The Flies Have Conquered the Flypaper
Steinbeck's The Moon is Down was first published in 1942, before he was sent off to fight. As a journalist, he enlisted in order to be in the thick of…
Marie Snyder
Still Not at the Finish Line
Jon Douglas, who wrote In It for the Long Haul, shared a series of papers that were discussed at the Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) that just wrapped…
Never Again?
All this tariff talk is provoking a recession, which seems to be a feature, not a bug. As the economy falls, companies go bankrupt and are cheap to take over…
Over Five Years of Covid
David Wallace-Wells has a piece in the New York Times about hitting the five-year mark with Covid (although it started in 2019, and the first case in the US was…
On Weaponizing Empathy
Lots of people struggle with boundaries; luckily there are many little sayings along the lines of "not my circus, not my monkey" that help people remember not to get worked…
Accepting Difference
I recently watched the lovely film, A Real Pain, about two cousins (played by Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin) who travel to Poland to visit their departed grandmother’s home. In…
Neither Lazy nor Stupid, but Unfortunately Conned
Well, this sucks. At times like this, like when Mike Harris got in a second time, I think of Rousseau's bit, "When the opinion that is contrary to my own…
Democracy Requires Participation
Just 18% of registered voters was enough to give Ford a majority back in June 2022 because so many people stayed home. The polls predict another Con win, but screw…
Canadian Broadcasting In Crisis
Does saying "Jeeeezus" and "oh my God" over and over as I scroll through the news count as praying? It's not just all the bizarre appointments in the US that…
Why Is Everyone Suddenly Sick??
Some people are working hard to believe this level of illness, getting sick several times each year, has always been the case. The latest bizarre reason I've heard for all…
Improving Indoor Air Quality
Literally years ago, as a trustee around February of 2023, I noticed that the CO2 monitor testing proposal that was ratified had a sneaky line about not beginning the test…
What a Failing Democracy Looks Like
Rachel Gilmore lived in Tunisia just before the fall of their democracy, and has important markers for us to notice: "The canary in the coal mine for a failing democracy…
Like Al Capone in a Syphilitic Period Trying to Do a Shakedown
A couple videos not to be missed:Charlie Angus on Trump - full transcript below:Angus: "What President Trump also said is that the tariffs will not come off until we give…
Staying Informed and Sane
Who I'm reading to get through this mess (among many others):#1 - Timothy SnyderYesterday's piece, "The Logic of Destruction," should be read in full, but here are some important bits:"The…
The Art of Life
Here's a nice distraction from our nutty lives: I watched this lovely film about Michael Behrens, a math prodigy who studied at MIT, then left it all at 29. Now…
Norms are for Breaking
Anonymous is urging me to move on away from precautions and towards prior norms of society in a string of comments on a previous post. I had too much to…
Still with the Immunity Debt Claims?
Two competing claims were made in the past few days on whether Long Covid should be a concern for parents of children or if children actually develop greater immunity from…
We’re Not Invincible
If an attractive person flirted with you, but then mentioned, just by the way, "I've been sexually active with someone with chlamydia, but don't worry because I don't have any…
Anomy: A Disturbance of the Collective Order
A few articles have come out recently concerned with the trajectory we're taking, particularly choices being made by young adults. But we need to acknowledge the upheaval we're currently living…
One-Liner Film Reviews for 2024
Most years on New Year's Day I try to remember everything I watched over the year for a round-up, but typically forget most of them. This year I kept track!!…