Google Docs Is Getting Better

Back in the before times, a couple of years before I retired, management at the TSX decided to change the office systems from SharePoint and Microsoft Office to Google Workspace. I fought hard and managed to convince the PTB that I really did need Word and Adobe FrameMaker to do my job, but I still had to use Docs and Sheets for some of my work. 

Since then, I've gradually transitioned most of my personal writing and home accounting to Google Docs and Sheets. I actually prefer Sheets to Excel, mostly because it has far better dark mode support than Excel, and is generally easier to use. As for Docs, I now use it for the few documents I need to create and have even used it to edit a friend's book. I'll probably not renew my Microsoft 365 subscription when it comes up for renewal next year. 

In the eight years since I left the TSX, Google has gradually added features to Docs. Jeremy Caplan at Wonder Tools has published an article listing his 20 favourite Google Docs features. Most were not available when I was at the TSX some duplicate features available in Word. Some require Gemini, which might be a problem in some organizations. 

Here are a few from his list. 

• Match a prior doc's format. This might be easier for some people to use than creating a document from a template.
• Add a quick link to any text. May be easier than Word's linking feature. 
• Create typing shortcuts. Similar to Word's Autotext but probably easier to use.
• Use markdown for formatting. Developers will love this.
• Insert interactive elements. Similar to Word's fields or Quick Parks.

There's more, like tables of contents and sections, which Docs calls tabs. I don't see any support for indexing though, which is something that I needed for some larger documents. 

I think it's clear that Docs is now a suitable tool for many technical writers. Those who are working with large documents, need complex print formats,  or features like footnotes/endnotes or indexes, will probably want to stick to more established tools like Word or FrameMaker. 

My Home Town in the Times

My home town of Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario has been featured in an article (gift link) in the New York Times. The subject is, of course, the ongoing tariff war between the US and Canada, and how it's affecting the Sault (or just Soo, if you're local). It's not affecting it in a good way. 

To cite just one example:

More than half of the steel produced in Sault Ste. Marie used to be shipped to the United States, and the 50 percent tariffs imposed by the Trump administration have devastated the company’s finances.

In March, Algoma Steel, one of only three major Canada-based steel producers, abruptly laid off 1,000 workers it had planned to phase out over two or more years through retirements and reassignments.

Mr. Shoemaker believes the real toll could reach 3,000 jobs, once the layoffs’ full impact makes its way through the city’s broader economy. And things are not getting better soon.

This makes me sad. Growing up in the Soo, my family and friends never paid much thought to the border. My eye doctor was across the river in Soo, Michigan. I had an exhibit in a science fair at Lake Superior State University. My parents would gas up the car over there and come back with cheap bread and I'd bring back Estes model rocket engines (you couldn't buy them in Canada). In later years, when I was visiting family, we'd go over the bridge to the casino to lose money and see a concert. 

But for most people, that's now changed. Traffic across the bridge dropped by 25 percent last year and is staying down. If I'll be going across the river to visit family, I'll leave my phone at home. But that's the only way I'll be visiting the US as long as Trump or the Republicans are in power. 

Photo of the Week - September 13, 2026

This week's photo is from my walk this morning along Frenchman's Bay, which is a major bird habitat. Today there were over a dozen swans in the bay, but most were out too far to make a good picture. But this one was closer. Taken with the 5x zoom on my Pixel 8 Pro. 

Swan on the bay

Saturday Sounds - Still Inside - The Tony Rice Unit

Today's musical treat is an album that I've been trying to find for several years, Still Inside by The Tony Rice Unit. Although best known as a bluegrass musician, he had a jazzier side, which is in full bloom on Still Inside. AFAIK the album, originally release in 1981, has never had a CD release, but it has shown up as a playlist on YouTube Music. Some of the tracks appeared later on his album, Devlin. 

From Wikipedia:

Following that with the Tony Rice Unit, he pursued experimental "spacegrass" music on the Mar West, Still Inside, and Backwaters albums. Members of the Unit included Jimmy Gaudreau (mandolin), Wyatt Rice (guitar), Ronnie Simpkins (bass), John Reischman (mandolin), and Rickie Simpkins (fiddle).

I'm not sure I've head the term "spacegrass" before, but it seems appropriate. It's jazzy, improvisational acoustic music with bluegrass elements, much like that played by David Grisman and Jerry Garcia in the 80s and 90s. I love every note of Still Inside and I hope you will too. 

