Omnium-Gatherum – Page 3

Category: Omnium-Gatherum

The company you keep keeps you

It’s hard being a company these days. But harder being a corporate cause or reporting on it. Two letters this week showed why:

The first was about fair-weather friends. It seems lots of big supporters of Pride and the LGBTQ movement are turning tail because some of their stakeholders view this as “wokism gone mad.” So Phil Haid, the CEO of social marketing agency Public Inc. wrote to his clients and friends: “The discomfort that many brands and businesses are experiencing right now is because for a time Pride felt like a party that everyone wanted to be a part of. But please remember that Pride is a protest and has always been. It stands as a constant reminder of the work society needs to continue to do to become equal, equitable, and just.”

The second example was about money. The Logic reports in-depth on Canada’s innovation economy. It does this independently and very well. Each June, the gigantic Collision Conference comes to Toronto (helped along by millions in public subsidies), and this year its date follows a conference The Logic is organizing. When The Logic applied for media credentials to cover Collision, it was denied: Why? “Running other events that piggyback on our own is not something we support.” Now Collision is a Goliath; The Logic is a David, as is its editor-in-chief David Skok. So David wrote about it. After his column appeared, Collision caved and let The Logic in.

Meanwhile…

June 17, 2023 No Comments

Fast-Checking. Fact-Checking.

All of us need to open a new folder on our desktops called “AI”.

Or “Eh-eye?” if we’re still not sure that artificial intelligence will overwhelm our 2,500-year-old ideas of reading and writing and creativity.

Into this folder, we should drop any article or video that catches our interest about the future of AI. We should fill it up once a week at least, no matter how despairing the prediction about AI is. Ever since ChatGTP made us aware that climate change is not our only existential crisis, I’ve been avoiding those who say we will soon be enslaved by our technology, and avidly reading those who say AI will be our salvation.

But at what other time in history have humans (at least those of us who can read and write) been able to not only be bystanders at the revolution, but players in it. Indeed, our participation is compulsory. We’ve all been drafted. So best that we at least learn what the rules will be, and how they’ll change because they’ll change faster than any other revolution in history. And for those of us who crave a ring-side seat to history, here’s your chance.

Meanwhile…

June 10, 2023 No Comments

Mass-producing intimacy

All of us need to open a new folder on our desktops called “AI”.

Or “Eh-eye?” if we’re still not sure that artificial intelligence will overwhelm our 2,500-year-old ideas of reading and writing and creativity.

Meanwhile…

June 3, 2023 No Comments

What happened then?

It seems that Whites will become a minority of Americans by 2045. This demographic reality is fueling the Great Replacement Theory that’s behind rising racial violence in the US.

I also learned that 32,000 Americans are imprisoned because of cannabis offences.

These two unrelated facts are connected in an odd and vital way to Canada and Toronto.

First, Whites became a minority of Toronto’s population in 2015.

What happened then?

Nothing. Even today, when 58% of Torontonians are not White, and when one in two Torontonians is born outside Canada, “nothing” is “happening”.

On October 17, 2018, cannabis was legalized across our country. What happened on that day and beyond?

Nothing. Young men, whacked up on grass, didn’t roam the streets terrorizing the population. Stoned-driving cases didn’t uptick. Even now, nearly five years later, the wisdom of decriminalizing cannabis isn’t polarizing our society. Frankly, not many of us give it a second thought.

I, for one, am happy to live in a place where nothing happens.

Meanwhile…

May 27, 2023 No Comments

How many existential crises can one world take?

Last year, global warming shifted from a distant thunder to a run-for-your-lives house fire. Alberta readers take note. This year, AI shifted from a semi-literate teen to the predator next door, coming for our jobs, our kids and our brains.

But there is an upside to the end of the world. It will take some time for oblivion to arrive, and before it does, we can bliss out on a third existential event: the coming together of robotic technology and artificial intelligence.

I’d like you to meet my new friend Ameca. She’s…well, see for yourself. She may sound a little fey today. But give her and her fellow humanoid robots a few months and they’ll have advanced the way global warming and AI did, with us barely paying attention and then suddenly they’re moving in to the spare bedroom.

Meanwhile…

May 20, 2023 No Comments

Slightly-cynical singles seek later-life love.

When my wife Jean was doing family medicine, many of her patients were smart, accomplished, kind and financially-secure women over 50 who had given up finding a mate because none existed.

“Have you tried dating online?” Jean would ask. Their eyes would roll and they would practically spit: “I would never do that. It’s so demeaning.”

Many of these women have turned out the lights on this issue. There are no men out there, so why waste your time looking? Just create a rich life where you don’t need them. Didn’t Gloria Steinem say a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle? Or you can select men for different uses, the way you would a spice from the kitchen cupboard.

Meanwhile…

May 13, 2023 No Comments

Up Chuck and Di

That was a rude sign greeting Charles and Diana when they visited Vancouver to open Expo ‘86. I thought it was way over the line. But oh my, how the line for the Royals has changed. Hacked phones, pedo pals, vengeful duchesses, and tabloids full of scandals.

Back on June 2nd 1953, Queen Elizabeth’s coronation was in many ways the first global broadcast of an event. It was in black and white. Elizabeth’s funeral last September 19th was called “the biggest human event of all mankind” because it was seen by 4.1 billion people. This is no surprise. Despite Britain’s straitened prospects today, the British Empire remains the largest empire in human history. At one point, 23% of the world’s people lived under the Union Jack and it covered close to a quarter of the world’s land area including Canada and Canadians. So there’s a vast vestigial interest.

