereal compared to you.
As an aside, my horoscopes promise me love every year and it never materializes. This year's Globe & Mail horoscope is the first one I can remember that didn't promise me love.
(Also, absolutely everyone in the world is light and almost ethereal compared to me, and I'm not sure why that's in my horoscope.)
New:
1. Queen of the World by Robert Hardman
Reread:
1. Remember When
I was particularly disappointed to see that the City of Toronto isn't extending sidewalk snow clearing to areas of the city that don't yet receive this service, because that's a giant step in exactly the wrong direction. In a pandemic year we need even more than sidewalk snow clearing. To maintain physical distancing, we need areas around the sidewalk, like curb lanes and boulevards and the edges of lawns, to be cleared as well.
Pedestrian physical distancing isn't just a question of two "lanes" that need to be six feet apart. Faster walkers also need to pass slower walkers. Some people are walking dogs or herding children. Some people insist on walking two or three abreast. Some people are carrying bulky grocery bags. People with wheelchairs or walkers or fragile ankles need to be able to avoid walking on the curb cut.
To physically distance through all these variables -
especially on older residential streets with narrow sidewalks - we need
to use not just the sidewalk, but also lawns and curb lanes. The
sidewalk on my own street is just barely six feet wide, so I'm always
stepping off the sidewalk onto the street, or onto a lawn or driveway, so I can stay six feet away from other people. I probably step off into a curb lane or onto a lawn about three to five times in a typical block of walking.
And in snowy weather, curb lanes and lawns aren't available because they're covered in snow. The curb lanes are full of snow plow windrows, and lawns are, at a minimum, unshovelled, and, more often, covered in snow banks from sidewalk snow clearing.
What the City of Toronto needs to do is clear not just sidewalks, but also curb lanes and at least 3 feet of lawns that are adjacent to narrow sidewalks. (Q: Won't that damage the lawns? A: The City can replant the lawns in the spring. Lives are more important than lawns.) They need to truck away windrows that end up in the curb lane, and go around making sure sewer grates are clear so gutters don't fill up with water.
In the Old City of Toronto - the portion of the amalgamated city where sidewalks aren't cleared - all these sidewalk-related needs and pandemic-related needs are exacerbated. There is higher population density, more people walking as a primary form of transportation, and more people who don't have cars. Older sidewalks tend to be narrower, buildings tend to be closer to the sidewalk, and the curb lane tends to be right next to the sidewalk (rather than there being a boulevard between the sidewalk and the curb lane). Grocery stores and other necessities are more likely to be within walking distance, so more people are carrying bulky packages and rolling bundle buggies. More streets have businesses with patios and lineups and those signs that they put out on the sidewalk.
In short, there are more people trying to physically distance in less space as the second wave of COVID balloons around us. The City needs to help its residents stay safe by extending snow clearing not just to all sidewalks, but to the areas around the sidewalks.
In the course of ordinary, in-store, non-pandemic grocery shopping, we often pick up items off the shelf and read the labels.
During the pandemic, we aren't supposed to be handling items we don't buy. Also during the pandemic, many people are shopping online (either for delivery or for in-store pickup), and (at least according to the marketing emails I'm being bombarded with) grocery store chains seem to be encouraging this.
One thing grocery chains could do to make online shopping easier and to discourage people from handling things in store is for store websites to have extremely robust searching and sorting by ingredients and/or nutritional information.
They often have ingredients and nutritional information that you can click on for individual products, but searchable and sortable would be far more convenient and user-friendly.
Examples:
- Show me all products from the "salad dressing" category sorted in ascending order of sugar content, so I can choose the lowest sugar salad dressing that meets my tastes.
- Let me use the Boolean NOT function to exclude all products that contain my allergens.
This information is already in grocery stores' computers - you can see it when you look up specific products on their website. People already know how to program computers to do things like sorting and boolean search.
If they could let us do this on store website, it would improve uptake of online shopping and reducing handling of items in-store, and may also introduce consumers to new products that meet their needs better than what they were buying before. A win for everyone!
Lately I've been using Gold Bond Ultimate Healing Hand Cream, and it seems to do the job. I'm moisturizing my hands exactly the way I was before the pandemic, and they feel comparable to their pre-pandemic state, with no cracking or pain.
My dyshidrotic eczema is still present, but under control, but which I mean it's in the calmest and least itchy state it can be in while still existing.
I haven't tried every hand cream out there so I don't know if this is the best one, but my hands feel like there's no pandemic, and that's not nothing.