Timothy Snyder on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11

Timothy Snyder has posted another thoughtful essay, written from Ukraine on the eve of the 25th anniversary of 9/11. It's about our response to terrorism, in general and that attack specifically, what it lead to, and how we can do better.

I was particularly struck by this passage from near the beginning of the essay.

When spectacular terrorism comes, you have to think even as you suffer. Your suffering, though desired by those who caused it, is not the terrorists’ ultimate aim. They push you into a frame of mind so that you then hurt yourself even more. History is full of acts of terror.

The real question, I told the students, is what you do next.

You cannot prevent every terrible thing from happening. But your freedom begins with your response.

Sadly, Americans in power responded as the terrorists would have wanted; indeed, we exceeded their expectations, making the world much worse for ourselves and everyone else.

Americans let the terrorists set the terms: their violence and our violence. We had an opportunity to see 9/11 more deeply, and to react in a way that would have created a safer world for generations to come. And we did not take that opportunity.

The basic American policy response to 9/11 should have been to liberate ourselves from fossil fuels. Without our dependence on oil, we would never have been entangled in the Middle East in the first place. Most of the 9/11 terrorists were Saudis, citizens of an oil kingdom that we helped to build, our “ally.” The right reaction in September 2001 -- as I wrote to a friend in the White House -- was to fund fusion and other clean energy sources. Had we done so, we could have headed off global warming, prevented further Middle East wars -- and indeed prevented the rise of Vladimir Putin’s hydrocarbon oligarchy and his invasions of Ukraine.

Today we face the reality of rising oceans, vast fires, and resource conflicts. We were given a chance to halt all of that.

But we did not take it. 

He goes on at length to discuss the distortions to our political system and foreign policy caused by our reliance on fossil fuels, the rise of Homeland Security and the systems that promise security but don't provide it, links all of that to Putin and the invasion of Ukraine, and the possibility of another large scale attack and what our response should be. 

Tying it all back to 9/11, he finishes by saying:

Commemoration is a singular chance to reflect. Americans in power will try to use this anniversary to that everything happened exactly as it had to, and that we should bow our heads rather than use them.

We went along twenty-five years ago. We should not do so again. Thinking about the last quarter century, we can choose to think differently.

And what we failed to do then we can do now. We can think of our security as part of our freedom, as our education and our health and ability to realize our best selves. We can turn from sources of energy that kill to sources of power that enliven. We can love our country but recognize that our only homeland is a common one, the earth itself.

Be Careful With Word's New Linking Feature

Microsoft has added a new feature to Word that lets you share a link to any paragraph in a document. It sounds like it could be handy; you could, for example, email someone with a link to something in a document that you need them to review. But be careful. Office Watch points out that there are some gotchas. 

For one, the document has to be stored on a SharePoint server or on OneDrive. Even more concerning, the default behaviour of the link allows the recipient to edit the document. 

The article goes into a lot of detail about how the linking feature works,  including what you can use as an alternative. If your organization uses Word with SharePoint, it's worth looking into, but be aware of the risks. 

How Long Does It Take?

Over the last couple of weeks, I've been reading a series of posts by Dean Blundell, who is travelling through Germany with his son. Why? 

Steve Schmidt, our two sons and I just spent eleven days tracing the route the US Army took through Bavaria in the spring of 1945, asking one question at every stop: how long does it take to get your country back once you hand it to a strongman? The answer is lifetimes.

Update: Dean has posted a summary article that covers all of the articles with links back to the original full posts. Or you can use the links below.

Here are links to the posts so you don't have to wade through Substack's confusing interface.

• Day One: Marienplatz and the Hofbräuhaus. HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE. I Brought My Son to the Bar Where Fascism Was Born to Find Out.
• Day Two: The NS-Dokumentationszentrum. My Gen Z Son Just Summed Up America’s Collapse in 11 Words.
• Day Three: Dachau to Tegernsee. Dachau Concentration Camp For ‘Undesirables.’ Sound Familiar?
• Day Four: Obersalzberg and the Eagle’s Nest. The View From Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest

There's one more part to the series in which he asks a related question:  What do you do with the buildings?

Trump Is Building Hitler’s Arch. The Next President Has To Blow It All Up. Period. Stop. We spent 11 days walking Hitler’s Germany with our sons. Here’s what the Allies did to his monuments, and why Trump’s arch, ballroom and name all have to come down. 

These posts are the best writing I've seen from Blundell. They should be required reading in every civics class in the United States (and Canada too, for that matter).