So here’s how I came to the realization that using oil for energy makes no sense.

We use oil because we can burn it. We make energy by burning it. That’s all it is. And you know when we started burning things for energy? Thousands of years ago. Thousands of years of evolution and technological advancement, and we still go around in our fancy cars by making repeated little explosions. Wanna go faster? More gas! More explosions! Queue in the Neanderthals.

Seems ridiculous when you think about it this way.

As a society, 0ur collective obsession with “the best” is getting out of hand. Sure something may not be the best. But idealism and looking for perfection is not the solution to most problems. A better question is, is it better than the current option? And we all know that there is always something better coming down the pipe anyway. Incremental progress is good. Let’s embrace it.

With all the problems that the world is already experiencing, Putin decided that invading Ukraine, killing innocent people, and adding to the suffering was what he had to do. What a shameful, reprehensible, disgusting, and sad excuse of a human being he is. I’m worried for my friends and the people of Ukraine, I’m sorry that the sensible people in Russia who don’t want this are going to pay a price, and I hope everyone is safe.

Love this:

This is a great rule of thumb: the Seatbelt Rule for Judgment. “My willingness to judge something should be proportional to how much I know about it.”

Via kottke.org.

Here we go again. Climate shadow instead of climate footprint, yadda yadda yadda.

The people-are-responsible-for-climate-change trope has been more present in the media lately. It may be well-intentioned, but the larger and more important story is that business and industry cause climate change, not people.

I can change my habits but that won’t mean a dime if business and industry doesn’t change.

Since 2018, I’ve been posting both my social media quips and long form pieces to my own web site steveroy.ca.

I do cross-post the social media bits to other platforms, never forgetting to engage with people there. But ultimately, the source of truth for everything I post is my self-hosted site, where I own and control my content.

This last part is why it’s baffling to me that people and companies take residence on platforms like Facebook, ceding ownership and control of their voice.

I heard recently a saying that perfectly encapsulates this: Never build your house on someone else’s land.

Anyone doing creative work constantly has to fight the feeling that their work is no good. Even The Beatles.

I like this quote from The Banality of Genius. A great read.

A good song or album – or novel or painting – seems authoritative and inevitable, as if it just had to be that way, but it rarely feels like that to the people making it.

Wow, these knitted products from Raw Color in the Netherlands are amazing.

“Communicating Climate Change through fabrics”

I love it.

Speaking of white privilege, here’s a confession. A couple weeks ago I was standing in front of the first aid section at my local pharmacy. I don’t know why then, why now, but it struck me that all the band aids are white. And I wondered what do people of color do? So I looked and indeed found (a few) appropriately coloured bandages.

I wasn’t seeing them until I thought to look.

Something to think about.

This title caught my attention today: All Your Favorite Cartoon Characters Are Black.

My white brain did not comprehend what was happening until I was half way into the article. I have never considered that people of color will perceive color in places where white people are discouraged from seeing it, imagined or not.

Untraining is a slow process.

A few weeks ago, my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary. It also happens that I’ve been developing software professionally for 25 years. I thought I knew what I was doing then, which could be said for both love and work. I can see now that I didn’t, not really. And that’s OK.

I may not be one of the cool kids anymore. But here’s one thing I’ve learned.

You have to allow for change. For yourself, definitely. But most importantly, for others around you. Especially the people you love and care about. One of the greatest gifts you can give someone you love is the freedom to change. Allow for them to try out ideas, evolve who they are, and even change their mind. Let them challenge you.

And when that happens, step up to the plate. Keep learning something new every day. Stay curious, challenge your assumptions, avoid stagnation. And that’s true for love and work too.

France is starting to ban plastic packaging of fruits and vegetables. The numbers seem to show that consumers don’t want it, bringing into question why the practice started in the first place. Let’s hope other countries follow suit. Canada, I’m looking at you.

Silly news title of the day:

UK shoppers shun plastic bags to save pennies not the planet, study finds

That’s capitalism 101: financial incentives always work. That’s exactly why it’s a good idea to charge for things we want to discourage people from doing, and why waiting for people to spontaneously want sustainable choices is the wrong approach.

Today Gruber posted a link to something he wrote 10 years ago, about his son and cherishing those moments when your kids are young.

And you know, sure it would be nice to go back to when my kids were kids. But they are adults today, and they still want to go to the movies with me, still want to play games and build Legos with me. In fact, we have been doing just that during these holidays.

I’m still cherishing those moments. Can’t complain.

This title says it all:

The Amazon is the Planet’s Counterweight to Global Warming, a Place of Stupefying Richness Under Relentless Assault

Some areas of the planet should belong to and be managed by the international community, not just one country.

