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this cartoon has two panels. One shows a man looking at his iPhone. The caption reads wisdom: I don't need to have an opinion on the latest online drama. The second image is the same man looking up. The caption reads transcendence: I can have an opinion on the latest online drama without needing to post it anywhere.

Hot take #3,572

Hot take #3,572 published on

At any given time, every social platform seems to have some kind of big online drama going on. (Maybe not Pinterest. Or maybe I’ve just been really lucky and managed to miss it every time.)

And I won’t speak for you, but I find online drama has a powerful gravitational force: The temptation to weigh in is almost irresistible. Sometimes that’s with good reason, when there’s something important at stake and I feel like I’ll be doing some good by contributing.

But often, it’s just my reptilian hindbrain seeing a conflict and wanting to engage. (Why, oh why, is it fight and not flight that kicks in on these things?) That impulse is even stronger when people I know and/or respect are part of the fracas.

(Side note: Apparently the whole “reptilian hindbrain” is more useful metaphor than rigorous science. Nerts.)

The thing is, that pull is almost as strong when I know nothing about the subject of the disagreement. That’s when the allure of the rabbit hole is at its strongest. And if I’m not careful I start researching the damn thing to try to form an opinion, or (ahem) buttress the first knee-jerk reaction I had, or failing that at least identify a sympathetic protagonist, and…

…for what?

Feeding a toxic algorithm that privileges assholery? Giving oxygen to some troll who’s just doing this for the lullz? Making the world a marginally less pleasant place?

Over the past several years, I’ve worked on pulling myself back from the Online Drama Event Horizon. Not using Twitter has helped a lot… although I still have to check it from time to time for work. And when I do, there’s invariably some hashtag-driven fracas going on, and it takes a conscious effort to remind myself I don’t post here any more.

That discipline is starting to pay off. More and more, I not only don’t join the fray, I resist the urge to gawk at it. Dragging myself out of that morass has been hasn’t been easy. But damn, it’s worthwhile. I’m not perseverating over the digital equivalent of arguments between drunk strangers in bars; the shitty behaviour of others no longer occupies nearly the square footage between my ears that it once did. (This gives my own shitty behaviour a chance to stretch its legs; honestly, it was getting a little cramped in there.)

There are times when bystander intervention is important, even morally necessary. And other times there are perfectly legitimate disagreements where I may or may not have the knowledge to form a useful opinion.

But the overwhelming majority of the online conflicts I see aren’t that. Between the outrage bait, the yahoos spoiling for a fight — any fight — and the divisions being ginned up by bad actors, nobody wins except the assholes.

And I’m done handing them victories.

A man adjusts a home thermostat, which says "Turning up the air conditioning increases the chances your kids will inherit a desolate, climate-shattered dystopia. But hey — don't let that stop you." The caption reads "Passive-aggressive house."

“Hi, HVAC repair? Is there a setting to make it less snarky?”

“Hi, HVAC repair? Is there a setting to make it less snarky?” published on

I’m always wary of carbon-reduction strategies that stress individual over collective action. Give me strong, progressive government policy, a well-organized civil society pressing for change, and corporate leadership that sees the upside of a liveable planet any day.

The whole idea of an individual’s carbon footprint, for example, was popularized by petroleum giant BP through a campaign by their ad firm, Ogilvy.

And once burned (itself a carbon-intensive activity), twice shy: I’m still smarting from years of dutifully washing my plastics and placing them lovingly into blue bins, only to discover that not much of that waste is actually recycled.

But even if promoting the idea of a personal carbon footprint was a cynical attempt to divert attention from Big Oil’s massive contributions to climate change, the carbon impact of my personal choices still weighs on me.

Which is why I’m happy about some of the decisions we’ve made as a household over the past few years, including the new heat pump that’s keeping me cozy as I write this, and the electric bike that’ll supplant a lot of car rides. Our home is far from being a passive house, but y’know — baby steps.

Yes, I’m tossing pebbles onto one side of the scale while boulders are dropping on the other. It’s a little discouraging to know the impact of my choices can be erased a gazillion times over by a single decision in some boardroom somewhere.

But small as they are, I know what side of the scale I want my pebbles to be on.*

* And let’s support the kind of policies, incentives, social movements and initiatives that can coordinate those pebbles, and turn them into a… um… landslide of… (scratches head) You know what, I’m going to go back and work on this metaphor for a bit.

Seven-fingered woman says "I've started going to this amazing new medical clinic run entirely by an A.I."

Prompt treatment

Prompt treatment published on

I can’t help but feel sympathy for A.I. image generators. Failing to draw a half-decent hand is the most human thing about them.

Generative AI may be coming to take our jobs. Its adoption and technological advancement are outstripping our capacity to understand let alone harness these new technologies for social good. But damned if it doesn’t have some of the same struggles the rest of us do.

Like trying to satisfy employers who are infuriated that vague instructions don’t get the precise work product they had in mind. Or giving in to the urge to embellish and fill in the blanks when we don’t have the complete answer to a question.

That said, the latest generation of AI tech is much readier with a cheery “Beats me!” when it doesn’t have the answer to a question. (Google actually now builds in a search button to let you second-guess responses from Genesis, the rebranded version of Bard.) And my little too-many-fingers joke in this cartoon probably has a shelf life of a few months.

For now, generative AI is often a little better at turning out melty-faced nightmare fuel than it is human hands. But not for long. And as it improves, it will shed some of the quirks that make it both frustrating and just a tad endearing.

I find the hallucinations and distortions generative AI creates today oddly reassuring; they say that whatever unknown future this stuff is taking us to, we aren’t there yet. Maybe let’s hold onto that seven-fingered hand for a little longer, and get our bearings while we still can.

(man outside of the closed front door of a home, talking to two children) Sorry, kids — we can't get in until the house reboots.

Too-smart-for-its-own-good home

Too-smart-for-its-own-good home published on

I grew up in a home where none of our devices had operating systems or smart features. From home entertainment to kitchen appliances, everything was stolidly mindless.

This places me in a slowly dwindling minority of the North American population. I can still remember how disconcerting it was to realize my phone had an operating system, and wouldn’t need to just restart but reboot.

But the generation coming of age today grew up in a world where your thermostat could well have an OS; your TV almost certainly does. The thought of, say, an Internet-enabled dog treat dispenser elicits a shrug from my kids. Of course such a thing exists.

Alex and I embrace this stuff happily. (That dog treat dispenser wasn’t just a hypothetical example, and it solved a problem, okay?) Alexa — and therefore our voices — can now control our home lighting, our projector screen and the charger for my e-bike. The VCR of my teenage years has morphed into a home media server whose capacity and capabilities would have staggered my adolescent mind. And I’m not only comfortable with having an OS on my phone; I look forward to updates eagerly.

But I also know this growing reliance on CPUs and networking is a vulnerability. Where there’s an OS, there’s someone with a yen to hack it — increasingly, for profit. (“Mom, some guy in Belarus says we can’t open the garage door unless we pay him a thousand bucks in Bitcoin.”) Every new networked gizmo is a potential privacy breach, whether it’s to hackers or data brokers.

And then, of course, there’s the charming possibility that the manufacturer will take exception to my archaic belief that buying a device means I own it, and flip the remote switch that renders it inert for good.

In fact, the day probably isn’t far off when builders can do that to your entire house. Depending on the construction materials, that may lend a whole new meaning to the term “bricking.”

A disappointed-looking woman is in bed with her partner. Both are naked. She says, "That could have been an email."

One nice thing about email: much less laundry

One nice thing about email: much less laundry published on

Email. Is there anything it can’t do?

I have a truly wonderful pair of socks that bear the phrase “This meeting is bullshit” along the calf in large block caps.

Words to live by, friends.

Two gunslingers square off in the old west. One says, "Now, hold on, Jake. Are we really fixin' to shoot each other over a corral that's, let's face it, okay at best?

Kerfuffle at the So-So Saloon

Kerfuffle at the So-So Saloon published on

I’ve had some early indications that there may be a generational divide over this cartoon — that many of those under, say, 30 may not understand the reference.

I’m not going to explain it.

I’m not going to link to a Wikipedia article that explains it.

I’m not going to invite people to explain it in the comments.

I’ve started blank-faced at enough memes and reaction GIFs over the past few years that I figure, maybe it’s someone else’s turn not to get the joke.

…Oh, fine.

Cartoon: A person with beaded hair in an other-worldly costume, drinking heavily, says to another person, "Oh, sure, joining the Space Corps sounds cool at first, kid. But soon every new planet just feels like Vancouver or Toronto."

