progressdeveloper

 I want this (it's a t-shirt). It summarizes about 50% of my entire world view. By the way, in my ongoing effort to listen to every history podcast ever made, I listened to Craig Baird on the Edmund Fitzgerald. TBH, not that interesting. Here's what I remember: - 29 people died (I would have guessed way more) - it was carrying iron ore (I probably would have said passengers) - it was American (def I would have said Canadian!) - its wreckage was found, both flotsam and the majority on the bottom of the lake - a storm has been predicted but not expected to be so huge - another ship of similar type was in the area but was unable to find survivors - exact reason for sinking is in doubt but one theory is it was hit by three successive "rogue waves". Another is that its hatches had not been properly secured. Everyone sued everyone. - for its time, EF was relatively huge - tons of ships have sunk in the Great Lakes over the years (I think thousands, with low thousands of dea...

While killing time at YYC airport, I had one of the most interesting conversations with Gemini that I have ever had. I got to thinking about the Silicon Valley Bank failure (a couple of years ago) and how banks manage the risks of borrowing money short term (eg. demand deposits) and lending it long term (eg. 30 year mortgages). In Canada and most countries, "long term mortgage" usually means 5 years; USA is an outlier in selling very long term fixed rate mortgages. But the same general problem applies in all countries. Here's what I learned: 1. Indeed, banks in general do not really try to match maturities of their assets to their liabilities. Eg they are quite happy to sell $1B of 5 year fixed rate mortgages and fund them with $1B of floating rate demand deposits. 2. They offset this risk (of interest rates that they pay for the deposit going higher than the fixed rate they receive on the loan) by buying swaps that convert the floating rate expense into fixed rate expens...

  I listened to this podcast on compulsory voting. As usual, I don't (didn't) have a strong feeling about it, but it seemed to me like a vaguely bad idea. The government forcing you do so such as thing seems bad, presumably a lot of people would vote with no thought to it, and it would possibly make people resent elections and government even more than they do already. (Aside: another common sign in the YYC marathon: "YOU RUN BETTER THAN THE GOVERNMENT!". Presumably directed mostly at Ottawa and anyone else who as promoting EV's and such. But I digress). As for precedents, the fact that Argentina is a leading compulsory voting country does not exactly argue for it. On the other hand, so is Australia (and Belgium). In Belgium, it is not enforced; in Australia, it's a $20 fine, but you can get out of it easily (eg. by claiming religious objection). I think similar in AR. Well, this podcast (with some expert whose position I forget, but we can probably assume he ...

Well, marathon #5 is in the bag. On one hand, I finished strong (meaning, it felt OK); no serious consideration of puking, walking, cheating, or DNF'ing, all of which crossed my mind three weeks ago. On the other hand, I had really been hoping for a sub-4h time and I clocked in at 4:03:59. So, didn't quite make it, but that's OK. I stand by my updated opinion about Calgary. It's lovely. The course was 90% on residential streets and was dead flat except for a few underpasses with small hills. The temperature was delightfully cool; the cheerers were enthusiastic and everywhere, and it all seemed supremely well organized. Besides the usual Strava-related signs, there was a bit of a "finishing" theme, in the sexual sense; my favorite was "my boyfriend is going to finish twice today!", hopefully for them, that was true ;) -- Last night I went out with Federico and Carolina, my Argentina friends. I was happy to hear that they are overall still 100% bullish...

Here I am in downtown Calgary. Just picked up my race stuff (I'm #2602). Start time is very early, 6:45, which is great. Temperature is a little higher than I'd like, but it is almost 3 in the afternoon, so, I'm not overly worried about that. Race Expo (the place they give you your timer chip and number) was about 1/4 the size of YVR's, which is fair enough. Wandering around downtown Calgary, I feel like I may have developed an unfairly negative opinion of it. Calgary seems about as nice as Ottawa, which is to say plenty nice, though it's river is much smaller. Nicer than Vancouver except for the mountains, of course. I am staying at an Airbnb about 2k from the race line. I took the bus in from YYC, something I have never done before ever, and that was OK. It's nice to have all afternoon with no particular agenda. And of course I'm anxious about tomorrow ;) Should be done by noon and catching 5 PM flight back home.

I continue to struggle  to watch "The Days" on NF. It's a dramatization of the Fukushima disaster. I find anything nuclear super interesting. But this show is absolutely awful. The writing and acting are just horrible. I will stick with it a while longer. I don't know much about the details of this incident, nor do I understand why Chernobyl is considered so much worse (could it be propaganda, Japan is an ally and Russia is not?) Same with one, the title of which I forget, about the Gioania incident in Brazil; that one was so bad, I had to turn off. (tl,dr: somebody stole a radiation machine from an abandoned hospital and in so doing irradiated a ton of people). On a somewhat more positive note, we watched "Still", about Michael J Fox's struggle with Parkinson's. I quite enjoyed it, though since then I have been thinking about all the ways it felt short. It was sort of fun to see MJF's wife and kids and a bit about how he navigates his disease. B...

I have seriously decided that excess phone use is a scourge and while I can't change the world, I am going to do my best to change myself. This is going OK: - keep phone out of reach of bed, ideally and usually in a separate room (unless I need the alarm) (this is the easiest but most important one) - don't take phone on walks unless I have a specific reason - avoid reflexively scrolling phone while waiting for something eg. in a MD waiting room - only watch YouTube on "the big TV", it's hard to never watch YouTube but I feel like only doing it on a real TV naturally limits it, somewhat. For me personally, YouTube is by far the most addictive corner of the internet. I naturally get tired of Facebook after a few minutes. I really want to delete SM from my phone, but to do this effectively, you have to install blocker apps. It's no problem to remove apps but blocking web sites is unreasonably difficult (why isn't this a basic feature of Chrome?). On a real c...

I loved this movie. Absolutely fantastic: Apparently it is classified, at times, as a rom-com; I'd call it a "psychological thriller" in the same approximate category as Uncut Gems and Marty Supreme. Culminating in a near-worst-case wedding reception. After the first 15 minutes, completely gripping. It did have some huge flaws, though: - far too long an opening and the scene setting up the premise (which I think will have anyone who sees this movie talking about afterwards) - the lead actress, pictured left, was adorable but horribly miscast - I know Robert Pattinson is a heartthrob but he could not have been less appealing  - no chemistry at all between the couple - do people really react to extreme mental anguish by making out with the first person that shows any sympathy? - ending was a nice idea but should have been much, much tighter 9/10 would recommend !

Marathon #4 (YVR) is in the bag. And it was brutal !! My time was so awful I couldn't even bring myself to look it up. Similar to last year, things were more or less OK until the Burrard Bridge (30k mark) and then it fell apart (though last year I did manage to pull off a good, for me, time). I spent the last 10k limping around the seawall and fighting the urge to throw up. Really unpleasant. I guess it was a combination of unseasonably hot and just having a bad day. It's fun to read the cheerer signs (though I heard or saw nothing, really, in those last 10k). The number of cheerers in Kits and around the Burrard Bridge was truly uplifting. Here are some signs I remember: "THE DEVIL WEARS STRAVA" "ON A SCALE OF 1 TO 10 YOU ARE A 42.2" "DON'T TRUST THAT FART" "RUNNING IS THE BEST BOWEL PROTOCOL" Anyways, we'll try again in Calgary in three weeks ;)