Rolandt

Boy, when your I’m-outta-here essay goes viral, do you ever get a lot of input. A few responses came up often enough to be worth sharing. This was via email, Twitter DMs, blog comments, and LinkedIn messages. All of which went completely batshit.

So, some answers. But first…

Thanks for the kind words!

I had no notion how the world might react to a cranky old overpaid geek’s public temper tantrum. The world’s been astonishingly warm and welcoming. Apparently I hit a hot button I didn’t know existed. The crankiest geek on the planet couldn’t fail to have their heart warmed. So in a huge number of cases, simply “Thanks for the kind words” was the right thing to say.

Dear readers: Yes, some of the answers described in this piece were kept handy in editor buffers and delivered by cut-and-paste. But I did read a lot of the messages, and all the ones I actually responded to.

“Can you come on our TV show?”

You name it: ABC, BBC, Bloomberg, CBC, CBS, CTV, CNBC, CNN, NBC, NPR, and a whole lot of cool blogs and indies. Also Anderson Cooper’s people!

“Can we get on the phone so I can ask you some questions?”

A variation on the theme, from non-broadcast organizations.

They all got the same answer: “Hmm, I'm not that interesting, just a grumpy old one-percenter white-guy engineer with a social media presence. If you want to go live with this story you should do it with the actual people who got fired, who are young, fresh-faced, passionate, and really at the center of the news story. I recommend reaching out to Emily Cunningham (contact info redacted) or Maren Costa (same) or Chris Smalls (same).”

“OK, we talked to them. Now will you talk to us live?”

These people were nice and just trying to do their job. I agreed to answer a couple of email questions in a couple of cases, but mostly just said “For complicated reasons, I don’t want to be the public face of this story. Sorry.”

“Complicated reasons?”

Yeah, the story is about firing whistleblowers, not about a random Canadian Distinguished Engineer’s reaction to it. So news organizations should follow the primary sources, not me.

There’s more. I put a lot of thought into what I should say, and then really a whole lot of work into writing that blog piece. I had help with style and fact-checking. (Thanks, Lauren. Thanks, Emily.) It is very, very, unlikely that anything I’d improvise on a phone-call or TV interview would be better. I’ve also had bitter first-hand experience with the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.

I think it worked. The news coverage, lacking alternatives, quoted heavily from the blog, and I thought basically all of it came out fair and accurate. Let’s acknowledge that this tactic is only available to someone who’s near the center of a news story, is a competent writer, and has a good place to publish.

I’ve no interest in becoming some sort of full-time anti-Amazon activist. I just don’t want to work for an organization that fires whistleblowers. I said so. It looks like the message got through.

“What response did you expect?”

I have seventeen years of blogging scars, so I speak from experience in saying: No idea. I’ve had blogs that I considered mightily important and labored over for days sink like a stone with no trace. Then I’ll toss off some three-paragraph squib that I wrote while watching TV and drinking gin, and it goes white-hot. Neither outcome would have surprised me.

“What were you trying to accomplish?”

I’m a blogger. I’ve been writing the story of my life here for seventeen years. Enough people read it and respond to give me hope that it’s at least intermittently interesting, and perhaps even useful. I’m a writer, I can’t not write. This is a major turning point in my life. I totally couldn’t not write it. That’s all. That’s really, really why.

“What about Brad’s piece?”

They’re asking about Response to Tim Bray’s departure by Brad Porter. Since he has the same “VP/Distinguished Engineer” title I did you’d think he’d be a peer. Actually he’s way more important and influential than I used to be, partly because he’s been there since the early days and is directly involved with the retail operation.

I believe that (as Brad says) Amazon retail is working intensely and intelligently to make the warehouses safer. But I also believe the workers. And anyhow, firing whistleblowers is just way, way out of bounds.

While it’s sort of a sideshow to the real issue here (firing whistleblowers), Brad also wrote:

Ultimately though, Tim Bray is simply wrong when he says “It’s that Amazon treats the humans in the warehouses as fungible units of pick-and-pack potential.” I find that deeply offensive to the core.

We’ll have to agree to disagree. If you run an organization with hundreds of thousands of line workers and tens of thousands of managers, and where turnover is typically significant, you need processes where the staff are fungible. Two things can be true at once: You work hard to preserve your employees’ health, and your administrative culture treats them as fungible units.

I actually found the patterns emerging in the responses to Brad’s piece more culturally interesting than his original post.

And hey, bonus: There’s another Amazon voice in the conversation: Anton Okmyanskiy, who’s a “Principal Engineer”, which is to say regarded as a world-class technologist, wrote Tim Bray quit Amazon. My thoughts.... It contains the remarkable sentence “Amazon should stay ahead of anger-driven regulatory enforcement by becoming a leader on social justice issues.”

It’d be great if a few more Amazonian voices weighed in. But I’m not holding my breath.

“Any regrets?”

Yes, I regret intensely that I didn’t link to Emily Cunningham’s original “Amazon fired me” tweet thread, which is exquisite (you have to click “show this thread”).

Favorite response?

Note, header not in quotes because nobody asked, but I’ll answer anyhow. I could drop a dozen portentous media-heavyweight names and yeah, pretty well everyone weighed in. But it’s not close, my fave was Wonkette: Amazon VP VIP Tim Bray Quitfires Self Over 'Chickensh*t' Activist Quitfirings. It says, of yr humble scrivener, “Come the revolution, let's remember not to eat this one” and “Class Traitor of the Day”. These lodged in what I thought was a thoroughly lucid and spirited take on the situation.

Once again

Thanks for the kind words!

 

 

 

I leased an all electric Nissan Leaf in 2016. I had quite a bit of apprehension but wanted to drive a vehicle that emitted no greenhouse gas emissions.

Thanks to great advice and help from people like Glen Cheetham, Jeff Putnam, and Aaron Stone, I joined the world of electric vehicle drivers.

It's been such a fantastic experience. Thanks to my friend and our former Rotary exchange student Joel Pflomm in breaking in the car on the first ride. The car has not only been ghg free in operation, its been really fun to drive (very peppy). It has cost about $15 a month to power and has had very low maintenance expenses.

Datasette table diagram, now with a DOT graph

Thomas Ballinger shared a huge improvement to my Observable notebook for rendering a diagram of a collection of Datasette tables. He showed how to use the DOT language to render a full schema digram with arrows joining together the different tables. I've applied his changes to my notebook.

Via @ballingt

I thought we (i.e. me) could use a break, so I made these abstract charts to represent the most popular quotes about hope on Goodreads.

I used to make charts like these a lot. See also famous movie quotes and chart-topping songs. Took me back to a simpler time. Hopefully we’ll be back there soon.

Tags: hope, quote

At the top of the hour I will be doing a #vinylcast on #ds106radio and #ds106tv of Kraftwerk's seminal Trans Europe Express pic.twitter.com/8px6x9NpMg

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) May 7, 2020

After yesterday’s fiasco of trying to cross-cast Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express to ds106radio and ds106.tv, I simplified this morning and just focused on the radio. I have a new, more powerful laptop on the way, and have a feeling that might solve some of the multimedia, cross-casting memory issues I am currently experiencing.

