Featured Links - July 22, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Sunset along the 401

• Five days, 65 km, 86,000 steps — and one restless city: I walked all the way across Toronto. This is what I saw (archive link). I am waiting for the Eglinton Crosstown to open and plan to ride it across Toronto, perhaps with stops at some of the stations on the underground part of the line. 
• A Juicy Chronicle of the Fat Decades at Condé Nast (gift link). Empire of the Elite, by Michael M. Grynbaum, is a story of (mostly) insider-outsiders who helmed the glossiest American magazines in their heyday." I miss magazines and browsing the racks in stores like Lichtman's, now sadly defunct. 
• Why Did the Rich Pull Away from the Rest? 'This is Part I of Stone Center Senior Scholar Paul Krugman’s series “Understanding Inequality,” which originally appeared on his Substack newsletter.' This is an important series of articles and worth the time to read.
• Published Via Desktop. 'A list of programs from the all-too-brief golden era of desktop publishing that “didn’t make it.” The GUI’s killer app didn’t slay forever.' Out of the 10 programs listed in the article, I used two: Aldus PageMaker and Venture Publisher. 
• The Peptide Craze. "The Surge in Use of Off-Label and Non-FDA Approved Peptides." TANSTAAFL. 
• Terry Gilliam Reflects On ‘Brazil’ As Film Celebrates 40th Anniversary & The Challenges Of Getting Movies Made Today: “I Really Don’t Want Any More Fights” I really must rewatch Brazil; it's one of my favourite movies. 
• Alberta’s Book Ban Is a Blatant Act of Cultural Vandalism. "The push to sanitize school collections erases what literature is for: knowledge, discovery, the freedom to think." I am sad to see this happening in Canada. 
• The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations. "I would like to address the recent slander circulating on social media, in editorial Slack channels, and in the margins of otherwise decent Substack newsletters. Specifically, the baseless, libelous accusation that my usage is a telltale sign of artificial intelligence."
• Radical New Theory Rewrites the Story of the Earliest Universe. "A new theory promises to simplify our approach to the universe's earliest moments, but some cosmologists say further mathematical scrutiny is warranted." Simplification is good. 

Featured Links - June 30, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

This week's post is shorter than usual. We have a kitchen reno coming up in a week and I'm pretty busy right now. And there's a yard and garden to take care of. So posts here are going to be shorter and/or sparser than usual for a while.

Birds in the hydro marsh

• Are these the world’s oldest rocks? Fresh data confirm contested claim. "Scientists debate age of ancient Canadian crust as Inuit leaders work to preserve the location."
• Photographer Captures the Terrifying Things Humans Have Done to the Planet.  "Photographer Edward Burtynsky has dedicated his life’s work to documenting the impact humans have on the planet, producing stunning photographs that evoke both awe and concern. This week has marked the start of a career-spanning exhibit of Burtynsky’s work at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York." I have seen several exhibitions of Burtynsky's photographs and if you can get to see this show in person, do so, as they have much more impact in a gallery setting.
• Could the Semicolon Die Out? Recent Analysis Finds a Decline in Its Usage in British Literature and Confusion Among U.K. Students. "Not only are semicolons evidently becoming more rare, but young people are less aware of how to use them, according to a survey."
• Why We Need Horror Authors in the Fight For the Freedom to Read. "Please note: this speech was directed at Horror authors, but I hope all of my readers use it as a template to speak to their community members about the importance of speaking out for the freedom to read and use the "how-to" component in the speech to give them the tools they need to take action."
• The Concorde-and-Caviar Era of Condé Nast, When Magazines Ruled the Earth. "Opulent days are over at Vogue, Vanity Fair and other once-powerful glossies. Anna Wintour is giving up (some) control. Now that everyone’s a gatekeeper, why do we keep recreating their status-obsessed world?"

