Here I was, so proud of my three jabs, and going out to a concert, and dining with friends, and getting on a plane and not feeling it was a flight into danger, and looking forward to Christmas. Very looking forward to that part.
Maybe they were right when they said the virus will always be with us, ever-mutating, one step ahead of science, faith and hope.
Oh well, at least we can still read at home on weekends.
1. Want to make Christmas dinner look like an Edvard Munch painting? You can generate original art using AI. And speaking of Munch, check out the new museum housing his work in Oslo.
2. When did we start hating the Establishment? In America, it was right after the Vietnam War. As Delanceyplace.com, the wonderful – and free – daily reminder of our past and present, reminds us: “In the 1950s, leaders on Wall Street, in Washington, DC, and at America’s largest companies were esteemed.” Here’s what happened then.
3. “My idea of happiness is spending 250 days a year in a recording studio.” Glenn Gould said that, but he also spent time elsewhere, namely at his childhood home at 32 Southwood Drive in the Beaches and his apartment at 110 St. Clair Avenue West. Here’s an oddly lovely story about Gould — from a real estate blog.
4. Surely Toronto is now one of the world’s most expensive cities to live in. Actually, it’s not. Like many Canadian Anythings on the Bell Curve, it huddles in the middle, as The Economist revealed this week in its annual survey of the world’s priciest cities. And the most priciest of all? Tel Aviv.
5. How you can be a spy. Bellingcat is the open-source intelligence service founded by some young British boffins like Eliot Higgins. As they say, “The promise of open source research is that anyone — not just journalists or researchers at select institutions — can contribute to investigations that uncover wrongdoing and hold perpetrators of crimes and atrocities to account. When we say “anyone”, we mean anyone: if you’ve an internet connection, free time, and a stubborn commitment to getting the facts right, then you too, can be an open source researcher.” Click here for Lesson 1.
6. Demolition videos are waykul. But why are power-plant demolition videos the best? See here.
7. Turns out, Harvard students aren’t that smart after all. At least not its white students. As The Guardian reveals, 43% of them weren’t admitted on merit. “One might call it affirmative action for the rich and privileged.”
8. 10 tiny changes that will massively improve your cooking. Even I can do this. But I can also eat bread forever, though watching it being made is tasty too.
9. When doctors go for woke. The American Medical Association recently published a 54-page guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts. No surprise, the new and approved way to describe disease pits social imperatives against science.
Like? Rather than saying “Low-income people have the highest level of coronary artery disease in the United States,” the guide recommends saying: “People underpaid and forced into poverty as a result of banking policies, real estate developers gentrifying neighborhoods, and corporations weakening the power of labor movements, among others, have the highest level of coronary artery disease in the United States.”
10. Sam and Dave were gods in the 60s. Here’s their most popular song, Soul Man. delivered in two-part harmony. To create your own harmonies half a century later, try this out.
Forbidden Words: The words you dare not utter in polite company this week are “airman” and “airwoman.”