At the bottom of the hour (in 6 minutes) tun in for a #vinylcast of Kraftwerk's Trans Europe Express in honor of Florian Schneider. There will be a re-broadcast later today for all our North American friends on #ds106radio https://t.co/vXRNHb42Qc #endlesseurope pic.twitter.com/V57EzKmiHL

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) May 8, 2020

Little tribute to Florian Schneider on #ds106radio with Trans-Europe Express, playing right now: Showroom Dummies. Listen here https://t.co/vXRNHb42Qc pic.twitter.com/pEwnEr7nWu

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) May 8, 2020

The needle is on the Trans-Europe Express record and streaming on the mighty #ds106radio pic.twitter.com/CoMsajSe3H

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) May 8, 2020

Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force sampling Trans-Europe Express in Planet Rock https://t.co/n47gAbT0Bd #ds106radio

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) May 8, 2020

Side b of Trans-Europe Express now streaming on #ds106radio https://t.co/vXRNHb42Qc pic.twitter.com/JWtTlxSzlQ

— Jim Groom (@jimgroom) May 8, 2020

I ended the vinylcast with Afrika Baambaataa’s “Planet Rock” to make the sonic connection between Kraftwerk and Hip Hop complete. We then achieved a seamless hand-off with Radio NZ; it was a good morning of #ds106radio

Microsoft Editor korrigiert inline Rechtschreibung und Grammatik, direkt im Browser. Leider bisher nur in einer vor eingestellten Sprache. Ich hätte gerne Deutsch und Englisch, und zwar gleichzeitig.

Die Extension läuft bei mir im Microsoft Edge auf Chromium-Basis. Noch nicht auf allen PCs, aber bald. In Microsoft Word ist Editor ebenfalls drin.

Der Editor ist als Browser-Erweiterung für Microsoft Edge und Chrome verfügbar und wird in Word- und Outlook-Аpps hinzugefügt. Dieser kostenlose Dienst ermöglicht Ihnen, die Grundlagen der Grammatik und Rechtschreibung zu meistern. Zusätzlich bietet der Editor mit einem Microsoft 365-Abonnement fortgeschrittene Grammatik- und Stilverbesserungen wie Klarheit, Prägnanz, Formalität, Vokabelvorschläge und mehr.

More >

Thanks for the mention Neil! It made me go back to Claire North‘s work, and I noticed she has published a new novel a month ago, The Pursuit of William Abbey. Added to the reading queue.

Replied to Reading “84K” by Claire North by Neil Mather

I’ve started reading 84K by Claire North. I saw it on Ton‘s book list ....

HP Canada has announced today that it’s mobilizing its Digital Manufacturing Partner Network of small and medium businesses to 3D print 3DP face shields.

The company says Health Canada has approved the face shield design, and the first batch out of 540,000 should start shipping out sometime this week.

The HP Digital Manufacturing Partner Network is a group of around 12 businesses in Canada that use 3D printing from HP to develop products from their companies. However, with the pandemic still ongoing and with there still being a demand for personal protective equipment, companies are pivoting to help the cause.

Hopefully, the masks start shipping out soon since Canada seems to be in desperate need of this type of gear for frontline workers.

 

The post HP Canada working to 3D print 540,000 face shields in Canada appeared first on MobileSyrup.

Lyft is looking to protect its riders and passengers during this pandemic with a new set of safety rules focusing on health.

The new rules are all a part of its new ‘health safety program’ which requires drivers and riders to wear face masks while inside the vehicle.

The new rules include a new ‘personal health certification’ app update rolling out over the next two weeks. In addition, both drivers and passengers must follow CDC and local health regulations.

Users of the ride-sharing app must pledge they won’t use the service if they’re sick. The app requires all users to promise to keep their faces covered and front seats empty.

Lyft will provide drivers with face masks and cleaning supplies.

The introduction to Lyft’s new rules comes after the impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on its business.

The ride-sharing company recently laid off close to 1,000 of its workforce as the volume of passengers using the service declined by 75 percent when compared to the same time last year.

 

1. “The Health Safety Program builds upon Lyft’s existing COVID-19 relief efforts,” Lyft said in a blog post.

2. “So far we’ve dedicated nearly $2.5 million to purchase hundreds of thousands of bottles of hand sanitizer, masks, and disinfectants for drivers at no cost to them.”

If any of the rules are violated in any way, Lyft users can report either the driver or passenger to the company. Any repeated rule-breakers of the new regulations could have their account suspended.

Image credit: Lyft

Source: Lyft Via: Engadget

The post Face masks now mandatory for all Lyft drivers and riders appeared first on MobileSyrup.

I just caught myself talking out loud to the cats about the magic D-word, dinner, the only word only one of them knows. Oh, that and biscuits. That means it's time to stop doing that and do something different. A constant in my life at the moment is this, so, I'm doing this.There's another constant too, and that appears to be grazing. Yesterday I made my perfected Guacamole for One with some

Google Canada has partnered with the McMichael Canadian Art Collection to digitize the Group of Seven collection via the Google Arts app. This would allow people around the world to check out 200 of the Canadian group’s artworks.

We're excited to partner with the @mcacgallery to digitize their incredible Group of Seven collection via @googlearts so people around the world can experience Canadian art where ever they are!

— Google Canada (@googlecanada) May 7, 2020

It has been 100 years since the founding of the Group of Seven. In May 1920, seven artists came to Toronto to exhibit their colourful modern style of painting. The Group of Seven often painted our country’s beautiful landscape.

The McMichael Canadian Art Collection features a significant collection fo the group’s work.

The Group of Seven includes Franklin Carmicheal, A.J Casson, Lawren S. Harris, Edwin Holgate, A.Y. Jackson, Frank Johnston, Arthur Lismer, Federick Varley and J.E.H MacDonald. The McMichael Canadian Art Collection even has paintings by Emily Carr, another amazing artist who was often associated with the Group, but never officially a member.

Download Google’s Art and Culture app on iOS and Android.

Source: Google 

The post Canada’s Group of Seven paintings now available in the Google Arts app appeared first on MobileSyrup.

I’m not going to name names here. Don’t worry. :)

I’m in the market for a Mac app for _____. It’s a not-uncommon need, and so I figured I’d have some good choices.

I’d also like an iOS app that syncs with that Mac app — but the Mac app is the more important of the two, because I sit in front of a Mac all day. (To me. Some people are iOS-first, which is totally cool.)

I downloaded and tried a couple apps. One required an account just to try the app, which pissed me off, but I did it anyway.

Window Resizing Test

The first thing I tried, with each app, was to resize the window. This is a good test because I get frustrated with sluggish apps: window resizing is a decent way to get some idea of how the app performs.

I know I’m not playing fair — I’m on a 2013 MacBook Air — but the app I write is fast on this machine, and other apps should be too.

Both apps were sluggish with window resizing. They were bad enough that I could have just stopped right there.

But it was actually worse than that.

With one of the apps, the upper position of the window could actually change during window resizing. It could even go offscreen. I don’t even know how that bug is possible.

The other app was almost as bad: the upper position of the window would sometimes jump down around 20 pixels then back up, real fast. It made the window seem to flicker. Nasty.

The basics of window resizing behavior should be impossible to mess up — AppKit should be handling this. If it’s messed up, then something in the app is fighting the frameworks. That’s a bad sign for the quality of the rest of the app.

Undo Test

I picked an action that would be 1) super-common and 2) something that every user should expect to be undo-able.

In one app, I did the thing and then chose Undo. It didn’t do anything that I could see — the Undo command was available, but had no visible effect. I did Undo again. No visible change. God knows what was happening.

In the other app, Undo just wasn’t available. This is actually better than a faulty Undo — but, still, it’s not good.

That Was Pretty Much It

I poked around a little more, enough to find some additional bugs, and then I trashed both apps. I deleted the account I had had to create for the one app.

By not paying attention to the basics of a good Mac app, each of these apps lost a potential customer who’s 1) happy to financially support app development, and 2) who has a blog that a bunch of people in our community read, where he likes to praise things that are good.

Maybe that’s not worth it? But doing a not-good Mac app is somehow worth it? I don’t understand.

