Jonathan Sick’s Timeline

What a time to be renewing a mortgage. Interest rates in Canada have been steadily going down with perhaps 50 to 75 basis points to go, making a variable rate look good. And this trade war could further reduce interest rates… Or! it could trigger inflation causing interest rates to go up.

🤷

I just finished my 50th Fitness+ session on the weekend (mostly rowing with my new bff Josh Crosby). I wish I got onboard earlier, but I’m so glad I’m here now. 🚣

For our respective birthdays we got each other a carpet cleaner and an electric snow shovel. We truly have become elder millennial parents.

I started reading Value(s) by Mark Carney 📚 My goal is to read Carney’s and Freeland’s books over the Canadian Liberal leadership race. Both are highly impressive, which bodes well for our future.

The snow banks are starting to get out of hand.

-21˚C and the furnace gave up last night. Thankfully we have some redundant forms of heating and some friends dropped off extra space heaters so we should be able to keep things going until a tech arrives.

Speaking of Krugman going indie, I find it curious that even established writers are offloading platform ownership to Substack in return for the benefit of its network and (I guess?) simple technical set up. What happens when Substack stops being cool or culturally palatable?

I was let down when I heard that Paul Krugman was retiring from the New York Times — this is until I found that he’s got a new home on Substack and is commenting with ever more frequency on economics and (of course) politics. Highly recommended and paywall free (for now?)

We watched Wild Robot last night 🍿 As new parents, the story line hit hard in a good way.

I appreciated the dystopian undertones of the movie — like the Golden Gate Bridge being underwater.

And if you’re an ecologist, just try to suspend belief for about an hour for best effect.

Finished reading: Boom by Byrne Hobart and Tobias Huber 📚

The book’s idea is that useful bubbles — characterized by irrational exuberance, shared optimism, and overinvestment — are important drivers of innovation (think of bubbles as things like the Apollo program and development of the microchip rather than purely financial delusions like the 2008 financial crisis). In that sense, the current AI bubble can be seen as useful because it’s concentrating huge amounts of R&D on a shared vision of the future. And just like the dot-com bubble popped but left behind the network infrastructure necessary for the Internet we rely upon today, the AI bubble may leave behind important software and computing paradigms even if Nvidia’s stock crashes.

Boom also has its weird and sometimes eye-roll-worthy moments. The first part of the book tries to explain that we’re currently mired in a Great Stagnation compared to the rapid developments of the mid-century. One of the things it blames for stagnation is the monoculture of university campuses — as if wokeness is to blame for a lack of innovation. The book ends with a philosophical and somewhat theological discussion of bubbles and progress that frankly didn’t land with me at all in audiobook format.

The middle stretch of the book is quite nice, though, as a survey of key technological developments in the last century and how a bubble-type environment brought them about.

Finished reading: Somewhere Beyond the Sea by Tj Klune 📚 This was our night time read for a while because we kept falling asleep early as new parents. I love Daniel Henning’s narration and find myself using David-the-Yeti’s voice with my son too often. I think it’s interesting how the first book concluded we can win over conservatives with love, but this book swung to towards silencing authoritarians with [magical] force and a little bit of land-back movement for good measure. Enough is enough, eh?

Finished reading: The Comeback by Lily Chu 📚A book about accidentally getting into a relationship with a K-pop idol and becoming a hashtag. I like the cross-overs with the Stand In and The Takedown.

Finished reading: The Stand-In by Lily Chu 📚 A rom-com where the main character finds her life’s work in becoming a productivity app developer/mogul? Oh yes!

Finished reading: The Takedown by Lily Chu. 📚 Lovely characters and I loved how the book poked at the cult of blind positivity. I also nerded out over how the friend Hanna is a callback to her book The Comeback.

Finished reading: Drop Dead by Lily Chu. 📚 A cute rom-com with a delightful narration duet from Phillipa Soo and John Cho. I wonder if Chu had Margaret Atwood in mind when writing Dot Voline?

