Assorted Reads (September 2024)

Hi folks! I hope you're all doing well. It's become my favourite time of year in Toronto when the days are warm and the nights are cool.

I've been trying to take in the last few days of warmer weather with bike rides around the city. I've even managed to get Ada to start coming along for the rides in the backpack I recently got to carry her around in.

She seems to be loving it so far. Whenever I pick up the bag she runs over to see if it's time for another ride.

Now, let's get into some reads to enjoy over a cup of tea, coffee, hot chocolate, or whatever else you enjoy on crisp, cool days!

Stop Looking at Each Other

I loathe social media but have taken the perspective that it's a necessary evil in order to stay connected with friends and to maintain and grow my professional network.

This essay was fascinating because I've never read a piece that critically looked at us, the users, as the monitors of each other's behaviour.

There have been pieces on the influence potential monitoring from "big tech", possible employers, or governments has had on our online behaviours. But this piece flipped that and looked at the dynamic between followers and the 'influencer' instead.

The line that jumped out to me the most in this piece was:

The more connected you are in the digital world, the harder it is to detach yourself from that ecosystem.

This has been true from what I've seen, in the sense that the more I've engaged with people in the digital world, the more unusual it seems when I've attempted to connect in the real world.

To give an example of what I mean - in recent months, I've been trying to use my phone as it was intended to be used - to call friends and family - rather than defaulting to "how are you?" text messages and holding entire conversations in that medium when I want to connect with people I haven't spoken with in a while.

Often though, I've found I've had to start the conversation with "Don't worry, I'm okay. I'm just calling because I wanted to say hi and see how you were doing".

Because to call someone, to forgo the initial 'digital world' connection with a text and just reach out in the real world, is so unusual today, it causes panic and worry as the first reaction. On some level it's funny, but on another, I find it strange that this is where we're at.

When to use each of the git diff algorithms

I wasn't even aware there were different algorithms for git diffs until I was setting up my local development environment at my new job.

Since discovering this, I've opted to use a different diff algorithm (patience) from the default and have found diffs much easier to work with than before.

Crooked Teeth

My book club picked this as our September read and I went in with absolutely no idea of what I was in for beyond the cover page. I didn't even read the summary in the back.

I don't want to spoil anything in case someone wants to read it, but the author challenges narratives around the refugee experience in a way that I've never read before.

It's not the lightest of reads, but it's a real page-turner if you're looking for something new to try.