The post <span class='p-name'>Today’s Tech, Tomorrow’s World</span> appeared first on TNL.net.

sillygwailo shared this story from The Mesh Method.

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When you’re excited to read a great book, do you flip to the middle and start reading? Of course not. You start at the beginning. The past few weeks have seen a glut of posts that claim to know what it takes to be successful at remote working. Most of them skip past the most important components – the Preface to our story:

• Having the right ecosystem.
• Establishing the right culture.
• Hiring experienced leaders to guide this effort.

Want to position your business to be successful? Stop trying to make remote work fit within an in-person mindset, immediately. Embrace change, and start looking for people to lead this effort who deeply understand and embrace the foundations of remote learning and collaboration.

According to a recent poll conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM):

• Seventy-one percent of employers are struggling to adjust to remote work
• Sixty-five percent of employers say maintaining employee morale has been a challenge
• More than 1/3 of employers are facing difficulties with:
  • Company culture
  • Employee productivity
  • Leave regulations

Now more than ever, organizations need leaders who are committed to creating and maintaining a thriving remote collaboration culture, one that emphasizes problem-solving, learning, and adapts to change.

Companies often prioritize terms such as velocity, efficiency, metrics, and process, but they take camaraderie for granted.

Pat Patterson, author of The Mesh Method

GitLab produced a great compendium on this topic, which led with:

ESTABLISH A REMOTE LEADERSHIP TEAM
Rally a team of experts who have remote work experience, can
communicate nuances, and serve as resources to others. A core
part of this team’s role will be to document challenges in real
time, transparently prioritize those challenges, and assign
directly responsible individuals (DRIs) to find solutions.

https://about.gitlab.com/resources/downloads/ebook-remote-playbook.pdf

There are a ton of qualified candidates on the job market right now, and odds are, you can find someone who possesses the right combination of experience, empathy, charisma, and sound decision-making.

sillygwailo shared this story from The Mesh Method.

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I tell my kids often that they should live their lives as optimists. To be an optimist, you have to believe that no matter how crappy or awesome a day you’re having, tomorrow can be better.

Waking up every morning, leaving the past in the past, then looking in the mirror and telling yourself “Okay, let’s see what this day has in store,” is a great way to set the tone for all the upcoming interactions you are about to have – with family, friends, co-workers, customers, lawyers…you name it.

As a friend recently told me, “Life is not supposed to be boring.”

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This definition of optimism makes perfect business sense, especially in Customer Success roles. Having a genuinely positive attitude and a willingness to collaborate is a critical component to successful organizations because there is an interconnectedness between the attitudes we bring to work every day and the potential outcomes of decisions made as a result. In short: it directly impacts the customer experience.

“I have always believed that the way you treat your employees is the way they will treat your customers, and that people flourish when they are praised.”

– Sir Richard Branson

With negativity comes anxiety, and with anxiety comes stress…and studies show a direct link between stress and poor decision making.

Positivity and negativity are contagious. In psychology, this is a phenomenon called emotional contagion. Some people are more susceptible to having their mood swayed than others – but a well-constructed collaborative business ecosystem mitigates the risk posed by negativity by offering a constantly evolving source of support.

…reducing your anxiety levels might be the first step to starting a life-changing domino effect that empowers you to perpetually make better choices.

Christopher Bergland, Psychology Today

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I like to say, “everyone is entitled to a bad day”. However, the next time you’re having a bad day, just remember – you never know who you’re inspiring, and tomorrow has a chance to be better than today, no matter what. Chin up.

sillygwailo shared this story from The Mesh Method.

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Everyone is different. Perfectly imperfect. We learn differently, we communicate in different ways, we have strengths and weaknesses…and furthermore, there are things we don’t even know about ourselves yet. It is this diversity, these mysteries that make us interesting. All organizations are a melting pot — introverts, extroverts, direct and indirect communicators, process-driven and creative thinkers alike.

One of the cornerstone principles of The Mesh Method is that everyone – no matter their role – has something beneficial they can share with others. I have seen Sales/BDRs work well with Senior Engineers and Support agents working well with C-Level executives. Every single time, there is an uneasiness that stems from an innate pack mentality, from every participant, irrespective of their experience level.

Mesh creates a framework to push onward and expand the pack, with new relationships. Everyone begins with similar doubts, unsure about how their skill sets match, but then realize that by the end of each session, they have learned something new, from hotkey shortcuts that quicken their pace, to specific ways their work impacts one another.

It is transformative.

Over the course of time, the ideas from these sessions interconnect and start to strengthen the core of the entire organization. They create deep bonds with people that wouldn’t ordinarily interact, they build trust-based relationships at scale, and they provide comprehensive solutions to tough challenges – many times, outside of the session. The sessions act as a spark of creativity.

When your pack has a shared mindset of let’s work to strengthen one other, problems become puzzles. All puzzles have solutions – and we, in our perfectly imperfect ways, are the pieces.

mkalus shared this story from iandunt on Twitter.

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Cities large and small are moving to create a network of streets for the same reason – as reported in the Seattle Times:

SDOT will evaluate streets based on whether they reach dense areas, allow people to stay close to home and keep parks from getting crowded, among other factors.

Seattle, some say, is following a movement of ‘open streets’ that started in Oakland.  Now it’s global.

But Vancouver, once a leader, is trailing. Council will have to decide on May 12 whether we will catch up

It may be the best pre-emptive move cities can take to shore up the barriers against another tide of Motordom – a return to vehicles, only more of them, being driven more often, to more places.   Confronted with congestion of their own making, many will want to have more road space to drive.

But if those same people experience the convenience and enjoyment of their own neighbourhood streets when they’re on foot and bike, they’ll fight to keep them.

 

 

mkalus shared this story from DmitryOpines on Twitter.

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mkalus shared this story from Ulysses Blog.

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Oftentimes, writing doesn’t start with writing but with collecting information and research. A blogger familiarizes his or herself with a new topic on the internet, collecting facts that will later become part of a post. A journalist takes notes on background interviews. A student compiles an overview of the available literature before starting to write a paper. Some novelists create a whole bunch of texts and bullet-point lists to help them write their books: character bios, location portraits, notes on historical backgrounds, plot synopses, outlines. What these types of text have in common is that they’re not intended to become part of the actual text but to help write it. They’re material.

For a long time, you’ve had the ability to attach notes to your Ulysses sheets. However, for many purposes, a note attachment is not ideal. Sometimes, material doesn’t belong to a particular sheet but rather to a specific group – the group for a book project, for instance. Other times, you just need more space for structuring elements, such as headings, or would like to add images. Enter material sheets, new in Ulysses 19.

On Mac, you can create a new material sheet or convert an existing regular sheet into one (“Use as Material Sheet”) via the File menu.

On iPad or iPhone, go to the library and create a new material sheet via the + icon. To convert a regular sheet, open the sheet list, swipe the sheet to the left, tap … and select “Use as Material Sheet”.

You can of course also make use of the following handy shortcuts:

• ⌃⌥⌘N to create a new material sheet
• ˆ⌘M to use a sheet as material/regular sheet

In the sheet list, material sheets are easy to recognize thanks to a visual marker.

Inside material sheets, you can do anything you can do with regular sheets: Ulysses’ complete markup is at your disposal, you may use images, put links, and so on. You can also assign them keywords.

There’s one thing, however, that differentiates material sheets from regular sheets: They’ll be excluded from all actions that apply to your “real” text: statistics, export, and writing goals. That is, if you would like to know the length of a paper, you don’t have to worry about keeping your research in a separate place – if it’s marked as material, it won’t be counted. If you export a novel manuscript to DOCX, your character bios and background notes won’t become part of it. If you set yourself the goal to write 300 words for that novel every day, your material won’t exaggerate your results (not anymore, sorry friends). Please note: Export and statistics are available for single material sheets, but as soon as you mix regular and material sheets, either by selection or in case of an entire group, material sheets will be excluded.