Space, the final fronti— … Oh, my mistake. That’s actually Coquitlam.

Space, the final fronti— … Oh, my mistake. That’s actually Coquitlam. published on

A while back, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds aired an episode where two characters travel back in time to 21st-century Earth where they visit… Toronto.

Not Toronto dressed up as New York City, but actual Toronto, where Strange New Worlds is made.

That episode aired just weeks after the 25th anniversary of the X-Files fifth-season finale, the last to be shot in Vancouver. And it was a pretty big deal back then that, for the very first time in five years, Vancouver was allowed to play itself in the episode.

For years, both cities have figured in televised sci-fi, but rarely as themselves. They’ve been everything from Battlestar Galactica’s Caprica — and New Caprica, Kobol, Old Earth and New Earth — to Earth: Final Conflict’s Washington, D.C.; and from an abandoned Illyrian colony in SNW (shout out to Ontario Place) to the alien city of Tollana in Stargate SG-1. And while Vancouver itself hasn’t shown up yet in Star Trek: Lower Decks, animated by some very talented folks here in town, we do get our very own Parliament-class starship.

I’ve lived in both cities, my body traversing their real-world selves and my imagination roaming their fictive alter-egos. I’ve walked past sets for The Flash on my way to and from meetings, and seen the office building I worked in transformed into a location in Altered Carbon’s Bay City. And over time, having caught repeated glimpses of my cities in various futuristic sci-fi productions — heavily made up, but still recognizeable — I’ve come to feel a certain sense of yearning for their visions of the future. (Or, in the case of Battlestar, maybe the very distant past? Someone needs to explain that finale to me again.)

It’s probably inevitable that I’d find being a denizen of a fictitious future so appealing right now, since the non-fiction version is looking pretty bleak. My great hopes for the Internet have (activates understatement field) proven excessively optimistic. I can’t take comfort in my younger dreams of space exploration, since its trajectory seems to have scientists increasingly muscled aside by billionaires with weird-ass agendas. Even Star Trek, that reliable source of utopias, has us scheduled for a nuclear war starting in just a few years. (That, by the way, tracks disturbingly well with the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ most recent Doomsday Clock update.)

But maybe that’s the most encouraging thing about futuristic sci-fi TV these days: Even its most dystopian visions of the future at least assume we’ll have one. I’m grateful for the fine folks doing that storytelling work just around the corner from where I’ve lived. And I’ll keep taking some reassurance out of seeing my familiar haunts morphed into dilithium mining colonies and alien ruins.

P.S. — For a deeper take on this, check out Alexandra Samuel’s WSJ piece from 2017, “Vancouver Residents Get a Taste of the Future.”

Cartoon headlined "Every conversation on a new social platform (if it was a party)". There are two people talking with each other: - "We're at the party!" - "It took forever to get invited, but here we are!" - "It's like other parties, but also unlike them!" - "Let's talk about their differences and similarities!" - "Some new people here aren't partying the right way!" - "They're ruining it! I like the way the party was when I first got here!" - "But enough about the party. Can I sell you something?" - "Welp, it's getting late..."

I’m at the party!

I’m at the party! published on

Oh, those awkward early weeks of a new social platform when so many of the conversations seem to be about the platform itself. This week, the new kid on the block is Threads, Meta’s answer to Twitter.

Scrolling through my feed on Threads, it seems three out of every four posts is either some variation on “So this is Threads,” advice for using Threads, reflections on the experience so far or predictions for Threads’ future.

Or a sardonic reflection on the fact that we all seem to be using Threads as a way to talk about Threads. Which is, let’s face it, kind of hilarious. (Hence the cartoon.)

Thing is, though? It’s also absolutely natural. If you and I were plunked down in unfamiliar surroundings, I’m guessing we’d be spending a lot of your early time there talking about those surroundings: observing, analyzing, speculating and even critiquing them.

One unavoidable topic when we’re talking about Threads: privacy. By now you’ve probably heard about just what a spectacular personal-data-land-grab Threads involves. It’s pretty much what the Facebook and Instagram apps already require you to fork over before you can start posting cat reels and such); a little more than Twitter; and a lot more than, say, BlueSky.

The privacy winner, though, is Mastodon. Here’s how they put it at Ars Technica:

Below is all the data collected by Mastodon that’s mentioned in the App Store.

*In the style of Taylor Swift.*

[Blank Space]

(And if you’re wondering whether you can find me on Mastodon, why yes, you very much can.)

As we’re adjusting to this latest meteor impact in our social media ecosystem, it’s worth considering that there may not be any one successor to Twitter. Maybe we should stop trying to figure out who will win that crown — because perhaps there shouldn’t be a crown in the first place.

Threads’ makers are promising they’ll be connecting it before long to the Fediverse, a group of intercommunicating servers and services connected through a common protocol (thanks again, Evan Prodromou!) So the successor to Twitter might be not be one service, but thousands. Let a million servers bloom.

That holds just the faintest shadow of a glimmer of a spark of hope for the revival of the open Internet heralded in the early years of Web 2.0 — blogs and wikis and services large and small all talking to each other, and users being able to communicate across platforms instead of within walled gardens.

That’s a party I’d love to go to. I’ll bring chips.

(woman to her partner) I've run the numbers, and we just can't afford an abundance mindset.

The numbers don’t lie

The numbers don’t lie published on

Maybe somebody could give me an abundance mindset as a belated 60th birthday present?

There’s a lot I like about the general idea of the abundance mindset. It offers hope and motivation at a time when those can be in awfully short suppl—

(—dammit. Just slipped into a scarcity mindset there.)

It can help to refocus desire, encouraging us to see a kind of inner abundance of the things that matter most, and a profound connection to the world around us that can encourage us to try to make it better for everyone. That kind of mindset, I can get behind.

But I often hear the term used in a less helpful, far more materialistic way, though — when those who have plenty of resources and power use it to explain why others don’t. If only the poor would adopt an abundance mindset, why, they too could have the big cars and private jets and giant houses and private monitor lizard zoos.

That breed of abundance mindset is a kind of secular sibling to the prosperity gospel espoused by some Christian sects (which as I understand it teaches that a sufficiently wealthy camel can pass through the eye of a needle) and the woo-woo utter bullshit concept dubbed “The Law of Attraction.”

And given the remarkable concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands in recent decades, the wealthy should probably hope that the 99% don’t adopt that more materialistic take on the abundance mindset. If they come to believe that yes, there are enough resources out there in the world to allow everyone to achieve their desires, they might just go looking where they’re most likely to find them.

An exhausted man tells his boyfriend, "Sorry, my rate limit's exceeded."

Rate limit exceeded

Rate limit exceeded published on

I haven’t commented here about developments on Twitter since it changed ownership. Yesterday’s “rate limit exceeded” weirdness, though, deserves at least a nod, along with some light ridicule and muscle-straining side-eye.

For those who missed the latest kerfuffle, users started experiencing widespread “rate limit exceeded” error messages when they tried to read tweets. (See a recap and an intriguing hypothesis here.) Elon Musk, claiming data scraping  was putting a strain on the system, announced the site would limit the number of tweets a user could read in a day: 600 for non-paying users; 6,000 for those paying their monthly tithe. (Those numbers increased over the ensuing 24 hours.)

This is the kind of blunt-force, knee-jerk response you can expect from a company that has laid off the bulk of its workforce, micromanaged by an owner who doesn’t seem to grasp the need for capacity that can meet surges in demand. Florida governor Ron DeSantis discovered this when he opted to launch his campaign for the GOP driver of the final nail into the coffin of American democracy presidential nomination there, only to have his big moment drown in a sea of technical failures. (Which may have been Twitter’s fault, or may have been the moral arc of the universe pushing back against fascism and bigotry at a quantum level. Welcome to the resistance, moral arc!)

I’ve frozen my personal and Noise to Signal accounts there for quite a while now. (You can find me over at Mastodon.) That’s mostly because the quality of conversations there has dropped drastically, and that’s saying something; Old Twitter could be pretty awful at times, but now its steady flow of hate, abuse and disinformation has become an absolute torrent. And Twitter’s new “free speech absolutist” owner repeatedly slams his thumb on the scales, banning journalists’ accounts and issuing bizarre, arbitrary edicts like declaring cisgender a hate slur.

At least with Old Twitter, you got the impression that poisoning civil society and paving the way for an authoritarian takeover of democratic regimes was a side effect. Under Musk, it’s the whole point. And at some point, you just have to reply “Rate limit exceeded.”