Featured Links - March 24, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

The of winter's snow (I hope)

• American Democracy is not in Decline, it's Dead. "We need to get beyond our own disbelief at how quickly the Trump regime has dismantled the vestiges of a liberal democratic order and implemented an authoritarian regime. We need to recognize reality for what it is. It is no longer appropriate to speak of the United States as a democracy under assault from within, or in decline. The United States is no longer a democracy."
• How Should We Think About the Economics of AI? A conversation between economists Erik Brynjolfsson and Paul Krugman. This is quite interesting. 
• What to know about the bird flu outbreak in wild birds and what it means for backyard bird feeders. "Take precautions around sick or dead wild birds, experts recommend. But you can keep your bird feeder up. Despite the spread in birds and other wild animals, scientists say the threat to the general population is currently low."
• Democrats Fighting Wrong Battle Because Trump Is a Symptom of a Huge Societal Problem. "Basically the Democratic Party needs to focus on how to make people's lives better. Some of that involves regulating technology--like banning the use of artificial intelligence in the college admissions process, banning the posting of fake jobs, prohibiting the use of AI to review cover letters and resumes, perhaps putting hard caps on the percentages of international students at American Universities, limiting the use of H1B Visas, and on encouraging people to disconnect."
• Stupidification. "It's getting worser." A light take on a serious problem.
• The Language of Surrender. "How Euphemism and Distortion Are Making Resistance to Authoritarianism Unspeakable."
• ‘All the birds returned’: How a Chinese project led the way in water and soil conservation. "The Loess plateau was the most eroded place on Earth until China took action and reversed decades of damage from grazing and farming."
• You Can Remove DRM From Your Digital Books, but It's Probably Illegal. "There should be a legal way to back up the books and audiobooks you've purchased."
• 'The universe has thrown us a curveball': Largest-ever map of space reveals we might have gotten dark energy totally wrong. "Findings from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) suggest that dark energy could be evolving over time. If they're right, cosmology will need a new model."
• These identical house designs could soon appear all over Ontario. It's a small step in dragging the construction industry kicking and screaming into the 21st century. 

 

Featured Links - February 10, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. After last week's blast of political stories, this week's articles are mostly politics-free. 

A winter farm

• The Batbible. The series bible for DC's Batman comics, written by Dennis O'Neil and updated by Scott Petersen. 
• Why Kodak is ‘Cracking Down’ on Respooled Motion Picture Film. "This week, Reflx Lab announced that it would soon no longer be able to offer some of its respooled 35mm motion picture stock because Kodak is more strictly “crack[ing] down” on respoolers. So, why is Kodak forfeiting the extra money made by selling to brands like Reflx Lab?"
• When Doctors With A.I. Are Outperformed by A.I. Alone. "A series of recent studies compared the performance of doctors with A.I. versus A.I. alone, spanning medical scans, diagnostic accuracy, and management reasoning. Surprisingly, in many cases, A.I. systems working independently performed better than when combined with physician input." 
• The rise of ‘influencer voice’: Why this TikTok creator accent is taking over the internet and maybe the world. "Was that a question? Online platforms have long influenced how we speak. Now a new generation of TikTok creators are fueling the latest variant."
• Video Game History Foundation to release scans of 1,500 vintage gaming magazines. "The VGHF's digital archive will be fully searchable, allowing researchers and enthusiasts to track the first mentions of influential games, developers, and gaming concepts."
• An Exoplanet Menagerie for SciFi Writers. "What would it be like to stand on an alien planet? Here's a quick tour of recent discoveries."
• NASA’s Historic Asteroid Sample Holds Clues to Life’s Origins. "The discovery is a capstone achievement for NASA, which went to great lengths to secure and deliver asteroid samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020."
• In Seattle, a Convergence of 5,444 Mathematical Minds (gift link). "Participants at this year’s Joint Mathematics Meetings explored everything from the role of A.I. to the hyperbolic design of a patchwork denim skirt."
• SpaceX has reshaped the landscape around Boca Chica, Texas. "The Starbase rocket testing facility is permanently changing the landscape of southern Texas."
• Why North England is poor. Some of the reasons discussed in this article would also apply to Northern Ontario.
• American Medical Association YouTube channel. Now that the CDC isn't doing updates about infectious diseases, the AMA has stepped up. 

Featured Links - January 6, 2025

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. 

How McGee spent the holidays

Should these words be banished into obscurity? 100 per cent. "LSSU drops, er, announces the annual cringe compendium. It's a game changer. IYKYK. Ok, we're sorry, not sorry."

The WIRED Guide to Protecting Yourself From Government Surveillance. "Donald Trump has vowed to deport millions and jail his enemies. To carry out that agenda, his administration will exploit America’s digital surveillance machine. Here are some steps you can take to evade it."

Business Daily meets: Astronaut Chris Hadfield. "In this programme, Chris Hadfield tells Russell Padmore how he was influenced by Star Trek, and the Apollo missions to the moon, as a child. He outlines why he welcomes private investment in space and he explains how he has become known for being the musical star in orbit."