By the way, you can now even filter your sheets for material, thanks to the new filter conditions that became available with Ulysses 19.

Remember, you can create a filter as follows:

On Mac, right-click the group whose content you would like to filter, select “New Filter”, and set your conditions.

On iPad or iPhone, go to the library and create a new filter via the + icon. Don’t forget to select the parent group.

Filters are versatile and offer countless options to organize your workflow. Here’s a proposal for novelists:

1. Create a group for your novel project and add a subgroup for each chapter.
2. In each of these chapters, create a sheet with a plot synopsis, and mark it as material.
3. Within your novel group, create a filter with the condition “Sheet is material sheet”.

Now you can keep a synopsis at hand while working on a particular chapter. At the same time, you can see and edit all your synopses together in the filter group, and, therefore, analyze if your plot is consistent. If your novel is final, you don’t have to worry: Your synopses will be excluded from export, you’ll receive a clean manuscript.

mkalus shared this story from Das Kraftfuttermischwerk.

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Aus aktuellem Anlass. Mach’s gut, Florian, und danke für die Musik!

(Direktlink)

(Direktlink)

Chris Coyier, CSS-Tricks, May 07, 2020

This is a two-paragraph article, so be sure to follow the links. The focus is on the CSS resources provided by Nguyen Huu Phuoc on various websites. "Like this one with over 100 vanilla JavaScript DOM manipulation recipes, this similar one full of one-liners, and this one with loads of layouts." And this React PDF Viewer, which is not free, but worth looking at because it's good.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Vancouver’s Mountain View Cemetery opened in 1886 and is administered by the City of Vancouver. It has a 110 acre site located west of Fraser Street between 31st and 43rd Avenues. The current manager is Glen Hodges who is well respected for his work and for his stewardship of the cemetery. There are over 92,000 grave sites and over 145,0000 interred remains.

One of the challenges over the last thirty years has been how to calibrate the balance of keeping the cemetery available to people who want visit family graves, and that of the public who may want to bike or stroll through the site.  Glen Hodges has worked to document the history of the cemetery and to respect the many cultures who come to visit graveside.

There are also 12,000 Canadian military graves in Mountain View. Right now that area has an astounding display of “Canadian Liberation” tulips that were planted to honour Canada’s contribution to Dutch freedom.

This is the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands which was led by Canadians during the Second World War.  Over 7,600 Canadian soldiers died in the Netherlands during the war.

The tulips are breathtaking and symbolic. But  local community organizer Sharole Tylor sent these photos of what the tulips looked like at the end of April.

Sharole writes: “I could not believe it- I saw a car drive through from 37th Avenue, the passenger got out and moved the barricade, moved it back once the car drove through and did the same for the barricade near 33rd. Like was that so much of a time savings that you couldn’t have used a regular street.”

In the photos  below, someone removed the barricade and then tried to back a vehicle  through the tulips centimeters away from one of the military headstones.

How do you balance public access for people visiting the  cemetery with drivers who want to shortcut or drive through? Should the cemetery be under camera surveillance?

 

 

The YouTube video below describes the symbolism of the plantings of the Canadian Liberator tulip and shows where 500,000 of these tulips have been planted in British Columbia.

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Images: Andy Yan & Sharole Tylor

If you’re in the market for an iPad Pro, choosing the ideal model size is not easy. It used to be simpler, back when the big option was made bigger by its bezels, and the small option had a significantly smaller display. I’ve used a 12.9-inch iPad Pro as my primary computer for five years, and have been very happy with it, but as the smaller iPad Pro’s display has grown, I’ve become more intrigued by it.

2017’s 10.5-inch iPad Pro was the first smaller model that tempted me. 2016’s 9.7-inch simply wasn’t enough; as an iPad user since 2010, I knew what a 9.7-inch display was like, and it wasn’t suited for my needs as a primary computer. But the screen bump in 2017 was intriguing, so I gave it a test run for a couple weeks. My takeaways: it was a fine device, but Split View was a bit too cramped, and since I mainly used my iPad at home rather than lugging it around regularly, sticking with the larger model made more sense for my needs.

Recently, however, I embarked on another test of the smaller iPad Pro. On the latest episode of Adapt, the iPad-focused podcast I do with Federico, I challenged us both to try doing our work on the 11-inch iPad Pro rather than our usual 12.9-inch setups. In my mind, it was the perfect time to try the smaller size again because a lot has changed since my 2017 experiment.

First, the smaller iPad Pro’s display has gotten larger yet again. The gap between 11 and 12.9 inches is relatively narrow. Also, while the current pandemic has forced me to work from home more than ever, prior to this global crisis I was taking my iPad on the go more regularly. In 2017 I lived in the suburbs of Dallas, whereas now I call Manhattan home, so it’s much easier to just walk out my front door and visit a local coffee shop, park, or some other public space to get work done.

Finally, the concept of the iPad as a modular computer has been another motivator to try the 11-inch model. I normally use my 12.9-inch iPad Pro exclusively in “laptop mode” with a hardware keyboard attached. But lately I’ve been wondering if that approach is too limited, causing me to miss out on the full potential of the device’s versatility. Using my iPad Pro not just as a laptop, but also as a tablet or in a desktop configuration sounds intriguing, and for several reasons I’ll detail later, I think the 11-inch model is better suited to these alternate setups.

So a few weeks ago I ordered an 11-inch iPad Pro alongside the Magic Keyboards for both the 11- and 12.9-inch models; I also bought a USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter so I could connect my iPads to an external display. All of these purchases made possible a comprehensive comparison of the two iPad Pro sizes, spanning tablet, laptop, and desktop configurations, for the purpose of determining which iPad was best for me. As I mentioned, I was already pretty happy with my 12.9-inch model, so my focus was especially on trying the 11-inch and evaluating its unique strengths.

Here is what I learned from my experiment, and my decision on the iPad I’ll be using moving forward.

11-inch Split View: Surprisingly Fine

My time with the 11-inch iPad Pro these past weeks has been marked by a lot of surprise, some of which has been positive and some negative. In the surprisingly good arena, Split View on the smaller iPad has been virtually a non-issue for me, which I didn’t at all anticipate.

In the ~12 hours per day that I spend on my iPad Pro, I work in Split View about half that time. As a result, I expected Split View to represent the biggest challenge I would face in adapting to the 11-inch display. The smaller iPad Pro, in a 50/50 Split View, uses compact layouts for apps, while the 12.9-inch device shows two standard iPad-class layouts. Apps on the 11-inch in Split View are essentially iPhone apps, but wider, while apps on the 12.9-inch can include additional features, like displaying a sidebar menu alongside the main content of the app. Here’s a comparison of the two devices side by side.

It’s a stark difference, to be sure. What I’ve realized during this experiment, however, is that when I’m working in Split View on my 12.9-inch model, I almost never have an app’s sidebar menu on-screen alongside its main content area. I find it too cluttered seeing three or four different ‘panels’ at once, as displayed above. So my default practice is to hide those sidebar menus to achieve a cleaner, more focused setup.

My habit of minimizing sidebars means that in most cases, the difference between Split View on the 12.9- and 11-inch models is minimal. Sure there’s more space to show content on the larger model, but in actual use, I haven’t experienced much of a difference for the work I normally do.

There is one exception app to this, but it would have been two had Apple not cheated the system with one of its apps.