Some of you got up at 4 o’clock this morning to see Charles’ and Camilla’s coronation. I didn’t, not because I don’t love all that, but I can always catch it later. I also sense that this may be the last coronation any of us will see. So for today, let the pomp and circumstance, despite the looming judgement of history, go marching on.

Meanwhile…

May 6, 2023 No Comments

Precision Persuasion

Saying you recommend rather than like something makes people 32 per cent more likely to take your suggestion. Using the word whom in online dating profiles makes men 31% more likely to get a date. Adding more prepositions to a cover letter makes you 24% more likely to get the job. And saying is not rather than isn’t when describing a product makes people pay $3 more to get it.

Those words are from Jonah Berger whose new book is a revelation that could spark a revolution. Magic Words: What to say to get your way is not about AI, or at least not just that. It’s about our reaching an inflection point in understanding the science of language. Says Berger: “Technological advances in machine learning, computational linguistics and natural language processing, combined with the digitization of everything from cover letters to conversation, have revolutionised our ability to analyze language.”

It’s clear where this is going, the same place cancer medicine already is. You and I can have exactly the same tumor, but you’ll get a different treatment than me, based on your DNA, your genes, age and gender. Today, you and I get different marketing pitches based on where we live, what we earn and where we spend. But tomorrow, marketers will know if you’re a “who” person or a “whom” person, an “isn’t” woman, or an “is not” man. Think of it as linguistic chemo, and…

Run for your lives!

Or should that be… run for your life?

Meanwhile…

April 29, 2023 No Comments

Whither the weather?

A friend of mine who spent a year in Leavenworth said: “You can get used to anything.” But getting used to summer sunshine in March one day, followed by a brutal snowstorm the next, will take some getting used to. I get that our punishment for overwarming the earth is extreme weather. But I can see a huge uptick in the sale of suitcases, for example, so that we can put our summer duds in one and our winter ones in another when we go to Montreal for the weekend. Or when we pack our bathing suit in the trunk, to think: “Where’s my toque?” No wonder North Americans consume well over two-thirds of the world’s production of antidepressant drugs. It’s the weather.

Meanwhile…

April 22, 2023 No Comments

Not a good look.

I remember as a kid in Edmonton walking home and looking at families in their windows and seeing them having dinner or playing together, and thinking: “Why can’t our family be like theirs?” Well, of course, I had no idea what their lives were really like. I was comparing their appearance to our reality – and coming up short, as we all do.

This was a big week for that old bugbear between appearance and reality:

● The BBC told its reporters to look a bit more sweaty and dirty
in order to appear more authentic to viewers.

● Imposter Syndrome, “the crippling idea that people like us could not possibly triumph given what we know of ourselves,” got a new workbook.

● Here are this year’s Oscar Visual Effects nominees.

● Where do you call home? The citizen intelligence agency Bellingcat uses geolocating to find where Isabel dos Santos, once Africa’s richest woman, is really hiding out.

Meanwhile…

March 4, 2023 No Comments

“Peter was always in the believing business.”

That’s from Paul Wells’ tribute to Peter Herrndorf who died last week at 82 and whose death is felt by the literally thousands of us whom Peter lifted up, especially when we and our organizations were faint of heart. It’s no surprise that, just one week after his death, the stories of his magical healing powers are legion, tear-inducing and growing.

Here’s mine: for 45 years Peter would phone me on my birthday and sing Happy Birthday to me. I knew he did this with hundreds of other friends as well and marvelled that he had the time, energy and discipline to do it.

Then when Jean and I got married, he would call on our anniversary to congratulate us. One year, he didn’t call on our anniversary, July 23rd, but the next day. I mentioned this when he called, and he said: “I’m not calling a day late; I’m calling a day early. You were married on July 25th.”

“No, Peter, our anniversary is July 23rd.”

“No, Bob, it’s July 25th.”

So I took off my wedding ring, looked closely at the date engraved on the inside and it read “July 25th.”

“Gosh, Peter, I guess you’re right.”

I was stunned. For years, we’d been celebrating our anniversary on the wrong day.

But this coming July 25th, when we celebrate our 30th anniversary, we’ll raise a glass to the man who not only cared about his friends’ anniversaries; he cared about getting them right.

We will miss him keenly.

Meanwhile…

February 25, 2023 No Comments

The Mounties and the English language.

I’ve never been a fan of Brenda Lucki, the Commissioner of the RCMP who decided to retire next month. Far from being an empathic female leader, she struck me as more of an old-fashioned, command-and-control leader who had a great deafness to politics and people.

But maybe the Mounties’ current state of disrepair is not just about leadership, but language. George Orwell’s famous essay, Politics and the English Language comes to mind when I read that, instead of abandoning a controversial neck restraint, the Mounties issued new guidance in November that “strengthens and clarifies definitions, oversight and accountability measures, the risks of applying the technique on medically high-risk groups, requirements for medical attention, the threshold for use and requirement to recertify annually on the policy regarding application.”

Category: Omnium-Gatherum

The company you keep keeps you

Fast-Checking. Fact-Checking.

Mass-producing intimacy

What happened then?

How many existential crises can one world take?

Slightly-cynical singles seek later-life love.

Up Chuck and Di

Precision Persuasion

Not a good look.

“Peter was always in the believing business.”

The Mounties and the English language.

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