Riding my bike home yesterday and a young man asked how I liked my ebike. So the conversation began. We were riding on a designated bike lane street so could ride side by side and talk. Came up to a roundabout, he said this is where he turns and we departed. This is the joy of riding a bike enhanced by a safe bike route. Cars are just plain transportation.
My adult sons and families live a distance away (Northern BC and Denmark). I so appreciate text messages. Sending them the occasional note from the love of a father, then to receive that simple icon of a heart back.
Dickens has a way with words.
NY Times article “Would You Pay to Attend a Wedding? As wedding costs continue to increase, some couples are charging guests to attend their special day.” Do you get your money back if they get divorced?
One of the workable solutions for calendars that hasn’t really been adopted in North America is the use of the week number. Some digital calendars and paper calendars have it, but it is usually rare. Instead of saying “we can meet the Tuesday of the week of Aug. 18” you can say “week 34”. The catch - All weeks are starting on Monday and ending on Sunday. There are multiple systems for week numbering, this is the ISO week date standard (ISO-8601), other systems use weeks starting on Sunday (US) or Saturday (Islamic).
Took this picture years ago in a UNHCR refugee campee camp in Eastern Ethiopia, close to the Somalian border. Bare existence in this camp of 25,000 yet the children showed this response when you smiled and showed your camera.
Back in the city after being on Quadra Island for a week. Am really noticing the constant city noise, it does not stop.
A morning view on Quadra Island. Spent a week there. Realized what silence was.
Annual car insurance premium is due today. Having an ebike and not driving as much you wonder at the expense per km for insurance.
Getting ready for a heatwave.
How many lawyers does it take to craft an opinion; how many PR execs does it take to put out a press release? Seemingly not enough given the calibre of what is being produced.
The more one reads about the history of colonialism the more one sees certain powerful individuals corrupted by their positions of privilege and their lack of empathy for diverse peoples.
Those that stood up to them were pummelled in any fashion. It continues today. Those people have not gone away. They are far from the truth and blatantly lie.
Artificial intelligence vs authentic or real intelligence? Given some of the international stories these days maybe the worry should be the need for just plain intelligence.
If someone were to ask me what my current interests were I would have to condense it to one - literature. What writing does to your mind is incredible. How one's imagination can create those vivid pictures that are painted with the written word. The sentences are always painting. The better writing creates such an intricate world. Reading gives us the ability to create but it comes with effort.
Art is the need to create; but in its essence..it is impatient of working with lame or tied hands. R. W. Emerson, Essays 1841
Love it when you start reading a book and run across word like ‘ghosteen’, lugubrious’, and ‘judder’. Nothing better than the new generation of Irish writers.
Rain again but then it is green and growing.
The Globe & Mail has an article this morning on the U of T. Bias is bias.
Beautiful Spsnish Banks this afternoonn at low tide.
You can never push for change when so many fear the loss of their precious “security”. Being placed in the existence of weakness will initiate somethingng but it will be limited.
Two of Helsinki’s most visited cathedrals will begin to charge an entrance fee beginning next month. Helsinki’s Lutheran Cathedral, Suomenlinna Church, and St. John’s Church will charge between €5 to €8 as an entry fee for visitors. The cathedrals typically get hundreds of thousands of visitors every summer.
Want to read: The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya 📚
Had not realized there are 35 seasons of The Simpsons.
The robins and hummingbirds are back.
Should be a different day. Dentist this morning and library meeting this afternoon with the possibility of snow, this late in the year?
The Dandy Warhols have some new music out soon. The 3 pre releases are good, sort of oldish with the addition of some newer layers of sound.