The exception app for my no-sidebar-in-Split-View practice is Slack. Since the chat platform requires a lot of switching back and forth between different channels, DMs, and even the several different workspaces I occupy regularly, Slack is the one app I wish I would enable seeing multiple panels on-screen at once. This is possible if you make Slack the larger app in a 66/33 Split View, but in the 50/50 setup I use more regularly, having to constantly switch to Slack’s menu view, like on an iPhone, is a pain.

The second app, which would have been even more of a problem for me than Slack, is Safari. There’s no app I use in Split View more often than Safari. And when I tested the 10.5-inch iPad Pro in 2017, one of the biggest pain points I encountered was Safari’s compact layout in Split View. Back then, as you would expect, the 50/50 Split View layout for Apple’s browser was just like its iPhone companion, where you couldn’t have proper tabs but instead were forced to use the iPhone’s system involving sites presented as a stack of cards. Mercifully, Apple changed this at some point, such that now the smaller iPad Pro can display a proper tab bar in Split View. It’s the only system app I know of that gains this special exception, eschewing the compact layout for something resembling a standard iPad view. Due to my heavy use of Safari, and disdain for the card-based tab system on iPhone, I’m extremely happy about this change. Without it, Safari might be a dealbreaker for me using the 11-inch model, but thanks to Apple’s special exception here, that’s not a problem.

Overall, I’ve been shocked by how well the 11-inch iPad Pro works for me when multitasking. Depending on your own work, or your level of willingness to keep sidebar menus on-screen in Split View, the story may be different for you. But for me, it’s been perfectly fine.

11-inch Fullscreen Views: Surprisingly Limiting

Fullscreen views, on the other hand, have proven a more difficult adjustment than I expected.

When I say ‘fullscreen views,’ I’m referring to a wide array of non-Split View setups, usually as relates to the design arrangements inside of apps, but also in spaces like the Home screen where the full 11-inch display is more limited than its 12.9-inch sibling.

Starting with apps, the main issue I’ve faced is the absence of three-column layouts in Apple Notes and Mail, which are exclusive to the larger iPad Pro. I’m a heavy user of both apps, and especially Notes, where I have over 1,500 notes organized among more than 75 folders and sub-folders. Notes is also, unsurprisingly, the app that holds the most open windows for me: as I write, I have seven different Notes windows saved, including one in Slide Over, four in Split View paired with Pages, Ulysses, Books, and Numbers, and the remaining two as fullscreen windows. Since I use this app so much, being able to view my full list of folders, notes in the selected folder, and the body of the selected note is very valuable for me. I’ve mostly grown accustomed to not having this option on the 11-inch iPad Pro, but it’s still missed.

Here are a few other in-app annoyances:

• In Safari, seeing fewer favorites in the favorites bar;
• The keyboard row not displaying Keychain’s key icon as often, requiring me to open Settings ⇾ Passwords & Accounts to grab a login;
• In Morning Reader, which I check many times each day, the larger iPad shows all ten tech headlines on-screen at once, while the 11-inch requires scrolling for a full overview.

I should also note that, after a few days with the default system text size, I adjusted the text down one notch in Settings ⇾ Display & Brightness ⇾ Text Size. The default size appeared larger than what I’m used to seeing on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, whereas moving it down slightly looked just right. This brought the added benefit, of course, of displaying more content on-screen than before in apps that support Dynamic Type.

The Home screen on the 11-inch iPad Pro is largely the same as on the 12.9-inch, fitting the same number of icons in your grid, but there are a couple notable differences. Despite the grid slots being consistent across devices, with the 11-inch model you lose a couple slots in the dock, the most important space for apps. Not counting the three suggested/recent apps on the right side, the larger iPad’s dock has 15 slots, while the smaller has 13. Two fewer slots isn’t a major problem by any means, especially if you keep a folder in your dock, but it’s worth noting nonetheless.

The other change is the number of widgets you can keep pinned to the Home screen. When using compact layouts, the larger iPad can display four widgets at all times, while the smaller can only display three. Again, it’s not the end of the world, but it could make a meaningful difference to you.

Tablet Mode

The iPad, despite its evolution over the last decade, is still at its core a tablet. As I mentioned at the start, however, I haven’t used my 12.9-inch iPad Pro as a tablet in the five years it’s been my primary computer. Yet pre-iPad Pro, I used either an iPad or iPad mini as a tablet and loved it. It wasn’t my primary computer, but it didn’t need to be. Once I had the larger screen of the iPad Pro, and the attached Smart Keyboard, the device became a laptop for me and nothing else. On the rare occasions when I tried using it as a tablet, it felt clunky; I simply found it too big to be a good tablet.

There was also the matter of regularly attaching and detaching the Smart Keyboard Folio. While it’s not exactly difficult to remove the iPad from that case, it certainly takes real intention and effort to do so; it’s just a little more cumbersome than I’d like. One of my favorite details about the new Magic Keyboard, by contrast, is that its floating design invites you to grab the iPad and take it with you. The bottom area of the iPad remains detached from the case, so you can easily reach out and enter ‘tablet mode.’

The absence of any tablet mode use in my life hasn’t historically bothered me much, because I found the trade-off of getting a great ‘laptop’ worthwhile. But with the 11-inch iPad Pro, and the tablet-friendly design of the new Magic Keyboard, I wondered if I could continue enjoying the iPad as a laptop while rediscovering its tablet identity as well.

What I’ve discovered these last few weeks is that, while the 11-inch iPad Pro is certainly a fantastic tablet, the very concept of tablet – for my use cases – is not as compelling as it used to be.

When I first started using my 11-inch iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard, I struggled trying to think of situations when I would want to grab the iPad and use it as a tablet. I attributed this to a simple lack of habit and assumed that in time it would change. Since my testing period with the device was limited to mere weeks, however, I tried finding immediate inspiration for tablet mode uses by going back to the beginning: Steve Jobs’ introduction of the first iPad.

That brilliant 2010 keynote was Apple’s way of proving to the world that a ‘third device’ deserved to exist, even in a world where we already had smartphones and laptops. The crux of the argument is that this third device, the iPad, had to be “far better at some key things” than either a phone or laptop. Seven such things were named:

• Browsing
• Email
• Photos
• Video
• Music
• Games
• eBooks

In using the 11-inch iPad Pro as a tablet, I evaluated the device in each of these seven categories.

Browsing

The iPad remains an excellent tool for web browsing. When holding the device in portrait orientation, you can see a full web layout in your hand, and it feels great.

However, my web browsing habits have changed significantly in the last decade. Whereas I used to daily browse sites for fun or from sheer interest, these days my browsing is primarily limited to work matters. I’ll browse sites as ways of keeping apprised of any Apple news that may need covering, but in those situations my best iPad setup involves using it in laptop mode because if there’s news to cover, I’ll quickly find myself needing an attached keyboard.

It’s not that I never enjoy the web recreationally anymore, only that my habits for how I consume web content have changed. A few of my interests, for example, are TV, movies, books, football, and popular news. In 2010 I would have visited individual websites to pursue these interests, but in recent years I’ve moved that kind of browsing into the Apple News app.

While Apple News does work well on iPad, it’s similarly great on the iPhone, and that’s where I’ve grown accustomed to using the app most often. If I were comparing browsing in Safari on iPad vs. iPhone, the iPad would easily win. Standard web layouts look great on the iPad in tablet mode, and that’s often not true on the iPhone – some sites aren’t responsive, and even on the ones that are, ads can quickly clutter the experience on such a small display. But in Apple News, with one minor caveat,¹ everything reads just as well on the iPhone’s smaller display, and I love that I can comfortably hold my iPhone with one hand while reading, whereas with the iPad, even at the smaller 11-inch size, one-handed use is only comfortable for a brief period of time.

