It’s a new word to explain an old idea, that women get fired differently from how men do. Maybe it’s because women are so new at the top that the men above them are flummoxed in showing the age-old grace and favours they do with men whose heads they are putting on the pike. What I don’t understand in the whole Lisa Laflamme firing fiasco is that Bell Media’s head of communications is a woman, as are 19 of the company’s 22 publicists.
Plus ça change…
1. Fight back against bullies. This training video shows that (i) The best defense is an instant offense (ii) It pays to have your pals nearby.
2. Lessons learned during a psychiatric residency. “Just stay silent long enough and the other person will tell you everything.”
3. A new kind of worldwide webb. You should check back on the Webb Space Telescope site every couple of billion years because that’s the scale of how it’s opened our eyes to the vastness of the universe. It’s 100 times more powerful than any other telescope. Even better is the number of senior women scientists who are directing it.
4. Roger Federer is a great champion. More than that, he’s a good sport.
5. John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. Together in David Storey’s lovely play about two elderly gentlemen. It’s called Home for a couple of reasons and at this level of acting, their silences and stillness speak as much as their words and actions. There are less elegiac ways to spend 90 minutes.
6. Remember when shows were just shows? Now, the stage is awash in effects unheard of in years past. Two of the best are Tokyo’s Teamlab and Montreal’s MomentFactory.
7. My phone is dead. How quickly mobile phones have become family members. A phone is not broken or drained. It is dead.
Speaking of intrusive, surveillance is getting so advanced, it can pick up voices from the vibrations on a bag of chips. Here also is a Russian dog-robot that can launch grenades. And a view of how your lost luggage gets made.
8. How’s your reno going? These young Amsterdam architects use design to expand densification not just close to home, but in it.
9. The dark past shines bright. Not only is colorization bringing the past to shimmering life (see this new view of old San Francisco), online surveillance techniques are discovering where old photos were actually shot.
10. Weaponizing music. Russia’s long tradition of subverting authority is alive and well in the samizdat music that takes on Putin.
Plus some great shower music, the kind you sing in the……that’s right. And in the mall, and on the road trip.
[P.S. I’ll be off-piste next week, returning to your InBox on September 3rd].
*****
Hitch-hike a helicopter to paradise.
Join us on the mountains this summer.
A gang of us are going heli-hiking at the end of this month, and there’s still room in the helicopter for you. So if you’re looking for a last-minute, end-of-summer lift like you’ve never been lifted before, come with us.
No skill or endurance is required. Just a sense of adventure (which may have been dormant in your heart during COVID) and a desire to smell the wild roses. And just as there are no conditioning or skill requirements, there are no age limits either. You can be, 8, 18 or 81 and be enlivened by the whole thing. You can be a marathon runner or mountain climber. Or you can also be wearing your Medic Alert bracelet the entire trip, as five of us recently did. You can bring your partner, your grandkids, your bestie.
We’ve taken friends heli-hiking for the past few summers and all of them (and I mean all) have come home raving about how gorgeous, different and wonderful it all was. And from door to door, the whole amazing experience is just five summer days.
So yes, Heaven can wait. But can you?
For more information on this and other RamsayTravels adventures, click here. And, please also forward to your like-spirited friends.