Three issues to watch in global health in 2025. "There’s little reason to expect a period of calm."

Scientists predict an undersea volcano eruption near Oregon in 2025. "Real-time data from Axial Seamount provides a good test case for eruption forecasting."

AI Comes for a Centuries-Old Craft. "AI infiltrates the lace-making community." Nothing is safe from AI slop. 

All the Space News We’re Excited About in 2025: Launches, First Lights, Flybys, and More. "A year of discovery awaits, with missions poised to reveal new insights about our home planet, solar system, galaxy, and beyond."

Headlights seem a lot brighter these days — because they are. "Light glare that's dazzling today's drivers can create a dangerous distraction on the road, experts say."

Opinion: Habitat for all — how housing and biodiversity can coexist even in a crowded future. A good piece by Christopher Brown which has direct relevance to what's happening with development in Southern Ontario.

Featured Links - September 9, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Family home - for a family of foxes

• A new era in hurricane tracking begins. "Inside the dangerous mission that could revolutionize how we hunt nature’s most terrifying storms."
• Arecibo Wow! I: An Astrophysical Explanation for the Wow! Signal. "We hypothesize that the Wow! Signal was caused by sudden brightening from stimulated emission of the hydrogen line due to a strong transient radiation source, such as a magnetar flare or a soft gamma repeater (SGR). These are very rare events that depend on special conditions and alignments, where these clouds might become much brighter for seconds to minutes. The original source or the cloud might not be detectable, depending on the sensitivity of the telescope." Another LGM contact bites the dust. 
• NARA recovers famed 1982 Grace Hopper lecture recorded on obsolete media format. An important piece of computing history has been preserved.
• Second Circuit Says Libraries Disincentivize Authors To Write Books By Lending Them For Free. "What would you think if an author told you they would have written a book, but they wouldn’t bother because it would be available to be borrowed for free from a library? You’d probably think they were delusional. Yet that argument has now carried the day in putting a knife into the back of the extremely useful Open Library from the Internet Archive."
• After seeing Wi-Fi network named “STINKY,” Navy found hidden Starlink dish on US warship. "It's no secret that government IT can be a huge bummer. The records retention! The security! So government workers occasionally take IT into their own hands with creative but, err, unauthorized solutions."
• A Word, Please: Coffee-shop prompt stirs ChatGPT to brew up bland copy. "A short article about a new coffee place prompted grammar expert June Casagrande to check her work against AI. The latter created tepid copy that included weak sentences and left out relevant details."
• Russia Bought the Right. "The cost was around $10 million so far, but this might just be the first of many bombshells." 
• Meet the right-wing Canadian influencers accused of collaborating with an alleged Russian propaganda scheme. "Tenet Media founder Lauren Chen allegedly took funds from pro-Moscow outlet." The Canadian connection to the previous story. 
• Are Some Ultraprocessed Foods Worse Than Others? (gift link) "A new study may offer the biggest clues yet."
• A window into the body: New technique makes skin invisible. "Researchers have developed a new way to see organs within a body by rendering overlying tissues transparent to visible light. The counterintuitive process—a topical application of food-safe dye—was reversible in tests with animal subjects, and may ultimately apply to a wide range of medical diagnostics, from locating injuries to monitoring digestive disorders to identifying cancers."
• Tonga eruption that poured 150 metric tons of water vapor into the stratosphere affected the atmosphere for years. "A new study builds on previous research into the underwater volcano's effects on the climate."

Featured Links - June 17, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Half moon

• AI Detectors Get It Wrong. Writers Are Being Fired Anyway. "AI is already stealing writers’ work. Now they’re losing jobs over false accusations of using it."
• Anatomy of a Flood (gift link): "The Post installed cameras along the main road of one N.C. town to document the many ways rising seas exacerbate high-tide flooding."
• Yes, Everyone Really Is Sick a Lot More Often After Covid. "It's not your imagination: Around the world, people really are getting sick more often than before the pandemic." The article does not mention the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the body's immune system; effects that have been studied and extensively reported on. 
• Strangers to Our Futures. "What psychology tells us about ourselves."
• Russia’s Faces New Threat From Saboteurs With Drones. "Russia is facing a wave of destruction from a new quarter: small drones flown by partisan groups within its own borders and in occupied territory. The new weapons make existing security measures obsolete, and open up many new targets for large-scale sabotage."
• Cancelling Ontario’s waste-water program is an affront to science and common sense. "OPINION: It’s useful, cheap, and poses no direct personal-privacy risks. It’s a godsend. So, of course, the province has decided to scrap it." Agreed. 
• A teacher invented a bunch of fake slang words to trick his Gen Z students. Now some of those words have caught on.