In summary, Jobs’ claim that the iPad is better at web browsing remains true, but for me it’s become an irrelevant advantage. My work-related browsing necessitates having a hardware keyboard on standby, and my recreational browsing is better done in Apple News on my iPhone.

Email

This one’s easy: I’d much rather use a Magic Keyboard when processing email than the iPad’s software keyboard. This might be mere personal preference, but I find that in any scenario that involves typing text – beyond micro bursts of typing, such as responding to an iMessage – I want a hardware keyboard.

Perhaps email could be more enjoyable using only touch while sitting back in a lounge chair, but what sounds more enjoyable to me is getting through my inbox faster so I can spend as little time on email as possible, and for that, a hardware keyboard is needed. The iPad in laptop mode easily beats tablet mode when it comes to email.

Photos

Here’s one area I can unequivocally say the iPad as a tablet is better than any alternative. Browsing and managing photos on the naked iPad is absolutely delightful. I love seeing my images on the 11-inch display as I hold it in my hand.

I’m one of those people who still manually sorts through photos after taking them to see which ones I want to keep, and which ones can be deleted. Typically I’ll do this on my iPhone, though sometimes on my iPad in laptop mode, but the best experience is certainly the iPad in tablet mode.

Video

The 11-inch iPad Pro’s aspect ratio is a better fit for most video than the 12.9-inch model, but I never watch video in tablet mode nor do I have any desire to. If I’m watching something on the iPad’s display, I’d rather not have to hold the display while I watch. My ideal setup involves placing the iPad in front of me in the Magic Keyboard or Smart Keyboard Folio, and in those scenarios the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is a better option for video simply because it’s bigger. Maybe I’m just lazy, but I’d rather kick back and relax while watching rather than manage holding or propping up the iPad by hand.

Music

In the pre-Apple Watch era, maybe the iPad was better for music in some respects, since it provided more screen real estate for browsing and managing your library. But now, nearly all of my music listening is managed on my iPhone (which connects to either my AirPods Pro or HomePod).

The main reason for preferring the iPhone, as I hinted, is that the Apple Watch’s automatic Now Playing view enables me to easily control music playback from my iPhone right on my wrist. If I’m playing something from my iPad, my Watch won’t give me playback controls, so I would have to interact with the iPad directly to make adjustments or see what’s playing. It makes more sense for me to do everything through the iPhone, so that whether I’m home or away, listening through my AirPods or HomePod, I always have immediate access to playback controls via my Apple Watch and Now Playing.

Games

This is yet another area where I find that either my iPhone or the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is a better fit than the 11-inch iPad in tablet mode. My thinking is simple: if I’m playing a game designed for touch, it will almost certainly work best on the iPhone, and I love playing one-handed when possible; if it’s not a touch-optimized game, I’ll likely use a connected Bluetooth controller to play, in which case I’ll put my iPad in the Magic Keyboard rather than in tablet mode. And while both sizes of iPad work well in this setup, the larger screen gets an edge.

eBooks

There’s no area of tablet use that was a bigger disappointment to me than eBook reading. I read a lot of books, and ever since getting the large iPad Pro, I’ve grown accustomed to reading on my iPhone rather than my iPad, even though pre-2015 I would always read on my iPad or iPad mini. My hope is that using the 11-inch iPad Pro would enable me to do tablet reading again, but I found the experience frustrating.

Perhaps the biggest barrier to reading comfortably has been the lack of sufficient margin in Apple Books, my reading app of choice. Apple provides no margin settings in its app, and while I knew that already, I was expecting that portrait orientation on the 11-inch iPad would have healthy margin defaults; instead, margin levels are at a bare minimum, which causes each line to be longer than I would like. This might sound like a nitpick, but in practice longer lines cause me to read slower, because my eyes have to move back and forth across farther distances. I’ve found that reading on my iPhone, where I can read on pace with a near-constant scroll, is the fastest way to consume books. The only way to replicate this on the iPad is to put Books in Split View with another app, which I could simply do on the 12.9-inch iPad Pro.

Besides the issue of poor margins, I’ve found that I prefer reading on my iPhone for two other reasons: one-handed use and true black backgrounds. I can hold my iPhone for extended reading sessions without any discomfort, while with the 11-inch iPad Pro I’ve found myself needing to regularly reposition my setup to stay comfortable. Also, I love reading with the true black background that’s enabled by my iPhone’s OLED display. Unless I’m reading outside in daylight, I always keep Books’ night theme activated because I find the true black so beautiful – it’s a nice battery saver too.

Tablet Summary

Overall, using the iPad as a tablet has been a mixed bag for me, and less compelling than I expected. So many of the things that used to be best on iPad I now find better suited to the iPhone, or to the iPad in laptop mode. If I did any drawing, sketching, or handwriting those would be excellent uses for tablet mode, but I don’t, so the possible uses I’m left with are minimal.

Even the simple matter of holding the 11-inch iPad Pro in my hand has been a disappointment in that the Apple Pencil constantly gets in the way. When the iPad is attached to a keyboard in landscape, having the Pencil sit along the top of the device is perfect. But when holding the device in-hand, it’s difficult to get a comfortable grip; I could simply rotate the iPad so my grip is opposite the Pencil, but I regularly switch hands when holding it, so doing constant device rotations isn’t a great solution.

Laptop Mode

Most of the day I need a keyboard attached, so I’ve been using a Magic Keyboard with my 11-inch iPad Pro heavily. I went into detail on my experience with the Magic Keyboard with both iPad sizes in the April Monthly Log for Club MacStories members, so you can read that full piece in the Club archive.

To summarize, the Magic Keyboard for the 11-inch iPad Pro is a compromised experience, but it’s livable for me. The trackpad is just slightly shorter than that of the 12.9-inch model, but the biggest problem is that nearly every key besides the alphanumeric ones is reduced in size compared to a standard keyboard. There are exceptions, such as the Command, Option, and Control keys left of the spacebar, and the arrow keys, but practically everything else is smaller – and in some cases much smaller – than standard sizes. This has definitely resulted in more typing mistakes for me, but that’s likely an issue that will be resolved with time.

Besides the problem with smaller keys, I also have an issue with the Magic Keyboard for both iPad sizes where I can’t make it sufficiently balance on my lap. Because of that, I now set the Magic Keyboard on top of the closed Smart Keyboard Folio, which acts as a perfect leveling surface and solves the problem entirely. For the full story behind this solution, see my Club MacStories piece.

Desktop Mode

Unfortunately I don’t have much to say about using the iPad connected to an external monitor other than that this experiment confirmed my preference for avoiding desks when possible.

My home desk is currently occupied by my wife the majority of the day as she’s temporarily working from home, but I used the space for a while one day to connect both the 11-inch and 12.9-inch iPads in succession to my external monitor. It’s a budget monitor, so it isn’t 4K, and it’s slightly wider than a standard monitor so the aspect ratio wasn’t ideal for either iPad. Both had significant black bars on the tops and sides when connected.

While I’m glad that desktop use is a legitimate option for iPads now, especially since mice and trackpads are properly supported, the software experience when connecting to monitors remains extremely limited. Very few apps support the years-old APIs that enable an optimized experience on external displays, and until Apple improves those APIs I don’t think that’s going to change.

Even if the software was better, working from a desk still may not be for me; I simply prefer having more flexibility in my working arrangement. That might change if I made the investment of building out a desk setup that’s more tailored for my needs, but I don’t currently have the space in my tiny Manhattan apartment for anything like that. I also don’t like the notion of having separate keyboards and trackpads for my iPad Pro and Mac mini, or sticking with a single accessory set and having to constantly unpair and repair when changing devices. Some third-party accessories offer hardware buttons to quickly switch between Bluetooth connections, but Apple doesn’t offer anything like that presently. So for the time being, desktop use of the iPad is at the bottom of my priority list.

