A few nice things
A few nice things:
- The weather creeped up to 20°C earlier this week, so Zoya and I took some time after dinner to head to the park, play on the swings, and blow some bubbles. Her favorite part was blowing the bubbles far away from me and then asking me to chase them down to pop them; she chuckled loudly every time I stumbled over my own feet in my endeavor to reach the evasive bubbles that floated past my hands and up into the sky. The weather is supposed to get cold again next week, so I relished this chance to play in the heat and sunshine.
- Today is Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and a special day in my family and community. Aside from all the community festivities, Nowruz is an excellent time to reset, to take stock of the past year and set intentions for the year ahead. Because it coincides with the first day of spring, there is an air of rejuvenation and restoration that comes with the holiday: a marker that tells us it is time for growth and flourishing. (I’ll likely write more about my Nowruz reset on the blog next week, but no promises.)
- The walks to the bus stop in the morning have been more musical recently. Every day, we set off down the sidewalk to catch the bus, and these days that stroll is accompanied by a cacophony of birdsong: there are birds flying through every tree, calling out to each other, marking the arrival of spring. The loudest are the cardinals, whose calls are distinctive and ever-present; we see the flashes of red fluttering from branch to branch as we walk by.
- L came back from her trip this week, and both Zoya and I are so glad to have her home. It’s startling how much you can miss someone even after a short absence, how you feel the emptiness that they leave when they are not here. Zoya and I had a ton of fun together, but we know that our small family only feels whole when L is back with us.
- The folks at Tom’s Dairy Freeze had a countdown to their opening day on Instagram. When Tom’s opens for the season, it’s truly a momentous occasion: it signals that the good weather is on its way, that ice cream season is here, that it doesn’t feel wrong to dream of the summer anymore. Zoya, my brother, Bri and I went to Tom’s on its opening day—they serve the best soft serve ice cream I’ve ever had so I’m always eager to visit—and the crowds were sparse; there was a chill in the air that may have kept some people away, but didn’t deter us. I had my first soft serve cone of the year, and felt delighted.
If you’re willing, let me know about a few nice things in your days; I’d love to hear more about what’s making you smile.
A poem
For a Student Who Used AI to Write a Paper
Joseph Fasano
Now I let it fall back
in the grasses.
I hear you. I know
this life is hard now.
I know your days are precious
on this earth.
But what are you trying
to be free of?
The living? The miraculous
task of it?
Love is for the ones who love the work.
Some links
A bold claim that seems accurate: big pharma is the most only reason anyone still dies from HIV. I worry how the dismantling of USAID will exacerbate this problem and how many people are going to continue to suffer and die because of the decisions of billionaires.
A chat with the family of the Texas girl who died from measles and the community where she is from. There’s a large community not far from where we live who also don’t believe in vaccinations, so I’m worried that stories like this one will be coming our way too.
If you had fun playing with your pocket calculator, like we all did, when you were younger, you’ll appreciate this dive into the history of the pocket calculator and how technology and business and culture all had to align to make it a reality.
Also about the history of seemingly-ordinary things: the history of the standard 52-card playing cards deck as we know it now. It hasn’t always been this way.
“Then as now, mechanisation and automation are not neutral. They never are. They do not just speed up older ways of doing things. Historically, they always mark transformations that are social as well as technical” On the evolution—and mechanization—of the production of olive oil.
I’ve shared a ton about the scourge of automobile culture before, but this look at the American (and dare I say, Canadian too) obsession with building highways is elucidating and infuriating all at the same time.
To close, I’m sharing something I should have shared months ago when I first read it; I think now that I’ve had time to process it, it’s even more salient and powerful than it was on first read.
My friend Jenny Zhang (I feel so incredibly lucky to call Jenny a friend, she’s incredible) gave a talk at Monktoberfest last October and shared her presentation on her website. The presentation is ostensibly about values at work and building an organization based on values, but it’s more than that: it’s really about how to be a person who knows and lives their own values; and aligns themselves with those values in the way they approach work. It’s quite possibly one of the best talks I’ve ever seen and read.
I’m going to share a few snippets from the talk here, but honestly, just go watch the talk, or at least read the notes; it’s worth every second of your time.
Increasingly there’s research that says that burnout isn’t just about working too much. It’s often much more about moral injury, a break with your values. It’s the psychic harm of not standing up for your beliefs, of watching unethical behaviour take place without doing something about it, of feeling betrayed by yourself or by someone you thought you trusted. […]
This is the catch-22 of culture change: fully integrating a new norm is difficult without changes in the underlying values, but values aren’t likely to change until the norms become normalized. Which means any culture change effort requires constant reinforcement to make sure the norms don’t regress before the values take hold.
And a couple of passages that really resonate with me, someone who has dedicated his career to doing the work of building culture in organizations:
That said, this is exactly the kind of unpaid glue work that can be a huge strain for the people taking it on. It’s also work that often falls to marginalized employees, because for them it can be a matter of surviving in the organization. It’s deeply unfair that most organizations don’t reward this work, that you have less time to ship shiny features that get promotions if you’re fixing the culture. It is a thankless role, and I’m not saying you should volunteer as tribute. But if you have to do it, whether out of necessity or because you can’t help yourself, let’s find you friends in high places who can help. […]
If only firefighters get the glory, don’t be surprised if no one wants to work on asbestos removal.
These snippets don’t quite capture how excellent this talk is and how important it is for anyone who thinks about values—at work and elsewhere—in their life. Please do go check it out.