Featured Links - March 25, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Colourful sunset

• We’re finally working out why the Mediterranean diet is so good for us (archive.ph link). "We have known for decades that the Mediterranean diet lowers the risk of heart attack and other conditions – now we are starting to understand how certain components of the diet work their magic."
• How to Convert Images to Editable Text in Microsoft Word. "Want to extract text from an image in Microsoft Word? Here's how to convert images into editable text within Word." It's a bit round about but as long since Word doesn't have a native way of doing it. 
• Media Matters publishes useful guide to Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda that "represents a threat to democracy, civil rights, the climate, and more". "We need to talk more about Project 2025, the terrifyingly right-wing blueprint crafted by right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation that is meant to guide the next Republican administration. If you aren't very familiar with Project 2025, it's time to school yourself and start spreading the word."
• The Publicly-Traded Presidential Candidate. From Jay Kuo: "One final note. The media needs to do a much better job warning about the dangers of such a publicly-traded candidacy and possible presidency. This is a man who has always been up for sale to the highest bidder, and who will now abuse the meme stock frenzy to achieve shocking personal financial gain while exposing our nation’s highest office to massive financial leverage. The American people need to be warned of the dangers inherent in this, far beyond the probable dispiriting headlines next week that Trump really will have become a billionaire, at least on meme stock paper."
• Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion (gift link). "Physicians say they’re seeing an explosion of birth-control misinformation online targeting a vulnerable demographic: people in their teens and early 20s who are more likely to believe what they see on their phones because of algorithms that feed them a stream of videos reinforcing messages often divorced from scientific evidence." 
• There is a Royal Order of Adjectives, and you follow it without knowing what it is. "There is a Royal Order of Adjectives, and you follow it without knowing what it is—a particular sequence to use when more than one adjective precedes a noun. There are exceptions, of course, because English is three languages in a trenchcoat." I never thought about it much when I was working as a technical writer because I didn't use many adjectives in my documentation.
• Blocking Burning Man and Vandalizing Van Gogh: Climate Activists Are Done Playing Nice. "Disruptive protests capture clicks. But in a movement that cites mass mobilization as the goal, can activists turn eyeballs into bodies?"
• The evidence is clear: A liquid-only diet before a colonoscopy is unnecessary. "It is true that diet matters for colon cleansing. Certain foods can greatly obscure our views of the colon: corn, nuts, seeds, and many kinds of vegetables. But that leaves many solid foods that people can eat and digest without affecting the quality of their colonoscopy. A low-residue diet, one that is heavy on starch and protein and free of vegetables, is just as effective, and much less difficult to endure, than a diet restricted to clear liquids all day." The article source, StatNews, is a reputable site. 
• EVs Are Much Lower-Emitting Than Combustion Cars. "Electric vehicles’ lifecycle emissions can be 70% lower than gasoline and diesel vehicles, BNEF finds in a new analysis."

Ruminations on Anachronyms

Benjamin Dreyer, author of the wonderful book, Dreyer's English, has an article in the Washington Post (gift link) in which he ruminates on anachronyms, a term I have to admit I hadn't come across until reading the article. He starts off by talking about subtweets.

The coinage dates to 2009, when Twitter was still Twitter, and posts there were referred to as tweets. But if Twitter has been X’d out and tweets are no longer tweets but posts instead, what is to become of the useful coinage “subtweet”?

 Given that the word now has become a generic term used on other social-media platforms (hello, my friends at Bluesky), I suspect that “subtweet” will join the ranks of what are known as anachronyms: words that are used “in an anachronistic way, by referring to something in a way that is appropriate only for a former or later time.”

That’s the way Wikipedia defines them, which will have to suffice for now, because the word is too new to have worked its way into dictionaries. Maybe when it does arrive, lexicographers will have identified its originator; linguist Ben Zimmer is often credited online, but he says he doubts he was the coiner.

He goes on to talk about several other similar terms, among them "subway token booths" (tokens now having been eliminated in New York and Toronto), and "podcasts" (the iPod having long been discontinued).

I wonder how long we will continue to call our omnipresent digital terminals "phones". How many phone calls have you made on your cell phone in the last week? 