Over paternity leave I crushed through the whole catalogue of Lily Chu audiobooks and I loved her whole mood board of Toronto / lady takes on the world / falls in love in the most implausible way / finds her purpose in life. Here’s some catch-up posts on each read… ✌️

My podcast listening stats for 2024 show just how much I have @macsparky in my ear! I’m sad to see Automators go (the second @rosemaryorchard podcast I’ve had sunset on me) but it’s given me the push to try improvements to my tech life and I thank them for that. 💜

This wonk podcast episode is primarily about whether passive investing is good for markets (and investors), but an idea that caught my ear is that we should have a means to invest in our local communities, but we don’t.

Right now, my biggest investment is in the US equity market. This is great for long-term returns, but it means my money has left the country where I live and isn’t making any tangible difference in my life. Why can’t I also make my local community better by investing in its businesses? In other words, why isn’t there an ETF for small businesses in Penetanguishene, Ontario?

And just like that, a night dipping to -20°, and Penetanguishene is iced in by Georgian Bay.

The first big ice formations of the season.

I enjoyed this video by Stewart Hicks on how the joining plate led to cheap trusses and ultimately the proliferation of McMansions in suburbia. So often a good idea ends up being perverted by capitalist players and the market goes along with it.

The first sunny day after two weeks of snow ❄️

You can’t tell your own stories if you’re too busy refuting the terrible stories told by others. You have to give yourself both the space—and the silence—to dream.

— Mandy Brown, Storytelling as practice

Watched Stay the Night with Andrea Bang. 🎬 We loved the thoughtful take on the rom com and coming of age genres. And perfect Toronto vibes.

My Old Ass 🎬 with Aubry Plaza and a Canadian cast surprised with the hard-hitting sentimentality of embracing the present and accepting the future (i.e. we all cried).

Started reading Handmade by Gary Rogowski because, until yesterday, it was free on Audible. 📚 I struggled through the start where he proclaimed he mastery of woodworking for ten minutes and then the first several chapters recounting his college life, but eventually it settled into a memoir on the craft similar to Peter Korn’s or even Nick Offerman’s. Definitely reminiscent of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in the melding of philosophy and craft.

Breakfast with Nikki

With great excitement we just started reading: Somewhere Beyond the Sea by Tj Klune 📚 It’s a prequel to the classic The House in the Cerulean Sea.

Finished reading: I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue 📚 A lovely office rom-com about finding empathy for yourself and others. Set in Calgary. ❤️

Currently reading: The Creative Act by Rick Rubin 📚 🐈☕️

Finished reading: Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick 📚 I thought this was a great primer on where we’re at with AI and what it can do for us. For the last year I’ve been using AI as a super-charged code completion with GitHub Copilot and a web documentation librarian with my MDN subscription. I’ve just scratched the surface of what I can do and I haven’t yet delved into the more conversational modes of AI. Mollick gave some interesting tips on prompt engineering — like giving the AI a persona for more insightful responses. Huh. Overall I like how Mollick encourages us to keep probing the frontiers of AI in our daily work and adopting it intentionally — much better than using it blindly or even ignoring it altogether.

I’m loving the upgrade from the 12 Pro camera to the iPhone 16 Pro. Portrait mode-ing all the things. I’ve been using the “Natural” photo styling a lot too.

Quick update on the iPhone transfer saga. The iPhone 16 Pro still crashed and behaved oddly. I ended up doing a clean restore, this time transferring directly from the old iPhone 12. Everything seems super happy since. That the original iCloud restore was buggy is concerning, but 🤷

The camera control “button” is interesting. I don’t feel at all fast using it yet, like I do with the physical controls on a Canon, so I assume I need to practice and build muscle memory for switching between settings.

Finished reading: How Infrastructure Works by Deb Chachra 📚 It starts out nerdy, but grows into a profound message about the social role of public infrastructure. Highly recommended.