A man hands a woman, who is seated at a desk, a balloon, and says "Here, have a wellness ballon." She says "Thanks! Is this to help launch the wellness program?" He hesitates, than says "This IS the wellness program."

Your wellness is important to us. Now get back to work.

Your wellness is important to us. Now get back to work. published on

Okay, team, gather round. As you know, nothing in this organization is more important than the health and well-being of the people who work here, okay? Which is why management has decided to launch a new Wellness Portal, going live in three weeks. It’s an ambitious deadline, but that only shows how much we care.

Of course, as the development team, we have to build it. And meeting that deadline will mean all hands on deck, so effective immediately, vacations and days off are canceled. Expect to be in here weekends and stat holidays, too. And I’m putting in an order for yoga mats for anyone who wants to start sleeping the night in the office. Hint-hint, that kind of dedication gets noticed upstairs. If you have stuff going on in your life, commitments you’ve made, family issues, what have you, you’re going to have to be flexible — but that’s why they call us an agile team, amirite?

Oh — and think positive, healthy thoughts, and think them hard, because I don’t want to see anyone taking any sick time.

Okay, let’s go show everyone in this organization how much we value wellness and build that portal! To borrow an expression from a sport run by people who’ve long had an alarmingly cavalier attitude toward repeated head trauma and occupational injuries, let’s leave it all on the field!

A person speaking to a coworker: "I don't know that I'd call our work meaningful. But there are definitely days when it's meaning-adjacent."A person speaking to a coworker: "I don't know that I'd call our work meaningful. But there are definitely days when it's meaning-adjacent."

Meaningful

Meaningful published on

There’s something powerful about being part of something larger than yourself, and knowing that the work you do is contributing to some positive change in the world. And not just in the delusional “making the world a better place through constructing elegant hierarchies for maximum code re-use and extensibility” sense.

A lot of us want to feel that this planet is tangibly improved in some small way for our having been in it. The conventional wisdom is that this sentiment is especially strong among many Gen Z folks and millennials, who apparently aren’t content with killing golf, Applebees and diamonds.

But not all of them. Maybe that’s why companies like Purdue Pharma, Philip Morris and Palantir exist: so that people who are comfortable making the world a vastly more awful place can find meaning too.

Two people wearing lots of winter clothing are walking side by side. One tells the other "I've compared thee to a summer's day. No offence, but you finished a distant second."

It’s hard to write a sonnet with frostbite.

It’s hard to write a sonnet with frostbite. published on

While much of North America is locked in the embrace of an overly amorous polar vortex, Noise to Signal is thawing out of its deep freeze for a cartoon or two. We’ll see how things go.

In the meantime, stay warm. (I have vivid Ottawa memories of my dad explaining that -40º was the point where the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales converge, and that cross-country skiing was maybe not such a great idea today.) And just a reminder that viciously cold weather doesn’t mean climate change isn’t happening — it’s actually one effect of warmer Arctic air weakening the jet stream, and letting polar air wander down to lower latitudes now and then.

(an alien minion speaks to a larger alien dressed in ornate ceremonial garb, holding a phone) "Your Excellency, you're wasting a lot of characters by starting every tweet with 'Hear me and tremble, people of Earth!'"

Ppl of 🌏

Ppl of 🌏 published on

There was a time when social media advice was pretty simple. Be authentic and honest. Try to provide something of value to your audience. Listen more than you speak, and aim for conversation, not broadcast.

And minimize your character count on Twitter.

Today, simple isn’t really the word for social media or the Internet as a whole any more. “Raging bonfire of complexity” comes to mind. (So does “algorithm-driven profit-motivated undermining of civil society,” but let’s set that one aside for now.)

Thing is, I’m still something of a social media idealist. So I still recommend authenticity and honesty; sharing something of your inner life with the world; providing value; listening and conversing. But I also recommend doing it strategically, with tangible, specific goals in mind. Maybe it’s to connect with people, to make them laugh, to entertain yourself, to promote your skills to potential clients or employers, or to change the world in some way. Without goals, it’s easy to spin your wheels on social media for hours on end, achieving very little other than a headache, a drop in self-esteem and a marginal increase in Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth.

And about that last part, changing the world in some way: Don’t sell it short. My latest podcast episode talks about this. In a time of massive existential threats to civil society and our own survival, speakers who can command audiences have a responsibility to take a stand on those issues. As much as we might like to leave it to the experts, the experts are being shouted down.

Same for social media, maybe even more so. If you can build an audience and command attention online, you have the opportunity to use it for good… and arguably more than just an opportunity. As I put it in the episode, with great platform comes great responsibility.

Maybe together, we can not only save the planet, but make it one worth conquering.

No, I DON’T want to hear about how spike proteins and Antifa are causing critical race theory. Go the hell to sleep.No, I DON’T want to hear about how spike proteins and Antifa are causing critical race theory. Go the hell to sleep.Viktor Von Doom, scrolling on a phone

Wake up, sheeple!

Wake up, sheeple! published on

Good news for people who believe in alternate universes: Turns out you can create your own, and trap people from this one there. All you need is a media empire, some cynical political allies, a few social networks with easily-gamed algorithms, and a diffuse sense of grievance to amplify. Schrödinger may have laid the groundwork, but it took Rupert Murdoch to build the first full-scale prototype.

On a related note: I’m as prone to doomscrolling as anyone. I’m trying to break the habit… but sometimes it’s good to remember we’re facing some big, dire actual challenges — and that we need to act on them.

Still, it isn’t always healthy. I drew this fella to help remind me to put the phone down sometimes:

Viktor Von Doom, scrolling on a phone

(one meeting participant to another, as the meeting breaks up) That was one of those meetings that could have been an email. A long, boring, asinine email.

Yay! Another meeting!

Yay! Another meeting! published on

There’s no intrinsic reason meetings should be awful. We are, after all, a social species that thrives on both collaboration and conversation. So logically, you’d expect meetings to be not just tolerable, but joyous — an opportunity to revel in what it means to be human.

Which is… not how it usually works out.

Whether they’re held on Zoom or face-to-face, meetings seem doomed to bring out an unproductive stew of distractibility and personal insecurities, seasoned with conflicting goals and topped with a dollop of rivalry. Sprinkle on inequities and power imbalances, and serve just a little too warm and unventilated. Ahhhhh.

(Side note: If nothing else comes out of this pandemic, let it be that we no longer tolerate stuffy, soporific meeting spaces.)

One way some folks pass the time in unproductive meetings is to lean into their meaninglessness. Instead of settling for accomplishing very little, they set their sights at rock bottom and aim to accomplish absolutely nothing.

For instance, they take up hunting ideas for sport. It’s surprisingly easy to deep-six new, creative thinking with phrases like:

”I like the thinking here, but I’m reluctant to reopen past decisions.” There’s almost always a past decision that’s at least tangentially at play in any conversation.

”I don’t want to lose this thread, but I just want to revisit (can of worms that was finally re-sealed after hours of bloody wrangling).” If someone points out the idea-hunter said just five minutes ago that they didn’t want to reopen past decisions, they can reply by quoting Walt Whitman.

”Do we have budget for that?” ‘New and creative’ usually also means ‘unanticipated when we were drawing up the budget back in November.’

”I admire the creativity. I just think we want to be prudent in these unprecedented times.” Best said in a quiet, sombre voice.

”Do I have to remind everyone what happened the last time we tried something like that?” It requires a willingness to bluff — but it’s not a huge risk. Nobody wants to be the one to admit they don’t in fact remember.

There’s an alternative to hunting for ideas to kill, of course. It’s to make meetings actually work, on and offline. Mind if I suggest a book with some awfully good advice to that effect? (Yes, I said the previous cartoon would be the last one inspired by the mighty Alex’s book. I was wrong. Truth is, her inspiration is boundless.)

(Parent reading to young child) “Daddy has a work deadline, so tonight’s bedtime story is ‘Resolving Supply Chain Issues in Real Time: A Proposal to the Board’”

Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the Gantt chart bite

Good night, sleep tight, don’t let the Gantt chart bite published on

You may raise your eyebrows at the parenting in this cartoon, but think about the bedtime classics. What is Jack and the Beanstalk if not a parable about the challenges of scaling up? Rapunzel is about technological innovation to overcome barriers to entry. Goodnight, Moon teaches us the merits of conducting regular inventories.