Featured Links - February 5, 2024

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Toronto General Hospital lobby

• Toki Pona: The Unique Language With Less Than 150 Words. "There are apparently thousands of speakers, but can Toki Pona be considered a language?"
• Bizarre Virus-like 'Obelisks' Found in Human Mouths and Guts. "Stanford University scientists say they’ve discovered virus-like agents in the body that are unlike anything seen before."
• NASA could have tried to Launch Space Shuttle Atlantis on a rescue mission if they had known Columbia was going to disintegrate on re-entry. 
• How Astronomers Are Saving Astronomy From Satellites — For Now. "Even the most powerful telescopes are in peril as orbits above Earth fill with thousands of new satellites. But scientists aren’t ready to give up the night sky."
• Your Google Pixel has a secret diagnostics menu — how to find it. Unfortunately it's only available to US users. And no, using a VPN with a US end point doesn't work. 
• ​$1.1B deals signed at Worldcon's 1st industrial development summit. "Investment deals valued at approximately 8 billion yuan ($1.09 billion) were signed during the 81st World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) held in Chengdu, Sichuan province, last week at its inaugural industrial development summit, marking significant progress in the advancement of sci-fi development in China." Science fiction fans who thought there wouldn't be Chinese state involvement in the Worldcon were very naive. 
• Pentagon moves to declassify some secret space programs and technologies. "Some officials at the Pentagon have been calling for such a new classification policy for years."
• We keep making the same mistakes with spreadsheets, despite bad consequences. "Errors with spreadsheets are not only frustrating but can have serious consequences."

Featued Links - December 18, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about. It's a longer list than usual this week because I won't be posting next week. 

Birds in the hydro marsh

New Mind-Reading "BrainGPT" Turns Thoughts Into Text On Screen. "It offers new hope to people unable to communicate in other ways." I can see some dystopian uses for this technology: 'Strap him in and put the cap on his head. We'll find out what he really thinks.'

VIV Games Saves the World. "Win the game and save nature -- raise funds to save the Rainforest with VIV." An interesting approach to gaming and doing good things in the real world. See more about it from Karl Schroeder. 

Bill C-18 is Dead, Long Live Bill C-18: Government Rewrites Online News Act With Final Regulations. "The combined effect of this regulation should be obvious: excluding some smaller and ethnic outlets altogether while reserving most of the remaining money for larger entities such as Torstar or Postmedia who employ more journalist-adjacent personnel. I suspect many of the smaller players could see this coming, but they’ve been tossed under the bus in the effort to send more money to bigger outlets who stood to lose the most from Bill C-18 (and who incidentally lobbied the most for the legislation)." This will be a long-term disaster. 

When the New York Times lost its way. "America’s media should do more to equip readers to think for themselves." Meanwhile in the United States ..."

Doom’s creators reminisce about “as close to a perfect game as anything we made”. 'In 30th anniversary stream, Carmack and Romero recall a game dev "perfect storm."'

‘It’s all gone’: CAR-T therapy forces autoimmune diseases into remission. "Engineered immune cells, most commonly used to treat cancers, show their power against lupus and other immune disorders."

Some Limits to Global Ecophagy by Biovorous Nanoreplicators,with Public Policy Recommendations. An examination of some of the limitations of the "gray goo problem" and how it could be combated.

55 Books Scientific American Recommends in 2023. "The best fiction, nonfiction, history and sci-fi books Scientific American staff read in 2023."

The Red State Brain Drain Isn’t Coming. It’s Happening Right Now. "As conservative states wage total culture war, college-educated workers—physicians, teachers, professors, and more—are packing their bags."

Diplomatic, geopolitical and economic consequences of an impending asteroid threat. "The Planetary Defense Conference 2023 addressed an asteroid threat scenario as difficult to confront. This article examines potential actions of relevant stakeholders, including States, the International Asteroid Warning Network, the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group, Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, and the United Nations Security Council." 

Anti-LGBTQ+ Chill in Saskatchewan’s Unseasonably Warm Winter. "But hope still warms my heart." The poison from the south is seeping over the border. 

The harm caused by dehumanising language. "Sticks and stones famously break bones – but words can also hurt you. It is there in the charged rhetoric from both sides of the conflict unfolding in Israel and Gaza, just as it can be found in the language of clashes around the world: old tropes and name-calling that seek to paint whole groups of people as somehow less than human."