For several years I’ve been wondering what’s wrong with me that I can’t hear what they’re saying in movies. At home I now often rewind and turn on captions.

Apparently it’s a real thing, not my imagination! And this piece does an amazing job at researching and explaining it. What a great read.

I feel better now. 😁

I’ve always been a big fan of The Beatles and am looking forward to watching Peter Jackson’s take. This quote from this piece in The Guardian captures how I feel:

Part of you is filled with regret: you want to urge the four of them to find a way to keep going, if only for a little longer; you pine for all the songs that went unwritten and unsung.

That reminds of Steve Jobs too. I sometimes wonder at all the things he would have come up with that we’ll never get to see.

Unbelievable words for incredible times in The Guardian:

We could destroy the machines that destroy this planet. If someone has planted a time bomb in your home, you are entitled to dismantle it. More to the point, if someone has placed an incendiary device inside the high-rise building where you live, and if the foundations are already on fire and people are dying in the cellars, then many would believe that you have an obligation to put the device out of action.

I like—as in, not really—the Scottish take: “Still on the road to hell.” More at 11.

I bought a color laser printer coming up on 4 years ago. Never changed the original toner cartridges. It’s been yelling at us for years that ink is low but somehow we keep on printing. I find that endlessly entertaining, but you have to wonder what kind of racket this ink/toner business is.

In this week of COP26, I’m happy to announce that my app Climateer is now available in the App Store. It presents the climate data in a familiar timeline, letting you see what’s happening with data pulled directly from sources like NASA and NOAA.

I started working on this app 3 years ago with the goal of simply showing our carbon budget countdown. Then instead of shipping it I kept adding more features. Finally I got around to polishing it up so it can be released, and I hope some of you will find it useful.

Dr. Eleanor Janega, referencing the seeming inevitability of capitalism:

None of this was inevitable, and none of it is permanent. We are simply prevented from achieving this through the interests of the wealthy.

It’s super interesting that her conclusion on capitalism is the same conclusion Dr. Genevieve Guenther comes to regarding climate change:

To think of climate change as something that we are doing, instead of something we are being prevented from undoing, perpetuates the very ideology of the fossil-fuel economy we’re trying to transform.

I can’t believe the Paris Agreement was drawn already 6 years ago.

Today, 2015 seems an age ago, before the climate monsters Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro became heads of government, before the Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion and Greta Thunberg’s public protests, before so many floods, so many fires, so many broken heat records. We stopped talking about climate chaos as the future and acknowledged it as the present.

Speaking of the media, they are currently obsessed with the “will COP26 change anything” narrative. This is a depressing and dangerous angle to peddle. News media play a huge role in popular perception. I’m always baffled that they seem oblivious to it.

Every once in a while a narrative emerges from the media that feels like it came out of nowhere and who has time to dig and fact-check it. I just finished reading this terrific piece that does.

The media has tremendous power to shape public opinion. Reporters and editors should not just be aware of their ability to spread moral panics. They should be terrified of it.

I received today a Sonos One SL that I ordered a few days ago. It’s my first Sonos and I’m happy with the sound level and quality. But most of all I’m happy there is still a market for so-called “dumb” technology that you can’t talk to and that can’t communicate with Google or Amazon. Now how about a dumb TV?

“Which climate future will we choose” indeed.

Sending warm hugs to all the COP26 representatives.

The expression “climate protesters” doesn’t put the focus on the right thing. They’re not protesting against climate, they’re protesting human activity that destroys the climate and the environment, which ultimately leads to our doom. Maybe we need a word that encompasses all of that?

I’m not much for piling it on but I find it hard to disagree with anything from Gruber’s take on the Safari 15 tabs:

[T]he first job of any tab design ought to be to make clear which tab is active. I can’t believe I had to type that sentence. But here we are.

These tabs are indeed a terrible UI in many regards, and I have the same gripes about which tab is active, the favicon doubling as close button, and the general disorientation. I also think that the Apple trend to hide UI elements is a failure of design.

But on top of that I’ve been deploring Apple seemingly making changes for the sake of change. It used to be evolutionary and it kept my device feeling new. But things have changed. Many updates from Apple now feel arbitrary and unproductive. To the point where it now makes me feel like I don’t own my device.

Because at any point Apple may decide to ship an update to something I’ve grown to really like that breaks my relationship with it and I find myself having to rebuild that relationship. The Safari 15 tabs are like that. I didn’t ask for this change, but it’s forced on me. I work in tech, but my mother doesn’t. If I have difficulty with some of these changes, how is my mother supposed to feel like she has any kind of grip on technology?

The aim of design is to make things for people that they find intuitive and pleasurable to use. At a very basic level, it is to solve people problems. That is what is being lost here.