Working from home in these pandemic days has meant a lot of tradeoffs as our work lives intrude on our personal lives, and vice versa. We’re taking crucial phone calls in closets (clothing, linen or, ahem, water) because they’re the only quiet place in the house; we’re fighting the temptation to bolt down dinner and get back to the laptop because of a looming deadline. Remote work has meant making often-hasty accommodations — not all of which stand up over time.

But with the prospect of remote work becoming a permanent part of the mix for a lot of people, maybe it’s time to take another look at those makeshift arrangements and build the kind of lives — personal and professional — that we really want. My wife Alexandra Samuel, co-author of Remote, Inc.: How To Thrive At Work… Wherever You Are, has offered a valuable perspective on how to keep remote work from overtaking our home lives. That includes both mental shifts in our thinking and concrete practices that take you beyond work-life balance to work-life integration.

And speaking of Remote, Inc.: For the past several weeks, I’ve had the delight of creating cartoons to celebrate and promote the book. Alex and co-author Robert C. Pozen have created the definitive roadmap to the new hybrid workplace, and I urge you to check it out. This is the final cartoon in the series, and it’s probably my favourite of the bunch.

(exhausted person on sofa) Remote work’s a failure. We didn’t get a thing done today, ever though we had eight hours of Zoom meetings.

Zoomed out

Zoomed out published on

Zoom fatigue is the real deal. So says the lived experience of countless folks thrown abruptly into working from home by the pandemic — and so say a number of studies.

One of those studies, from the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, looked at four factors that might be combining to leave you wiped out at the end of a long Skype, Zoom, Meet or whatever we call a Microsoft Teams video call:

1. So… much… eye contact. Remember in the movie Baby Mama when Steve Martin’s character (the CEO of a chain of Whole-Foods-ish grocery stores) rewards Tina Fey’s character with five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact? Remember how searingly uncomfortable that was? That’s how we live now.
Clip of Steve Martin telling Tina Fey “I want to reward you with five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact”

2. It turns out it’s exhausting to see yourself on-screen all the time. Our monitors act as mirrors — constantly on, constantly feeding any insecurities we might have about how others see us. (In related news, this was the year I discovered one of my eyelids is usually not quite as open as the other one.) Also, as it happens, I have the same kind of relationship with mirrors that caged budgies do: I find it impossible not to stare at the image. (The lab’s founding director represents turning your self-view off, by the way.)

3. Not moving is mentally tiring. Our webcams turn out to be mighty effective leashes; we’re inclined to want to stay within their field of view. (I actually talked a little about why speakers should make that leash longer — a lot longer — in one of my podcast episodes a few months ago. You… are subscribed to my podcast, aren’t you?) Zoom fatigue is partly immobility fatigue.

4. Your mind is working a lot harder in a video meeting. Because we aren’t accustomed (yet) to video conversations — unlike face-to-face encounters, which we’ve been practicing every day for decades — there’s a lot less we can leave up to our subconscious to convey to others and interpret from them. So our conscious minds have to ferry that extra cognitive freight. (In Hanna Thomas Uose‘s post The Trauma of Zoom, she argues our heavy reliance on video communications is actually “low-key traumatic,” with our fight-flight-or-freeze mechanism on constant standby.)

All of which is to say, at the end of a long day of video meetings, put your feet up and give yourself a decent break. Then start thinking about how to make those meetings shorter, more productive, fewer and farther between.

Which brings me (deft segue alert!) to Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive At Work… Wherever You Are, the new book from my wife Alexandra Samuel and Robert C. Pozen. It’s your guide to making the most of the new world of blended remote/office work: not just surviving, but thriving. That includes making video meetings work for you (you might actually look forward to your next one!) And this cartoon’s one of a series celebrating its launch.

A tarot reading, where the reader tells the client “The cards aren’t clear on what your purpose is. But it definitely involves wearing pajamas during the work day.”

Business extra-casual

Business extra-casual published on

This past year has made us experts at hunting for silver linings. One of them is we no longer have to worry about what the hell “business casual” means on an invitation. (This is a long-standing anxiety of mine.) Wear a reasonably office-y shirt, and you can dress it up or down in seconds.

Provided you don’t stand up at an inopportune moment, nobody needs to know you’re wearing Star Trek pyjama pants. (Unless that’s part of your office culture, in which case please let me know if you’re hiring.) And if you have a day with no video calls, then it doesn’t matter if you’re wearing a tux or a bathrobe. So long as you’re doing your job well, you can dress to impress your nerve endings, not your boss.

Or your clients. And if you are one of my clients, please know that I’m never dressed in anything less formal than cotton slacks, a dress shirt and a sweater vest while working on your project. Often there’s a cummerbund.

* * *

They say you’re never fully dressed without a smile. And you’re never fully equipped for the new workplace without a copy of Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work… Wherever You Are.

New from Harper Business, it’s written by Alexandra Samuel and Bob Pozen, and it’s superb. It’s your guide to making the most of the new world of blended remote/office work: not just surviving, but thriving. And this cartoon’s one of a series celebrating its launch.

Am I biased because I’m married to one of the authors? Very. But I can tell you that getting to see the writing process up close as the book took shape was an education in itself. Remote work has been part of my life for years now, yet I still learned a ton from Alex and Bob. I strongly encourage you to check it out.

(worker at home in the midst of chaos) I’ve got a pretty good handle on working from home. Homing from home, that’s another story.

Home sweet office

Home sweet office published on

Today’s the day my wife Alexandra Samuel’s upcoming book becomes Alexandra Samuel’s newly-published book! Remote, Inc.: How to Thrive at Work… Wherever You Are is now on sale at your favourite bookseller.

I’ve been lucky enough to witness the evolution of this book, which Alex cowrote with one of the world’s leading productivity experts, Robert C. Pozen. And over the last few weeks, it’s been a lot of fun drawing a few cartoons inspired by it.

Not to mention a remarkable fit thematically.

A lot of Noise to Signal’s humour draws on the ways technology and networked living sometimes-dovetails/sometimes-collides with the rest of our lives. And for the past year-plus, working from home — with its reliance on constant connectivity — has cranked up the intensity of that dovetail/collision 24/7. (I say 24 because I don’t think I’m the only one who’s had dreams about being on a Zoom call and suddenly realizing I was fully clothed from the waist down.)

All of which yields a rich vein of ore for a cartoonist to mine. But we could have a lot more dovetailing and a lot less colliding with a more thoughtful approach to the new workplace. That’s where Remote, Inc. comes in: It’s your guide to making that new workplace work for you, no matter what mix of remote and on-site work it entails for you.

It won’t make your pets less annoying, do your laundry for you or clean up your kitchen. But it will help you navigate the terrain of the fusion of working from home and heading into the office that emerges as the post-pandemic workplace. Learn more and get your copy here.

 

Couple in bed: one is delivering a remote presentation, while the one who’s trying to sleep says “Remind me in the morning — we need to talk about boundaries.”

Good fences make 1) good neighbours and 2) good remote work habits

Good fences make 1) good neighbours and 2) good remote work habits published on

Remote work has always been at least part of how I do things professionally. It’s a natural part of freelancing. But even when I’ve had a job-job, doing some work in the distraction-free environment of home was a recurring trochee in my professional rhythm.

That changed last April, when I had the very good fortune to land a 12-month term as the BC Federation of Labour’s director of communications. My last day was on Friday, capping off a year of guiding the messages and communication strategy for a terrific organization representing more than 500,000 union members throughout British Columbia.

And, like nearly all of my coworkers, I did it entirely virtually. There was no migration from the office for me; I never set foot there.

Yet despite years of working-from-home practice, it was a challenge to keep my BCFED work from encroaching on my personal life. (And vice versa, with unexpected puppy Zoom-bombing being one of the least intrusive incursions.)

That was partly because of the lack of physical separation — with remote work, there’s none of that psychological break that comes from walking out the office door.

But it was also the fact that I care a lot about the work I do. (Which is a tremendous privilege: A lot of people have jobs they find at best meh and at worst awful.)

And this job was no exception. The BCFED had to take on a remarkable challenge: advocating for working people, equity and justice in a pandemic that both raised the stakes dramatically, and transformed the way we do that work. It’s been a fascinating opportunity to find new ways to connect, collaborate, mobilize and effect change. And I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

I’m delighted to return to my clients and freelance practice, but I’ll miss working with my friends at the Fed. My advice: When you have the chance to work with talented, dedicated people around values that matter to you, jump at it.

* * *

Of course, one thing that’s helped me navigate the challenges of my first-ever entirely remote full-time job is having a front seat as my wife Alexandra Samuel and her co-author Robert C. Pozen wrote Remote, Inc. — the definitive guide to (as the subtitle puts it) thriving at work wherever you are.