Canadian scientists are still being muzzled, and that risks undermining climate policy. 'Environmental scientists in Canada continue to be stifled in their ability to conduct and communicate their research. Interference in science, also referred to as “muzzling,” was a well-documented concern during the Conservative government of the early 2010’s, when it gripped the collective consciousness of Canadian federal public sector scientists. Our research sheds light on a broader understanding of the recent interference in environmental sciences in Canada.'

 

Featured Links - November 13, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

CJ, who does not like the news this week either.

• Crypto Slang: 25 Crypto Terms and Their Meanings Explained. It seems that crypto has developed its own slang very quickly. What the slang tells us about the world of crypto is more interesting than the words themselves.
• Inside an OnlyFans empire: Sex, influence and the new American Dream. "The fast-growing platform represents the creator economy at its most bluntly transactional, where sex is just another unit of contento monetize."
• How Citizen Surveillance Ate San Francisco. "When a homeless man attacked a former city official, footage of the onslaught became a rallying cry. Then came another video, and another—and the story turned inside out."
• The Case for Amplifying Trump's Insanity. "The "Banality of Crazy" has warped American politics, as few voters recognize just how deranged, delusional, and dangerous Donald Trump is...because the press rarely reports on his routine insanity." And if recent public appearances are any indication, he also has dementia.
• The librarian who couldn’t take it anymore. "She loved books. And in a time of spreading book bans in public schools, that’s why this Florida librarian had to quit."
• Inside Mike Johnson’s Ties to a Far-Right Movement to Gut the Constitution. "The new House speaker has longstanding ties to the evangelical inspired Convention of States cause." Gilead rising. 
• monaspace. "An innovative superfamily of fonts for code." This is an excellent monospaced font, and I will probably use it in place of Consolas. 
  
  

Featured Links - October 16,2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Geese on the bay

• September 2023 was Earth’s most extreme month for heat ever recorded. "Climate scientist James Hansen says the world may soon exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius warming threshold."
• AI Is 'Unwrapping' Burnt Scrolls From Herculaneum. "Mount Vesuvius buried Herculaneum in volcanic ash 2,000 years ago. Modern tech is revealing lost texts from the town."
• Being a Republican can kill you; living in the same state with too many of them can kill you too. "The Washington Post conducted a study trying to get to the bottom of why American life expectancy was shrinking. What they found was that red-state politics was killing people at an alarming rate. They studied three adjacent counties along Lake Erie: Ashtabula in red Ohio; Erie in purple Pennsylvania; and Chautauqua in blue New York. The 2020 death rate in the Ohio county was 650 per 100,000 people, compared to about 490 in Pennsylvania and 540 in New York."
• A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words (1860). Browsing through this could be a real time sink. It might also be a good resource for authors looking for unusual words for their stories.
• It's time to standardize smartwatch charging. "Smartphones have finally fallen in line, and it's time for wearables to do the same." The article suggests watches should support the new Qi2 wireless charging standard, which makes a lot of sense. 
• Staying ahead of virus mutations. "New AI tool can predict viral variants, ID most dangerous, help make vaccines ‘future-proof’."
• The Whole of the Whole Earth Catalog Is Now Online. "The seminal DIY catalogs, journals, and magazines printed by the techno-hippie publishing house are finally available online in digital form, all for free." I had several issues of this back in the day and spent many hours browsing through it.

Featured Links - June 12, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

• The C-Word Is Everywhere Right Now — And Not in a Bad Way. "It's one of the most divisive words in the English language and — thanks to the LGBTQ community — it is having a moment."
• Passwordless logins are a confusing mess. "In this week's guest column, Jared Newman wonders what it will take to make passkeys truly usable." I am holding off on passkey until some of the issues mentioned in Ed Bott's article get straightened out.
• 5 features Google Pixel should take from third party Android skins. "Pixel's software is Google's "true" version of Android, but other Android versions have some great software ideas that Google should adopt." Yes to all of these, especially the Pro mode for the camera app.
• "Adam And Eve" Conspiracy Theory Hits TikTok After Joe Rogan Podcast. "According to the conspiracy theory, every 6,500 years a major cataclysm hits Earth." More wacko craziness from the ignorant. 
• ChatGPT Goes to Court. "The fault lies not in our machines, but in ourselves."
• A Leaked Tesla Report Shows the Cybertruck Had Basic Design Flaws. '"The “alpha” version of the EV company’s first pickup had problems with braking, handling, noise, and leaks, according to an internal presentation.'
• The Explosive Legacy of the Pandemic Hand Sanitizer Boom. "Three years ago, the FDA declared a manufacturing free-for-all. Now a noxious brew of leftover product is catching fire and making people sick." End-stage capitalism at its best.