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I went into this experiment with no strong sense how it would turn out. And the findings surprised me in both positive and negative ways. A quick overview of this article reveals that lots of the surprises were negative: tablet mode wasn’t as appealing as I’d hoped, fullscreen views were limiting, and connecting to an external monitor is something I have no desire to revisit anytime soon.

However, despite all of these drawbacks, there remains something very endearing to me about the 11-inch size. Besides the positive fact of Split View working fine for me on the smaller display, there’s something compelling about the device that’s hard to pinpoint. Maybe it’s the wonder of seeing so much computing power present in such a small package. Or perhaps the way that the limited screen space reflects a minimalist ethos, making the 12.9-inch display feel excessive by comparison.

I’m amazed at how easy it’s been for me to switch back and forth between the two iPad sizes. Every time that I’ve changed sizes, I very quickly adapted to the iPad in front of me. In fact, after those switches my first impression when moving to the 12.9-inch size has often been that it’s felt too big, whereas moving to the 11-inch often gives me a feeling of delight. Maybe that’s just because the 11-inch is so new to me still, but I don’t think it can be explained away that easily. There’s simply something very nice about the smaller size.

If I had just purchased both of these devices, and could return whichever one didn’t suit me, that would be a very hard decision to make. As it stands though, since I already had a 2018 12.9-inch model, and had to buy a 2020 version of the 11-inch, the decision is made a lot easier.

The 11-inch iPad Pro is a fantastic device, and I may revisit it in the future, but for now retaining my 2018 12.9-inch model seems best. Primarily because it means saving a lot of money, since I can simply return the 2020 11-inch for a full refund. I’m also interested to see if Apple’s continued evolution of iPadOS will involve features that better take advantage of larger displays.

My ease in adapting to each screen size makes clear to me that you really can’t go wrong with either model. The two devices are close enough in size that both can function well as primary computers for most people.

This is probably too general of advice, but I’d recommend that if you expect to regularly use your iPad Pro as a tablet, the 11-inch will likely be your best option. If, however, you expect to use it almost entirely with a Magic Keyboard attached, the 12.9-inch is a good bet. Both devices can work in both modes, but the 11-inch is a better tablet, and the 12.9-inch is a better laptop.

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There’s relatively little happening as regards Brexit developments this week (although the increasing row over the Northern Ireland Protocol is important), and little new to say about such developments as there are (but see Dr Katy Hayward and Professor David Phinnemore’s analysis of the background to the row). As regards the current situation overall, Katya Adler, the BBC’s excellent Europe Editor, has provided a clear summary.

So instead of writing a new post, I am ‘re-upping’ one from 28 September 2018 on Brexit Britain’s war fixation. It seems appropriate since Britain is having a public holiday for VE Day. That was decided last year, to reflect that this will be the 75th anniversary (the same happened for the 50th) but perhaps also reflects, precisely, a fixation with the Second World War which is growing rather than diminishing with time, even as those who still remember it diminish in number. (For further, interesting, reflections on this do take a look at an excellent blog post by Miles King)

And, indeed, since writing that post it does seem as if war obsession is growing and coarsening, with the behaviour of pantomime oaf Mark Francois a prime, even paradigmatic, case. That could be seen as harmless enough, but it does carry dangers as the post points out. These have come into even sharper relief during the coronavirus. For as discussed in my post of a couple of weeks ago dubious comparisons with Spitfire production or the Blitz have undoubtedly adversely affected Britain’s response to the pandemic.

Despite the post being about 18 months old, there is not much that I want to change or add (and I haven’t edited it apart from expunging one, now legally superseded, phrase), except for two things. One is that my point in the third footnote that people might not be sanguine if faced with disruptions to supplies in the event of no-deal Brexit seems borne out by the panic buying at the start of the pandemic crisis. The no-deal Brexit under discussion at the time was that of there being no Withdrawal Agreement at all, but similar disruptions can be envisaged if, at the end of December, we leave the transition period with no trade deal in place and, actually, even with such a deal there will be a need for new customs processes which will disrupt established supply chains. Also of note is that the coronavirus shortages were caused by a short-term demand spike; those at the end of the transition period will be driven by supply shortages, and may be of longer duration.

The second additional point is that, in response to the original post, I received several messages saying that I was ‘showing disrespect’ for those who fought in the war, or failed to understand its significance. This is nonsense. I spent eight years researching and writing a history of Bletchley Park, Britain’s wartime codebreaking organization. That history is itself often mythologized or misunderstood and as I wrote in the book it shows no lack of respect to those who worked there “to avoid sanitization and sentimentality … most of them would have regarded an attempt at analytical rigour as a more fitting tribute” (p.32).

That same idea matters in the current context, where there is sometimes a mood of almost authoritarian insistence upon jingoistic celebration. It would have seemed odd, I imagine, to those who were engaged in fighting authoritarianism and for individual freedom.

At all events, it is a strange historical irony that, in the long-run, it has proved more difficult for Britain – or perhaps England – to ‘get over’ winning than it has for other countries to get over defeat and occupation. And perhaps an even stranger and grimmer one that this has been partly responsible for Britain leaving the institution which embodies the successful attempt to provide the continent of Europe with an alternative to the horrors of both the war and its long, bleak, ‘cold’ aftermath. Happy Victory in Europe Day.

The September 2018 post follows.

Brexit Britain’s wartime fixation

In the run up to the referendum, it was widely remarked upon that one significant strand of the leave campaign channelled the British fixation with, and often mythologization of, World War Two (WW2). How big a part it played in the outcome of the vote is impossible to say, but it seems plausible that it was a factor amongst the demographic that voted most strongly for Brexit, the over 50s. This would be not so much people who remember WW2 – now a relatively small number – but the generation or two who grew up, as I did, in its shadow. It was a time when every other film and TV series was set in the war, when children made models of Spitfires and Lancasters, and teachers and parents spoke of ‘the war’ both routinely and as the defining event of their lives.

No doubt future analysts will have much to say about this*. For now, what matters most urgently is to understand how that same fixation and mythologization is impacting upon the ongoing politics of Brexit. As the outgoing German Ambassador to Britain remarked earlier this year, it has two components**. One is the idea of Britain ‘standing alone’, the other a narrative that links, as Boris Johnson has explicitly done, Nazi Germany’s attempt to subjugate Europe with the present-day EU. Perhaps we could add (at least) a third aspect, quite often seen on social media, that Europe owes Britain a debt of gratitude from the war that ought to be repaid by accepting all Britain’s negotiating demands.

These and similar sentiments constantly re-appear almost every day, and, possibly, with increasing regularity as the negotiations grind, stutter and stall. Just today there was a report of the views of Conservative Party members on these negotiations. One said: “I’d rather have no deal than a bad deal … if this country had a chance and an opportunity it could look after itself. In the second world war we were feeding ourselves”.

This is obviously historically inaccurate (much food was brought to Britain, at huge cost in human life and suffering, by Atlantic convoys) but the real point is that seems to have been said not as a worst case scenario, but as something desirable, part of the opportunities of Brexit, not as a calamity or as Project Fear hyperbole. It is revealing of the quite different ways that people may react to things like the appointment this week of a Food Supplies Minister as part of no deal planning. Many will think it extraordinary that a rich country in peacetime could even be entertaining such a possibility but others may feel not just sanguine but enthusiastic about it***.

A national quirk takes centre stage

We’re no longer in the situation where this longstanding quirk of the British psyche can just be dismissed as an amusing eccentricity. It has somehow come to occupy centre stage in the politics of Brexit. The Brexit Cabinet sub-committee is routinely described as the ‘war cabinet’. Boris Johnson constantly attempts – and fails – to cultivate a Churchillian image.