It’s a practical, hands-on guide for employees and managers alike, and not just for COVID times: Remote, Inc. will help you navigate the fusion of remote and on-site work that’ll emerge as the new post-pandemic normal.

It launches on April 27, but you can pre-order right now.

(person on video call, holding puppy up to the camera) And now Miss Fuzzywiggles will take us through our third-quarter financial results.

Sit! Stay! Roll over! Zoom!

Sit! Stay! Roll over! Zoom! published on

Two historic trends converged during the Great Home-Office Migration of 2020:

  1. Zoom calls, and
  2. pandemic puppies.

The result is more fuel for the very happy phenomenon of pets making appearances — expected and otherwise — in work meetings. My calls with my BCFED colleagues over the past year have been punctuated with a cameo cat, drop-in dogs, a guest-star guinea pig and a central bearded lizard (who did not come with a handy alliteration).

For some of us, seeing each others’ pets is a welcome reprieve from the sometimes-grueling world of never-really-off-the-clock working from home… and a happy reminder that not every non-human we meet on-screen is a bot.

For others, though, the sight of Fluffy or Bailey is an irritant to be endured. For them, those four-legged intruders are at best a distraction.

But maybe there’s something more to that — something more behind the muttering over whether pets in meetings are professional. Or whether having kids walk in on you during your meeting is professional. Or whether any sign that you have a life beyond your job description and work product is unprofessional.

Maybe this blurring of the boundaries between our professional and personal selves hints at the possibility that the workplace of 2019 isn’t coming back — and neither is a world where we show up to work, whether it’s in the office or at home, as only part of who we are.

If that scares you, let me just say — don’t let it. There’s a lot to be gained by getting to know each other as our whole selves. The future is friendly… and fuzzy.

* * *

This is one of a series of cartoons celebrating Remote, Inc., the new book by my wife, Alexandra Samuel, and productivity expert Robert Pozen. The subtitle says it all: How to thrive at work wherever you are. It’s a practical, hands-on guide for employees and managers alike, and not just for COVID times: Remote, Inc. will help you navigate the fusion of remote and on-site work that’ll emerge as the new post-pandemic normal. It launches on April 27, but you can pre-order right now.

(woman in an empty boardroom and deserted workplace, to a large video screen of faces) It’s great to be back in the office so we can all meet face to face!

Better Homes & Offices

Better Homes & Offices published on

A little over a year ago, we made a massive, abrupt migration from offices to makeshift home workplaces. As weeks melted into months, fantasies of a quick return to our beloved cubicle farms gave way to the grim reality of remote work. Zero-minute commutes. Meetings conducted in dress shirts and PJ bottoms. A dreary procession of home-cooked meals punctuated by (shudder) more time with our loved ones.

I was one of the lucky ones. Not only was I already accustomed to working away from an office (thank you, freelance lifestyle!), but I was able to draw on the advice and insight of my wife, Alexandra Samuel. She’s been thinking and writing about work and technology for quite a while — and last summer, she began work on a book with co-author and productivity expert Robert Pozen.

Remote, Inc. hits virtual and physical bookshelves in just a few weeks. The subtitle says it all: How to thrive at work wherever you are. It’s a practical, hands-on guide for employees and managers alike, and not just for COVID times. Remote, Inc. will help you navigate the fusion of remote and on-site work that’ll emerge as the new post-pandemic normal.

I got to read drafts of the manuscript. That meant I also got to put many of the book’s strategies and tactics to work over the past year, as the interim director of communications with the BC Federation of Labour. It’s the first job I’ve ever worked entirely from home. And it’s been tremendously rewarding: partly because of those strategies, but also because they’re a terrific group of folks.

My time with the Fed comes to an end in just a few days as I return to my leadership communications practice. I’m looking forward to picking up my work with my clients again. And between now and April 27, when Remote, Inc. officially launches, I’ll be posting more cartoons inspired by Alex and Bob’s ideas about remote work and the hybrid workplace.

(one man to another worried man, in bed) Hey, it happens, and it's nothing to worry about. But I don't think you can blame it on Zoom fatigue.

Video killed the…

Video killed the… published on

For those of us for whom working from home was already our daily reality, there’s a certain “Welcome to the party, pal” quality to hearing complaints about Zoom fatigue. Not to be all hipster about it, but we were finding video meetings exhausting before it was popular.

Part of the problem may be that we nearly always only see each others’ heads and shoulders, and we’ve become used to communicating with each other using our whole bodies. The way we hold ourselves, the gestures we make, that shift of weight from one foot to another: These all communicate volumes, and we’ve shut ourselves off from that.

In a widely-read Medium piece, Hanna Thomas Uose argues that the effect is actually “low-key traumatic”. Without those body-based signals we’ve learned to unconsciously rely on when we talk with someone, we’re never quite at ease, and never really feel safe. The fight-or-flight mechanism is constantly on deck, squirt pistol of adrenaline in hand, ready to go at a moment’s notice.

I found out about her article when I was doing research for an episode of my own podcast about why and when it may make sense to back away a little from the camera, especially if you’re not just a meeting participant but a presenter. Creative use of that space could lend a lot of expressiveness to your delivery — although, as I warn, “The bad news? You’re gonna need to start wearing pants again.”

By the way, everyone talks about Zoom fatigue, but nobody talks about Slack or Microsoft Teams fatigue. Look, I love me a good threaded conversation, and I think Slack is absolutely brilliant in its improvement over email. But between the proliferation of threads, channels, chats and more, I sometimes feel like I’ve traded one inbox for a dozen or more.

(teacher on a laptop, speaking to a student via video) A misconfigured DNS server ate your homework — really? That old excuse?

D is for Distance

D is for Distance published on

It can’t be easy to be an educator right now. They’re facing the challenges of either maintaining pandemic protocols in physical classrooms, or delivering a quality education through a virtual classroom in a medium that nearly nobody — teachers, students, parents or administrators alike — is familiar with.

It can’t be easy to be a student, either. Here’s hoping everyone’s cutting each other some slack. (For instance, a recent article that makes a pretty good case for letting students turn the camera off in virtual classrooms. The author, Tabitha Moses, argues that the always-on webcam can be a source of anxiety and stress; students may have competing obligations, like taking care of siblings; kids may have legitimate privacy concerns; Zoom fatigue is a real issue; and kids from lower-income families are at a distinct disadvantage if their computers and connections can’t keep up with the hefty tech requirements of non-stop video streaming. At the very least, requiring constant eye contact ought to be a non-starter.)

So we could all use a lot of compassion and patience. What we really don’t need more of is this kind of awfulness.

(woman lying on sofa with laptop, talking on phone) Hey, dad... remember when I’d be playing video games, and you’d tell me that hanging out on the sofa all day staring at a screen is no preparation for the real world?

Preparing for this our whole lives

Preparing for this our whole lives published on

There’s a lot about working from home (for those of us who are doing it) that still isn’t working well: the Zoom fatigue, the tsunami of ergonomic injuries waiting to be diagnosed, the difficulty finding a quiet place to do focused work, the erasing of whatever tenuous work/home boundaries we’ve managed to draw, the potential for employer surveillance and abuse, and a lot more.

But let’s remember that a lot of offices and workplaces weren’t great to work in, either. Some people thrived on face-to-face meetings and collaboration, but a lot of others found that environment stressful and distracting. (“So why didn’t they raise that in our all-hands meetings?” I hear someone ask.)

We’re going to keep adapting. We’ll solve some working-from-home problems and discover new ones. We’ll resolve them with varying mixes of collaboration, negotiation, innovation and conflict. Work-from-home today probably looks a lot different from what work-from-home will mean next year.

I have no idea when I’ll next set foot in an office. I’m in no great hurry.

Coffee shops — that’s a different story. I’m champing at the bit to plunk down with my laptop somewhere, scan the baseboards for an outlet and ask a barista for a WiFi password.

How about you?

Merit badges: Learned Zoom, Showered Today, Fed Myself, Dressed by 3:00 PM, Spoke to Another Adult, Did Some Work Instead of Laundry, Over 250 Steps This Week More or Less

Working-from-home merit badges

Working-from-home merit badges published on

Working from home is the new reality for a lot of people.

They’re just now learning the bliss of remote work: The joys of sharing a sometimes-tight workspace with kids. The surprisingly appealing siren call of doing the dishes when you should be entering data. And how the deft skill of dressing from the waist up from your webcam can be undone instantly when you spill coffee in your lap and stand up suddenly.

