We humans place a lot of importance on the time it takes for Earth to revolve around the sun. It takes one year, and we wind up in more or less the same place — relative to the sun — each time. A time for celebration!
But since the sun itself is orbiting around the centre of the galaxy, Earth moves along with it. With the sun moving at 220 kilometres per second, and Earth along for the ride, we end up seven billion kilometres away from where we were a year ago.
That seems like a lot, but in the vast emptiness of space, it’s hardly anything — just 0.0007 light-years per year. To put that into perspective, the nearest stars, in the Alpha Centauri system, are over four light-years away.
Which brings me to a pet peeve — why is so much science fiction based on conflict, even outright war, between beings from different parts of the galaxy? The time and expense would be unimaginable if it weren’t for the fertile imaginations of science fiction writers.
To get an idea of the vastness of space, think of the stars as specks of sand. If the sun was speck lying at your feet, you would have to travel to the other side of the world to find the closest other speck.
I just finished slogging through an epic novel where an entire “league” of planets orbiting various stars was at war with two sets of alien beings from other planets. What a colossal waste of resources.
I think the reason we can imagine it is because so many wars here on Earth have wasted millions of lives and billions of dollars. So why not scale up to the stars?
There’s a cool new thing you can do in HTML that is supported by all the major web browsers, including Safari. But I can’t use it because, well, Safari.
You see, if you want the latest version of Safari, which has this cool new thing, you also need the latest or near-latest version of macOS. It’s been like this for several years now. Safari and macOS are joined at the hip.
Firefox, Chrome and Edge don’t have this problem. I can easily install the latest and greatest on my aging iMac. In fact, I switched to Firefox a few months ago because the old Safari on my old Mac was painfully slow.
Why can’t Apple make its latest version of Safari work with older versions of macOS? It seems insane that Mozilla — a small non-profit — can do this, but the behemoth that is Apple can’t or won’t. They should be embarrassed.
Everyone else has had their say about the Liquid Glass design adopted by Apple, so why shouldn’t I? Actually, I’m mostly fine with it, but some of those icons just don’t make sense.
The one that jumps out at me is Settings. The icon is a set of gears — glass gears apparently. I can’t help thinking about the teeth breaking off as they mesh together. Ouch.
The same goes for the Passwords icon — a set of three glass keys. Try putting one of those in a lock and see how well it holds up. Hint: it won’t.
Both of those should be metal, but that would put them out of step with the rest of the icons. It’s almost like we should go back to the original skeuomorphic design where the icons looked the way they would in real life.
Another example is the Books icon. Can you imagine a book made out of glass? Those pages won’t turn. The same goes for Contacts, which I’m pretty sure is supposed to represent a book of sorts. Both of these icons should be paper.
The old Mail icon looks like a paper envelope, just as you would expect. The new one looks like a glass envelope, which, of course, would break if you tried to read the contents.
One more that makes me cringe is the Games icon represented by a glass rocket propelled with glass fire. That thing would never get off the ground. We need metal and fire.
The only one that kind of makes sense is the Camera icon, with its glass lens. But the ring around the lens and the body of the camera are presumably also made of glass, so it only half-way makes sense.
I do manage to suffer these indignities, though, by thinking of the icons as baubles. For example, don't think of it as a real book. It’s more like a decoration that you might hang from a Christmas tree. What about the rest of the year? Some people have whole shelves devoted to knickknacks and doodads, so you could think of your glass keys sitting on one of those.
I’m on track to read 4647 48 books this year — up by fourfive six from 2024. I was lucky enough to find eight books I felt were worthy of 10 stars out of 10, plus three others that didn’t quite make it with 9.5.
The reason for the strike-throughs is that I managed to squeak in a couple more books before the end of the year. One was an epic that I was determined to be done with after several months, and the other was a page-turner that I devoured in five days.
10/10
A Truce That Is Not Peace
by Miriam Toews Memoir
Jennie’s Boy
by Wayne Johnston Memoir
Etta and Otto and Russell and James
by Emma Hooper Fiction
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
by Agatha Christie Mystery
A Two-Spirit Journey
by Ma-nee Chacaby Memoir
The Other Valley
by Scott Alexander Howard Speculative fiction
Fifteen Dogs
by André Alexis Speculative fiction
Red Team Blues
by Cory Doctorow Science fiction
9.5/10
The Ministry of Time
by Kaliane Bradley Science fiction
How the Light Gets In
by Louise Penny Mystery/thriller
After an absence of nine years, The Animal Reporter is back with an inspiring post about the unsung heroes making lives better for the abused and homeless.
I played a supporting role with a spiffy new WordPress theme that I made from scratch. This was no small accomplishment for me since past attempts over the years have ended in failure and having to resort to tweaking an already-made theme.
I like to create my own thing from the ground up, with control over every step of the way. You can learn more about how I did this in a previous post.
I also updated my projects page to reflect the new look of The Animal Reporter.