Peter Hargraves - the businessman who donated millions to the leave campaign, funding a leaflet to every household in the country - celebrates the insecurity Brexit will bring: “it will be like Dunkirk again”, he enthuses. Liam Fox announces his support for a round-the-world flight of a restored Spitfire to drum up exports for post-Brexit Britain.

Nor is war fever the preserve of crusty oldsters. Darren Grimes, the 22-year old Brexit activist, recently pronounced that “we’re a proud island nation that survived a world war – despite blockades in the Atlantic that tried to starve our country into submission. I don’t think we’re about to be bullied by a French egomaniac [i.e. Macron]”.

There’s a certain bathos in all this. Brexit, sold to the voters as a sunny upland of national pride and prosperity, reduced to the glum promise by Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab that the government will ensure “there is adequate food supply”. Slogans like ‘it won’t be too bad’ or ‘you won’t actually starve’ would probably not have had much traction, no matter how shiny and red a bus they were written on.

The dangers of war fixation

But there is far more danger than humour in it. The underlying sentiment of confrontational antagonism has permeated the Brexit negotiations from the beginning. Brexiters, having won their great prize, and having assured us how easy it would be, immediately adopted a stance not of confident optimism but of sullen suspicion punctuated with bellicosity.

Recall one of the early moments that the complexities of Brexit became clear – in relation to Gibraltar – and former Conservative leader Michael Howard immediately started talking about war. Or, more low-key but showing how permeated with hostility the approach has been, Johnson’s ‘go whistle’ jibe or Davis’s ‘row of the summer’ bluster.

That’s one danger, and it has already done its damage. The far greater one is the now ingrained and sure to become worse narrative of EU ‘bullying’ and ‘punishment’. This is almost invariably accompanied by invocations of WW2, of standing alone, of German aggression and French duplicity. It is dangerous not so much because it often invokes a highly partial picture of the war but because it always invokes an entirely unrealistic picture of Brexit.

Britain, through its vote and its government’s actions, has chosen to leave and to do so in the form that it has. That entails losing all of the benefits of membership of the EU and of the single market. It is not bullying or punishment to be expected to face the consequences of that choice. Britain has not been forced by foreign aggression to ‘stand alone’: it has chosen to do so. It has backed itself into a corner, through lies and fantasies about the practical realities of what Brexit would mean. It is now in danger of telling itself lies and fantasies about why that has happened.

Britain’s wartime history is something we can justly feel proud of. For that matter there are plenty of people - older people, now, inevitably - in countries like France, Belgium and Holland who continue to feel gratitude for it. But pride should not mean truculence, bellicosity, entitlement and self-pity. Above all, Dunkirk was almost 80 years ago. There is also plenty to feel proud of since and, in any case, that one desperate moment in our history should not and does not define us forever.



*Indeed some already have. See in particular the excellent chapter by Robert Eaglestone, ‘Cruel Nostalgia and the Memory of the Second World War’ in Eagelstone, R. (Ed) Brexit and Literature. Critical and Cultural Responses. Routledge, 2018.

**It is noteworthy that even pointing this out was enough to enrage Brexiters, with the Daily Express railing against the comments for ‘mocking’ them.

***The relative numbers in these different camps will become politically significant if a no deal Brexit were to happen. Brexiters are likely to find much less appetite than they think for massive disruption to the amenities of everyday life, even amongst those who currently appear relaxed about the prospect.

Chris Dede, Learning Policy Institute, May 07, 2020

Overview article describing how education is (and should be) adapting. Chris Dede writes, "Theory and evidence show the benefits of using innovative teaching strategies based on current knowledge about learning. These next-generation instructional models are characterized by:

• utilizing collaborative, guided learning-by-doing to complement passive learning-by-assimilation;
• providing students agency to include their personal interests in what they are learning, and infusing these into the curriculum to be covered;
• complementing high-stakes tests with diagnostic/formative assessments that measure a broad range of knowledge and skills useful in life; and
• involving many types of people as “teachers” in various life settings of students, extending learning outside the classroom and beyond the school day."

He continues, "educational models based on these strategies and implemented by well-prepared teachers produce outcomes that are more equitable and effective, as well as better suited to what students need for success in life."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Bell says that its Crave streaming service has experienced a 75 percent increase in usage amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although the carrier hasn’t released a new subscriber numbers, it notes that there has been a significant increase in viewing. Bell last revealed Crave subscriber numbers back in August 2019, stating that the service had 2.7 million users at the time.

The Montreal-based national carrier says there has also been a 25 percent increase in live TV viewing. These increases in entertainment and content consumption aren’t a surprise since many people have been self-isolating at home amid the pandemic.

Internet data volumes have also increased as much as 60 percent during the day, and 20 percent in the evening. Further, there has been a 40 percent increase in rural internet usage.

Bell says landline and wireless voice traffic has increased by up to 200 percent at peak times, and conference calling is up 250 percent.

The carrier states that despite the increase in usage, it has been able to maintain overall network reliability of 99.99 percent throughout the pandemic.

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The Quayside neighbourhood in Toronto is no longer being developed into a futuristic smart city.

Alphabet-owned Sidewalk Labs was working in conjunction with Waterfront Toronto to turn the underutilized Quayside area in the Toronto east-end into a smart city project that would become a touchstone for smart cities in the future. Alphabet is Google’s parent company.

Over the last two years, there have been dreams of giant wooden buildings, heated streets with hexagon tiles and many other strange but exciting changes to the typical city layout and design. However, as things progressed, people began to look at Sidewalk Labs with more scrutiny, especially when it came to data collection and storage.

The technology/real-estate development company cites economic uncertainty around the world and Toronto’s real-estate market as reasons for cancelling the project.

“It has become too difficult to make the 12-acre project financially viable without sacrificing core parts of the plan we had developed together with Waterfront Toronto to build a truly inclusive, sustainable community,” Sidewalk Labs’ CEO Dan Doctoroff stated in a letter.

The company submitted a few plans to the city to kickstart the project. However, the project was repeatedly pushed back as more amendments were made regarding data collection and ownership, facial recognition rules and other tech-related privacy issues.

Other plans were delayed because people felt that Sidewalk Labs was overreaching in what it wanted and originally agreed to. It seemed at every turn there was something to stop Sidewalk Labs from proceeding. This is likely for the best since data privacy is an important issue, especially in the context of a smart city.

Source: Sidewalk Labs

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Zoom announced that it has acquired Keybase, a startup company that specializes in secure messaging and encryption.

In a blog post, the company stated that this acquisition is going to help it build end-to-end encryption. This comes after Zoom has faced numerous security issues in the last few months as its popularity and usage significantly increased amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Zoom’s acquisition of Keybase, which was finalized for an unknown price, will likely boost its credibility. The platform will also definitely benefit from having encryption experts on its team.

“This acquisition marks a key step for Zoom as we attempt to accomplish the creation of a truly private video communications platform that can scale to hundreds of millions of participants, while also having the flexibility to support Zoom’s wide variety of uses,” Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said in the blog post.

Yuan notes that since enterprise consumers are reliant on a high level of security, this new acquisition will help Zoom achieve that standard.

He also stated that the service is going to implement new tools for paying customers once Keybase is integrated into the company. For instance, he says that the platform is going to offer end-to-end encryption for paying customers.

Further, he says that “logged-in users will generate public cryptographic identities that are stored in a repository on Zoom’s network and can be used to establish trust relationships between meeting attendees.”

Given Zoom’s recent track record in terms of security, this acquisition is a step in the right direction towards regaining consumers’ trust.

Source: Zoom

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