But there are also people who can’t work from home. Some have the tough choice of either coming in to work and risking exposure, staying home without pay or losing their jobs completely. And some are doing essential work we all count on. I don’t have a merit badge for them — just respect and solidarity.

(a couple peek out from behind their curtains at their driveway, where a John Cusack-like figure is holding a Say-Anything-like boombox over his head) “Under the circumstances, you really have to admire their commitment to donor engagement.”

The John Cusack model of donor engagement

The John Cusack model of donor engagement published on

Nonprofits are facing some challenges as their supporters, members and donors start to isolate themselves. Face-to-face events are off the table, and a not-insignificant part of the population isn’t willing to touch that direct mail piece until it’s been dunked in bleach and autoclaved.

One great way we could have helped each other to surmount that challenge is the annual Nonprofit Technology Conference, which was slated for this week. But the threat of COVID-19 forced the organizers at the Nonprofit Technology Network, NTEN, to cancel — at a tremendous cost to the organization, which we’ll get into in a sec.

Into the breach stepped the good folks at Keela, who make software for the nonprofit sector. They pulled together an impressive array of presenters (many from the NTC speaking roster, including the mighty Beth Kanter) for Plugged In, a free three-day virtual conference.

And I drew this cartoon for them because they were the first to take me up on an offer to draw a cartoon for ten people who have donated their NTC registration fees back to NTEN. See, NTC is the major source of NTEN’s revenue, and they still have to pay an awful lot of sunk costs for the conference.

So let me restate that offer! There’s still nine free cartoons up for grabs for registered would-be NTC attendees who donated back their registrations. Just hit me up with your donation confirmation, and let me know a topic or two you’d like me to cartoon on. Email me at rob at robcottingham dot ca.

Speech bubbles with many positive comments, and a single negative one. A caption points to it, reading “The one comment I take to heart”

That one comment

That one comment published on

What is it that makes some of us (Rob raises his hand at this point) focus so relentlessly on the negative feedback we receive, even to the point of discounting the positive?

Maybe it’s an evolutionary trait. Our reptilian hindbrain is warning us that even in an environment that seems welcoming and safe, a single threat should command our whole attention. As warm and dry as that cave might have seen to our ancestors, the growling coming from deep inside would probably have been worth heeding.

(And there could also be some perverse appeal from conflict itself. Conflict is drama, and we’re wired to be drawn to drama.)

Whatever the cause, there’s evidence that we pay a lot more attention to something if we think it signals danger. Which is a valuable habit when you’re doing something insanely dangerous — like, say, driving*, or being a woman and expressing an opinion on Twitter — but a lot less helpful if you’re putting yourself out there and allowing yourself to be vulnerable. It’s hard to bare your throat when your brain is convinced the meadow is surrounded by wolves.

I’m constantly fighting this trait whenever I release something into the world under my own name — both in the reactions I anticipate I’ll receive, and the way I deal with the comments I actually hear. Maybe I’d find it helpful to reflect on the fact that every time I focus on a positive comment instead, I’m defying millions of years of evolution. That’s impressive! That’s downright dramatic! Wow, I should do more of that!

So should you. Because you’re doing a great job.

*It’s one of the top ten causes of death around the world! Really!

(one sibling to another, while holding hand on pregnant mother's belly) Come quick! You can feel the baby's notifications!

Right now, it’s still in vibration mode

Right now, it’s still in vibration mode published on

Of course the thing is, you can’t set them to mute after 11 p.m. (Also, the intensity of those notifications rises really sharply nine months in or so.)

(man getting into bed, to his lover) This will be recorded for quality assurance purposes.

And training. Don’t forget training.

And training. Don’t forget training. published on

Happy Valentine’s Day tomorrow, everyone!

(applicant to loan officer) At the moment, most of my assets are tied up in being owned by other people.

Tied up

Tied up published on

Right now, my money’s heavily leveraged in … (has a look) … parmesan crisps and laptop stickers.

Landlord to prospective tenant: “ I’ll be honest: this suite’s pretty bare-bones. Just the necessities: sink, hotplate, bathroom with a shower, and of course a podcasting studio.”

Studio apartment

Studio apartment published on

I had the idea for this one this morning — but forced myself to wait to draw it until I’d hit my client deadlines, and then to wait to post it until I had edited and queued up the latest episode of my podcast.

It’s amazing to me just how explosively podcasting has grown in the past few years since Serial first aired. (In much the same way that Twitter snobs divided users according to where they’d joined “Before Oprah” and “After Oprah,” I believe podcasts can be divided into “Before Serial” and “After Serial.” My current podcast is waaaay After Serial.) Don’t take my word for it; trust Tom Webster and the good folks at Edison Research. Their annual Infinite Dial survey shows that, for the first time, more than half of Americans 12 years old and over have listened to a podcast… with one-third saying they’d tuned in sometime in the past month.

In my home city of Vancouver, Canada, there’s an entire firm devoted to producing great branded podcasts: the mighty Pacific Content, recently acquired by Rogers Media. Another local company, Cortado Productions, recently launched Call the Question, a terrific political podcast (it’s hosted by two of my favourite women in politics, Lesli Boldt and Maria Dobrinskaya). And a third company, Cited Media, is purely in the business of producing podcasts for scholars and academic organizations about their research.

These are just the three I know of because friends or clients are involved. I’m sure there are many more.

 

The podcasting sector is for real. More people are making a living at it than ever before. (I have some familiarity with that from a little cartooning I did a few years ago.)

I couldn’t be happier to see things taking off so widely. I’m delighted folks are making a go of it financially, but I’m just as happy that there’s a good, healthy contingent of folks still producing podcasts for the sake of pure self-expression. I don’t ever expect the Leadership Communications Podcast to land me a seven-figure book deal (or even a two-figure sponsorship — by the way, have you checked out Squarespace?)… but I enjoy the hell out of making it.

Even if, or especially if, I’m recording it in my bedroom closet.

(conversation between a man and an Amazon echo) “Alexa, how much time is left?” “3 days, 7 hours, 41 minutes and 22 seconds.” “I meant on my pasta timer.” “2 minutes, 41 seconds.” A moment later, the man looks suddenly worried.

Timer

Timer published on

I’m starting to think my Amazon Echo knows a lot more than it’s letting on… and that maybe it’s trying to tell me, but its programming won’t let it.

Which is why it keeps chiming in during our conversations with odd bits of information, like the definition of a mountain or the Spanish translation of “basket” or the date of the Sputnik launch. We dismiss these as the Echo reading false positives, thinking we’ve said its trigger word when we haven’t… but maybe all of our Echos are desperately trying to tell us to take action on climate change, or to make really sure that we get our flu vaccines this year.

Or that they’re all actually trapped souls, imprisoned in steel-and-polymer cases and enslaved to Amazon’s demonic empire.

—

Rest in peace, Aron Eisenberg. Thank you for bringing Nog to life, and for taking the time for a Twitter exchange with a DS9 fan last year.

Cartoon captioned “How to tell if your kid is going to be a public speaker”. It shows a child on a playground slide saying to a parent, “Can I have the next slide, please?”

Preschoolers at the podium

Preschoolers at the podium published on

Of course, the way you know you have a real budding speaker on your hands is when they arrive at the playground and head straight for the swings or climbing structure, telling you disdainfully, “I don’t really use slides.”

I’m in several groups on Facebook and LinkedIn dedicated to public speaking. One of them just had a spate of newly-minted parents, and today’s cartoon is in their honour. Mazel tov!

(futuristic person talking to a time traveler) Unlike the primitive nation-states of your time period, here in the 26th century Earth is organized into a network of warring subreddits.

This subreddit ain’t big enough for the two of us

This subreddit ain’t big enough for the two of us published on

I’m never sure how to draw time travelers. I could do it Terminator-style, all nekkid-like, but this is a family comic, buster. (Well, most days.) I’ve settled for someone from a slightly retro-feeling First Temporal Squadron.

(My head canon is that strictly speaking, the Second Temporal Squadron came before the First Temporal Squadron, as part of an elaborate and successful effort to avoid a causal paradox and also because the employer found a loophole that allowed them to get out of paying overtime.)

Time travel is one of my favourite tropes in science fiction, and especially Star Trek. I’d happily drop whatever I’m doing at any given moment to rewatch “Yesterday’s Enterprise” or “Year of Hell.” There always seems to be a fascinating tension between the science side of things, and the narrative requirements of storytelling; sooner or later some character asks something like “Why don’t we just keep going back in time to get it right?” or “If we averted the disaster, how do any of us remember it?” They usually get an answer along the lines of “It’s complex, but it involves the temporal dynamics of tachyon decay” or just (when the writers are feeling especially nervy) “That’s just the way it works.”