Back in August, I demonstrated the power of a drop in the bucket. One of my drops in the bucket is supporting Canada’s economy by buying Canadian as much as possible.
Here’s what my mornings look like these days.
Granola — Oatally Awesome — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Granola — Rogers — made in Canada by a Japanese company
Yogurt — Activia — made in Canada by a French company
Flax — CanMar — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Soap — The Soap Works — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Toothpaste — Green Beaver — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Toothbrush — Ola — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Shampoo — Attitude — made in Canada by a Canadian company
Razor — Rocky Mountain Barber Company — made overseas by a Canadian company
Shaving cream — Nivea — made overseas by a German company
Floss — GUM — made overseas by a Swiss company
That toothbrush, by that why, is made out of maple scraps from a nearby lumber mill. That’s about as Canadian as you can get.
I'm still looking for viable alternatives for shaving cream and floss. Shaving cream from Rocky Mountain Barber Company is made in Canada, but way too expensive. Floss by Ola is more reasonably priced but made overseas and breaks every time I try to use it.
I’ve been using Safari for the past couple of years, assuming that it would run best on my aging iMac, now so old it’s stuck on Ventura.
I mean, surely a browser built by Apple would be optimized for computers built by Apple.
But in the past couple of weeks, Safari has become painful — spinning beachballs, long start-up times. Looks like Apple has left this old-timey 2017 Mac behind.
Even when Safari seems finally ready, I still can’t type in the address bar.
So it’s back to good, old Firefox. Even with AI built-in, and I’m not sure if I’m too crazy about that, it still runs circles around Safari.
Really, all I want to do is click on an icon and type where I want to go on the Internet. Firefox does that.
Research on environmental reporting confirms my own experience of late — positive stories are more engaging and more likely to encourage you to help with solutions.
Awni Etaywe, a lecturer in linguistics at Charles Darwin University in Darwin, Australia:
If people are constantly told the situation is hopeless, they disengage. When we focus on solutions, shared values, and tangible actions, we open the door to lasting behavioural change.
I’ve been following a subreddit called EcoUplift, and I have to say it really has helped change my attitude. It was not that long ago that I might have said there was no point in even trying.
Compare this with the novel The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. The apocalyptic horrors described in this well-meaning story were so overwhelming that I had to put it aside.
It takes work to choose optimism over pessimism, but it’s worth it.
As a small example, I went out of my way to buy some water bottles that are not only made in Canada, but are also eco-friendly. Now drinking water is doubly refreshing.
What’s the point of making a contribution or doing my part when it amounts to little more than a drop in the bucket?
You may have heard people say this, or thought it yourself. I know I have.
But lately I’ve been thinking about the cumulative power of those drops. I asked ChatGPT to do the math for me.
Supposing a million people contributed. In terms of the world’s population, that’s a tiny, almost negligible, percentage. But if each contribution was the equivalent of a drop in the bucket, the bucket would soon be overflowing.
1 mm drops → ~0.52 L
3 mm drops → ~14.1 L
Drops that are 3 mm in diameter scale up in three dimensions from 1 mm drops — hence the massive increase in volume.
What if those drops fell in the form of rain over a period an hour?
1 mm drops: ~0.52 mm/hr (very light)
2 mm drops: ~4.19 mm/hr (moderate)
3 mm drops: ~14.1 mm/hr (heavy)
If you stood in a rainfall of 3 mm drops, you would be drenched. Even 1 mm drops would get you noticeably wet.
Again, one million is not that much when you think in terms of total population. Canada has a population of 40 million. If one million people took part in a movement, that would only be only 2.5 per cent of the population.
Don’t underestimate your contribution. Those drops in the bucket can add up pretty fast.
In the course of just under a month, I’ve done a U-turn on my opinion of Fix the News. I now recommend that you stay away from them, and here’s why.
On July 10, I wrote a post about how Fix the News does a good job of improving your optimism with a weekly roundup of good news — concentrating on “big picture stories of progress.”
It’s a newsletter that’s mostly free, but you can pay $US80 a year for more coverage. I was on the fence about this. On one hand, it’s a lot when converted to Canadian dollars. On the other, it seemed a like a worthy cause.
A couple of weeks later, I noticed that Fix the News planned to move to the Substack platform due to its greater reach. I naively assumed that they were unaware of the controversy surrounding Substack, mainly involving them allowing extremist views that do not align with those of Fix the News. So I sent them an email pointing this out.
On Aug. 3, I received a response from the Fix the News founder, Angus Hervey. It turns out they have been aware of this for years, but have decided to go ahead anyway because they are convinced that it will allow them to raise more money for charity.
“We totally understand if this is a bridge too far for you, it's not an easy decision for us. If you do decide to leave we'll be sorry to see you go!”
They have decided, essentially, that the ends justify the means. It’s a level of cynicism that caught me off guard, and took me a while to process.
So, yes, I’m moving on from Fix the News, and I no longer recommend it to others.