More on Northern Ontario Dialects

Last year I posted about dialects specific to Northern Ontario, where I grew up. Recently I came across a column from Soo Today that has more examples of some terms from Sault Ste. Marie. It's not a complete list (I can think of at least four terms that aren't included) but it does expand the number of words by quite a bit. 

It had started when someone allowed as how they had to go down the line the next day to their camp at Tunnel Lake.

“I’ve heard that Northerners call their cottages ‘camps’ and I imagine Tunnel Lake is a recreational body of water somewhere around here,” our guest blurted out, “but what the heck do you mean by down the line? And somebody also mentioned up the line and over the river. What line? What river?”

Having been born and raised in the Soo area, the rest of us burst out laughing at the consternation our “patois” was causing our visitor. It had never occurred to us until then that someone from “away” would find these expressions confusing. What ensued was a kind of parlour game where we decided to see how many local expressions we could come up with.

The result was a pretty fair starter list of words and phrases that could make life easier for visitors to and new residents of an area the Ojibwe – the indigenous Anishinaabe inhabitants of the region – originally called Baawitigong (Bawating), meaning "place of the rapids."

Featured Links - April 17, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Spring flowers

• The Hacking of ChatGPT Is Just Getting Started. "Security researchers are jailbreaking large language models to get around safety rules. Things could get much worse."
• A Number System Invented by Inuit Schoolchildren Will Make Its Silicon Valley Debut. "Math is called the “universal language,” but a unique dialect is being reborn."
• Plastic-eating backyard fungi discovery boosts hopes for a solution to the recycling crisis. "Experiments conducted by researchers at the University of Sydney, published in science journal npj Materials Degradation, found that two types of fungi could be harnessed to attack small samples of polypropylene, which is used to make items like takeaway containers, ice-cream tubs and cling film." Before going too far with this, the researchers might want to read ILL WIND by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason.
• Hidden Sci-Fi Women of the OED. "There are a number of female science fiction authors cited in the OED; some have coined words and many have interesting backstories. The genre has attracted many female authors and readers over the years, although it is traditionally male-orientated. Many of these authors are elusive, hiding behind (often male) pen names. Here are just a few of those cited."
• GetHuman. "Fix Your Customer Service Issues Faster. Get a rep on the phone faster & get better help."
• Why Tokyo Works. "Understanding how urban design makes this city work."
• Got Pop-Up Ads on Android? How to Spot and Remove Them. "Are you seeing unwanted pop-up ads on Android? Here's how to stop pop-up ads on your Android phone home screen."

Featured Links - March 6, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

McGee relaxing

• Yes, everything in physics is completely made up – that’s the whole point. "A physicist's task is to constantly create equations that keep up with our observations of physical phenomena."
• High-resolution image reconstruction with latent diffusion models from human brain activity. "We demonstrate that our simple framework can reconstruct high-resolution images from brain activity with high semantic fidelity, without the need for training or fine-tuning of complex deep generative models."
• The gray swan: model-based assessment of the risk of sudden failure of hybrid immunity to SARS-CoV-2. "Our findings suggest large jumps in viral evolution may cause failure of population immunity resulting in sudden increases in mortality. As a rise in mortality will only become apparent in the weeks following a wave of disease, reactive public health strategies will not be able to provide meaningful risk mitigation."
• Apparently the AI wants me dead. When science fiction writers are getting scared of AI, it's time to worry.
• We tested 43 old USB-C to USB-A cables. 1 was great. 10 were dangerous. "Here’s why you may want to destroy your entire collection of USB-C to USB-A cables."
• "The narrative had to be baked into the corridors": Marc Laidlaw on writing Half-Life. "Also yeah, he does regret posting that Episode 3 story."
• You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time. They aren't kidding; this is truly strange.
• Recent Submissions to the Oxford English Dictionary. A look about some terms used in printing and typography. My favourite word: "flong".

Some Language and Writing Resources

Here are links to some articles and web pages about writing and language resources.