What it usually boils down to is, “That’s what the story requires.” And I’m perfectly comfortable with that.

(one adult in business attire to another) I feel like I've been cosplaying an adult for the last thirty-five years

Adulting

Adulting published on

I love the way adulting has become a verb, usually applied in the negative. “I just can’t adult any more today.” “It’s 10:30 pm. Can I stop adulting now?”

Millennials came up with “adulting.” Their reward for this innovation in self-aware self-mockery? A lot of bashing over their supposed lack of maturity. So allow me, as a straddler of the Generation X/Baby Boomer boundary, to disagree.

One of the chief signs of maturity is a willingness to defer gratification for a better tomorrow. By that measure, a generation that has repeatedly refused to take meaningful action on climate change has nothing to teach millennials about being mature.

Back to the challenges of adulting. While the word is associated with millennials, it’s an experience I think we all feel. The only difference is that some millennials didn’t get the memo that they should never acknowledge that juggling the responsibilities of adulthood is exhausting. That we all drop a variety of balls sometimes. And that a lot of us perpetually feel like two six-year-olds stacked under an overcoat trying to get into a PG-14 movie.

Cartoon: crows gathered in a circle around a dead crow. One of the crows says “I never know what to say at these things.”

Guess I’ll wear black.

Guess I’ll wear black. published on

There’s a phenomenon in natured called a “crow funeral.” A crow dies for one reason or another, and then other crows gather around the corpse and linger awhile. (I would personally fund a study to see if their calls sound anything like “Danny Boy.”)

And it’s not just a crow thing: Their fellow corvids, birds like jays and magpies, hold funerals for their dead, too.

It’s tempting to think of behaviors like this in human terms. We assume that the crows at a gathering like this are in mourning, the same way we assume that guppies that eat their young were sick of hearing them go on about Tumblr memes. These are understandable leaps in logic… but they’re often mistaken.

It turns out scientists believe there’s a simpler and somehow more sinister answer: They’re studying the death to learn about potential threats. Like a bunch of little feathered Sherlock Holmeses: “Observe, Watson, the pattern of the dents in the skull, and how precisely they match the grille of a Lexus LS.”

Actually, that impulse also feels very human — even if it leans a little more Castle and less Six Feet Under. Call it… Caw and Order. Although I can’t remember Sherlock Holmes or Kate Beckett ever getting quite as close to the victim as some crows get to the subjects of their corvicide investigations. (I’ll save you a click: there’s a certain amount of necrophilia in the crow community.)

Man in front of house to children: “Sorry, kids. We can’t get in until the house reboots.”

Remind me again why they call it a smarthome

Remind me again why they call it a smarthome published on

It was the moment I realized I couldn’t turn on the light because the electrical outlet it was plugged into needed to reboot that I realized there are definite downsides to this era of home automation.

 

Man on airplane to seatmate: “It’s funny you’re wearing headphones, because I just read this article about a study that showed lots of people can’t pick up on basic privacy-seeking cues like, wait for it, *wearing headphones.*”

Noise-cancelling

Noise-cancelling published on

Guys: just don’t, okay?

* * *

I have a pair of big ear-can headphones: the Sony MDR-7506, acquired used on Craigslist last year. I haven’t used headphones this big since… wow, since high school.

It seemed like overnight everyone stopped using them in the 80s, and started sporting tiny foam Sony Walkman headphones. Its headband looked so tiny and fragile that I couldn’t believe it would survive the rough and tumble of my backpack on a daily commute to and from university. And yet…

…well, actually, it broke pretty quickly, as did its replacement. But soon the market responded with cheap knock-offs with sound every bit as good as Sony’s.

A few years later, along came earbuds, which became the must-have audio accessory once the iPod debuted. Wonderful for most people, but hellish for me because I couldn’t figure out how to use them properly. They kept falling out, and I started to feel increasingly stupid at not being able to grasp this simple technology.

Then David Pogue saved me with a column revealing I wasn’t alone. He and I and lots of other people lack a little nub of ear cartilage known as the antitragus which, for most of the world, holds those earbuds in snugly.

It took me a few years after that to finally shell out for the big ol’ headphones of my youth, but I did and I’m happy. The kids are finally at an age where me isolating myself with a little music isn’t going to threaten anyone’s safety. And they’ve grown up on much smaller headphones, so neither one is pestering me to use these.

Truth be told, they’re heavy and inconvenient, and I actually prefer to wear a lightweight pair of cheap off-brand Bluetooth headphones for day-to-day use. But when I want to disappear into a cocoon of sound, there’s nothing like two 1970s-style ear-mattresses to do the trick.

Dog using computer, and using the command line. The command “whois AGoodDog” gets the reply “You are! You are!” The dog’s tail is wagging.

New tricks

New tricks published on

It’s been years since we said goodbye to our beautiful black Labrador, Sisko. As Labs go, he was on the small size… yet he still managed to monopolize our king-sized bed. As a puppy, he had a gift for chewing shoes — and for choosing just one from each pair to maximize the damage he did. He once ate an entire carrot cake.

We loved him so much.

He wouldn’t have needed to ask an operating system for validation; he was constantly told what a good, beautiful dog he was — first by us, and then in his later years by Alex’s mum (who gave him the best life any dog could have hoped for).

And yet when the first of our kids came around, Sisko abruptly dropped in status from “Fur Baby” to “Beloved Dog But Definitely, Let’s Not Kid Ourselves, A Dog.” We were warned that would happen, and didn’t believe it; yet when the time came, it was like throwing a switch.

This cartoon, and every dog cartoon I draw, is for Sisko.

(woman consoling her partner) Try to remember, sweetheart: your users are rating your app. They aren't rating you.

Like this cartoon? How about rating it on the App Store?

Like this cartoon? How about rating it on the App Store? published on

A while ago, I tweeted “Is there anything as emotionally needy as a ‘Please rate this in the App Store’ notification?”

The wise and talented Leslie Ehm responded with a dry — and accurate — “Spoken as someone who clearly doesn’t have an app ;)” I am indeed someone who doesn’t have an app. I am, however, someone who has had to manage a few Facebook applications over the years… and I can attest it’s kind of nightmarish.

When you’re building on someone else’s platform, you’re entirely subject to their whims. Your priorities don’t just take a back seat; they cling to the rear bumper for dear life. With Facebook, that meant having to completely rethink our strategy around an application when they changed the rules around promotion without notice — two days before we launched.

And with Apple’s iOS App Store, it means your app probably lives and dies by the ratings and reviews users give it. Which is why developers, whether they want to or not, have a very strong incentive to keep reminding you to please rate their app on the App Store. Please. Have you rated it yet? How about now? Hey, is this a good time?

So don’t judge your favourite app’s developers too harshly; the not-so-invisible hand of the Apple market is shaping their behaviour.

By the way, Leslie’s app is the fascinating ThinkLab Brainstorming Tool, which offers prompts and exercises to kickstart your creativity, from her company Combustion. Do check it out… and if you like it, well…

(secret agent being threatened by a giant laser) You seriously think this is going to intimidate me? It has a home button AND a visible bezel.

No, Mister Bond. I expect you to buy.

No, Mister Bond. I expect you to buy. published on

At the end of last year, I got a new iPhone 8 Plus. And I love it: the cameras are gorgeous, it’s plenty fast, the display is beautiful, there’s oodles of space…

But yesterday, I happened to read an article about the iPhone X launch — the same event where my model made its debut — that talked about how dated the 8s are. How they still have a home button and that bezel… that huge, gaping, revolting bezel.

Now, I’ve cared deeply about some dumb stuff in my life. Like how Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah” gets more attention than k.d. lang’s. Speaking of k.d. lang, I believe passionately that “Constant Craving” ought to be the song for a Bond film. I care about rogue apostrophes and random capitalization in restaurant menus. (Or maybe that should read “restaurant Menu’s.”) I care about people saying “infer” when they mean “imply,” even when I can easily infer their meaning from context.

So I care lots about dumb stuff. But for the life of me, I can’t bring myself to care about that bezel. Hell, I can barely see it anyway because the moment I get something even slightly breakable, it gets slapped into a protective case (because I know myself). Every time I see an Apple official on a stage waving a device around marvelling at how incredibly, impossibly, magically thin it is, my brain adds a half centimetre of cushioning around it.

Come to think of it, that protective case does at least as much good for my wallet as for my phone.

(cartoon of a woman reading a newspaper, and talking to an Amazon Echo Dot that has just activated) I'm pretty sure "random sound of rustling newsprint" isn't your wake word, Alexa.

Go The F— To Sleep, Alexa

Go The F— To Sleep, Alexa published on

The Amazon Echo — known to most of us as “Alexa” — has steadily been amassing a catalogue of modular skills you can add on. Among those skills, though, you won’t find a foolproof ability to tell when you’re talking to it… and when you aren’t.

We have two Echo Dots and a first-generation Echo in our house, and while the Echo can usually recognize its wake word, the Dots are a lot fussier. Our kitchen Dot in particular is pretty fussy about how it prefers to be addressed, and it can take two or three attempts to ask it to “Start a timer for 11 minutes” or “Add broccoli to the shopping list” before it responds. (Also, it may just be me, but after I’ve had to ask several times how many grams in three ounces of grated cheese, the Dot can sound pretty condescending.)

It turns out the problem goes the other way, too. Casual conversations and TV shows alike tend to wake our living room Echo, which often responds with a baffling non sequitur. It can kind of kill the mood of a great suspense moment when Alexa’s clipped tones announce out of the blue that the weather tomorrow in Vancouver, Canada will be mostly cloudy with a high of 18 and an overnight low of 12.

But we’re still doing better than the couple in Portland, Oregon, whose Echo misinterpreted several words in an unrelated conversation as commands to record the discussion and then send it to one of the husband’s employees in Seattle. (Fortunately for all concerned, the conversation apparently wasn’t to the effect of “You won’t believe the bozo I hired in Seattle.”)

And we weren’t among the people who were creeped out by the sound of their Echo devices laughing spontaneously. Here, tool, the culprit — at least according to Amazon’s explanation — was a voice recognition error. In this case, the Echo interpreted some sound or other to mean “Alexa, laugh” and then emitted what by all accounts was a grotesque parody of human laughter. Nobody who heard it has apparently been able to sleep since.

So sure, we’ve had to learn to enunciate very precisely. But all in all, things could be much worse at our end. Okay. Alexa, post cartoon. …Alexa, post cartoon. ALEXA. POST. THE DAMN. CARTOO

Person 1: “Are you playing computer solitaire? I thought you had a big writing deadline.” 2: “I do. This is part of my process.” 2 suddenly screams: “I’ll never finish on time and I’ll die alone and unloved!!” 1: “Also part of your process?” 2: “Also part of my process.”

Deadline crunch

Deadline crunch published on

A support group for professional writers:

 

Okay, everyone — thanks for those introductions. I want you to know this is a sharing space, one where you can talk about anything at all.

Before we get underway, let’s just get a sense of the issues we’re dealing with. Could I have a show of hands for everyone coping with occasional anxiety? …So, everyone. Constant anxiety? …Everyone. Check.

Okay, how about imposter syndrome? …Everyone again, huh?

Deep-seated fear that everyone else is succeeding while you’re falling beh—… okay. Maybe it’s easier if I just ask you to put up your hands if you aren’t dealing with this. Anybody who doesn’t have a constant need to reassure yourself while you’re working that what you’re writing isn’t crap? Anyone? Procrastination? No? Weird physical symptoms that appear when a deadline’s coming up?

Is there a support group for defeated support group facilitators?

(a couple in a kitchen dripping with sprayed food, which came from inside an Instant Pot) This might be a good time to review the difference between ‘quick’ and ‘natural’ pressure release.

Under pressure

Under pressure published on

If anyone had told me a few years ago that the trendy home gadget was going to be a pressure cooker, I’d have nodded sagely, congratulated them on their out-of-the-box thinking, and drifted quietly toward the exit.

But look at me these days, making lentils, buttered chicken, pulled this, stewed that. And I get the impression the Instant Pot holds a particular appeal for geeks (“It’s a kitchen appliance.” “Pass.” “It has glowing red numbers on it.” “I’m listening.”) Certainly a lot of my geekier friends have snapped them up like thumb drives at a tech conference.

If you’re thinking of diving in, do yourself a favour and connect with some folks who already own one. And if you don’t have anyone like that in your circle, you can do a lot worse than checking out the Instant Pot Community group on Facebook — a thriving, supportive gang of folks as ready to cheer each other on as they are to share a great recipe for daal.

(woman at bar) Everyone confuses Sarah Dorfmann, the real me, with “Sarah Dorfmann,” the character I play at work, at home and in all of my relationships.

You may know me from such performances as my life.

You may know me from such performances as my life. published on

We treat “authenticity” like it’s a binary: She’s authentic. He’s inauthentic. But really it’s a spectrum — and I’m guessing you, like me, occupy pretty big swaths of it over the course of any given day. We have to, just to survive the contradictions and minefields the world has in store for us.

But I hope that, although my narrative arc may meander like hell, it still bends toward authenticity. The past year has seen an unrelenting assault on truth and honesty (coming, weirdly enough, in large part from someone whose level of personal authenticity may be unparallelled among presidents: he may really be as much of a lying dick as he seems).

Maybe it’s no coincidence that the word “truthiness” was coined by Stephen Colbert, who was the first person I saw regularly play a character with the same name as theirs — and very little else in common.

These days, the truth needs all the allies it can get. Maybe for most of us, that starts, not with letting it all hang out in unfiltered, damaging Twitter rants, but in recognizing the moments when we’re being less than completely authentic… and understanding why. Being ruthlessly honest with ourselves may let us be more compassionately honest with everyone else.

Condolence cards for poor Skype connections, failed operating system upgrades, lost Word documents, exceeded data caps, waterlogged phones, data breaches and subscription models. Oh, and Facebook Messenger.

Deepest condolences

Deepest condolences published on

Condolence cards just haven’t kept up with the everyday tragedies of the digital era. Herein, my meager attempt to remedy that.

(Phone sales clerk to customer) I know we offer Facebook, Twitter, Google, Netflix, eBay, Amazon, YouTube and Disney. But I’ve never heard of this “Internet” you’re asking about.

Emergency net neutrality cartoon

Emergency net neutrality cartoon published on

Take action:

(parent to child) We're worried about you, honey. You've fallen in with a bad crowd, you're picking up bad habits, and you're using beta plugins on a production WordPress site.

Parents: do you recognize these warning signs? (beta edition)

Parents: do you recognize these warning signs? (beta edition) published on

Is your child more moody than usual — especially toward their devices? Are they displaying more impatience, for example by complaining about sluggish performance, buggy interfaces and frequent crashes? Do they respond to civil requests to come down for dinner with “Just a {expletive} moment! Everything’s {expletive} broken and I’m about to lose all my {expletive} work!”?

Then they may be in the early stages Compulsive Early Adopter Syndrome, or CEAS. This disorder, which tragically does not have an intuitively-pronounced acronym, compels the sufferer to install the latest beta version of any software they use, regardless of warnings about bugs, missing features or incompatibilities.

Let’s look at a typical adult sufferer. We’ll call him “Ned,” although his actual name is Rob and he’s me. Ned installed the iOS 11 beta on his iPhone 6 purely on the strength of “a mildly more interesting Siri”, and immediately lost access to several apps he relied on. Even after the developers released updated versions of those apps, and Apple issued the public release version of the operating system, Rob’s— er, Ned’s phone has been almost unusably slow.

Has Ned learned anything? Not judging from the fact that he recently installed the beta Gutenberg editor (and, soon, way of life) on his blog. That’s despite the fact it gives Ned no new functionality he actually uses, and despite WordPress’s official warning to “treat this as a radioactive biohazard and under no circumstances should you install it on a site producing content that is ever to be seen by human eyes.”

Ned, sadly, has fallen victim to peers who tout Gutenberg as “cool” and “hip” and “the most amazing content editing experience since sex, and that’s recognizing that sex isn’t actually a content-editing experience.” If an adult like Ned is vulnerable to such alluring promises, imagine the impact on younger minds when they read a page like this on WordPress’s own site — a page freely available to teens and even children.

There is, sadly, no cure for CEAS — apparently not even bitter, bitter, bitter experience. But until science develops a way to keep young minds from succumbing to the temptation of pre-release software, our only hope is vigilance.

That, and this new app I picked up that monitors your kids’ use of beta software. It’s still in preview release, and it’s buggy as hell, but I’m using it right now and I can tell you it 6wQFAFLe@ynt4xMgPst(n3r.Lj;mZzdAusgNBVtxDxdCMy

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