• From Nature, an article aimed at researchers and academics: Poor English skills? New AIs help researchers to write better. "Machine-learning tools can correct grammar and advise on the style and tone of presentations — but they must be used with caution."
• From the Queen's University Accessibilty Hub, a web page with advice on creating accessible documents in several formats. "There are many forms of documents which are used during a learning session. These may include; Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft PowerPoint documents and PDF documents.  All three types of documents can be used electronically, either during presentations or by offering students electronic versions of the documents to store and review.  They can also be used in print format - as handouts during a session, for example. These documents may also include equations, charts, graphs, infographics, and tables which need to be accessible for all."
• From the American Geophysical Union, Writing Plain Language Summaries. "A Plain Language Summary from a technical abstract may seem link a daunting task, it can help to expand the reach of your science by putting it in the hands of new audiences in language that they understand."
• The Grammarphobia blog. "Grammar, etymology, usage, and more, brought to you by Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman."
• The Conscious Style Guide. "The first website devoted to conscious language. My mission is to help writers and editors think critically about using language—including words, portrayals, framing, and representation—to empower instead of limit. In one place, you can access style guides covering terminology for various communities and find articles debating usage. We study words so that they can become tools instead of unwitting weapons."
• So, it’s the OED update, obvs. From the OED's blog, a post about their January update. It's kibble for word nerds.
• English is picking up brilliant new words from around the world – and that’s a gift. "English is picking up brilliant new words from around the world – and that’s a gift."
• A Twitter thread by Mushtaq Bilal, PhD. "6 incredible resources developed by top universities to help you become a proficient academic writer — totally free:"

Featured Links - January 23, 2023

Links to things I found interesting but didn't want to do a full blog post about.

Winter trees

The Water Myth. "It is a common belief that you have to drink 6-8 glasses of water per day, but this myth comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of some basic physiology."

NASA Reveals Tantalizing Details About Webb Telescope’s Successor. "The Habitable Worlds Observatory now has a name, a rough timeline, and a whole lot of hype."

My Week With the Future of Garbage Bins. The internet of things comes to garbage bins. You might laugh but this product makes sense.

The World Through a Copyeditor’s Eyes. "Advocate. Prose custodian. Adjunct to the life of the mind. A person in my role wears many hats—and keeps many secrets." Although my title at work said "technical writer", I spent a lot of time editing. This article is quite accurate. 

Zaha Hadid's, Under Construction, Chengdu Science Fiction Museum Will Host Worldcon 2023. This is an amazing building and will be a fitting setting for the WorldCon, assuming it's finished by October.

The Astounding Physics of N95 Masks (YouTube link): They don't work the way you might think they do.

An enormous Martian cloud returns every spring. Scientists found out why. "What's causing this natural wonder on the Red Planet?"

Starlink Is ‘Forced’ To Finally Start Caring About The System’s Light Pollution And Harm To Scientific Research. I've posted about this before. It's about time that SpaceX is being forced to do something about it.

How TikTok and the Pandemic Changed Language

A couple of articles recently have highlighted how fast our language is changing. 

First, the New York Times describes how users of TikTok have created their own jargon to get around TikTok's content moderation. I've gifted from my subscription so there's no paywall. 

TikTok creators have gotten into the habit of coming up with substitutes for words that they worry might either affect how their videos get promoted on the site or run afoul of moderation rules.

So, back in 2021, someone describing a pandemic hobby might have believed (perhaps erroneously) that TikTok would mistakenly flag it as part of a crackdown on pandemic misinformation. So the user could have said “panoramic” or a similar-sounding word instead. Likewise, a fear that sexual topics would trigger problems prompted some creators to use “leg booty” for L.G.B.T.Q. and “cornucopia” instead of “homophobia.” Sex became “seggs.”

On Twitter, Margaret Atwood pointed me to a new book, Pandexicon, that looks at how the pandemic has changed our language over the last couple of years.  

When the pandemic struck in early 2020, Wayne Grady started collecting the words and phrases that arose from our shared global experience. Some, such as "uptick" and "pivot," had existed before but now took on new meaning, and others, such as "covidivorce," "quarantini," "covexit," and "shecession," appeared for the first time, their meaning instantly clear. Through this new vocabulary, we became more able to adapt to change, to domesticate it in a sense, and to reduce our fears.

Moving from the very beginning of the pandemic (the "Before Times") and our early response to it through the peaks and troughs of the various waves in countries throughout the world, and ending with a contemplation of what the "After Times" might look like, this book takes us on a journey through the pandemic and illuminates both how this new language has unfolded and how it has changed the way we think about ourselves and each other.

Pandeixcon won't be published until March 2023, but you can pre-order it from the publisher.