So many PEPPERS
Hit and Miss #473
T and I did a snacky grocery store stroll Friday night. Best time to do groceries—barely anyone in the aisles!
The goal, as you might surmise, was to restock our snack supplies. But I couldn’t pass up the $7 half-bushel box of sweet peppers.
If you, unlike me, have ever before bought a half-bushel box of sweet peppers, you know where I went wrong. This is so many peppers!! I sliced and diced for an hour and there’s still one layer in the box. Some, mercifully, I put in the fridge for the week; the rest, optimistically, I’ll finish chopping and freeze tomorrow.
Anyway, if you’ve ideas for pepper recipes, do let me know.
This week, it’s links and excerpts. Woo!
I often quote Ursula K. LeGuin’s brilliant definition: “Technology is the active human interface with the material world.” We spend virtually every moment of our lives engaged in these interactions through physical objects — for me, at this exact moment, the ‘technology’ is my computer, but it’s also my clothing, my chair, the walls and windows around me, even my contact lenses — and I’ll be digging more deeply into what this means.
(“distant early warning”, Deb Chachra)
We can feel our increasing use of computers having an impact on us - personally, professionally, and how we exist as a society. But it doesn’t feel clear how, or even if, we can change it. We absolutely can change these feelings and our actions. Part of this work is getting our heads around the current stakes of the situation and learning more about the technological realities that we’re all mired in, whether we like them or not. We also need to know that less computer is an option, particularly in response to climate change and geopolitics.
(“author’s note and welcome”, Bianca Wylie) [h/t SB]
We should measure this organization first by what it stops. Which rules disappear? Which approvals go? Which contracts are exited? Which leaders are asked to seek a new mission because the institution they sustained is the one being replaced?
(“Digital Transformation Canada Needs to Start Fresh”, Amanda Clarke) [h/t HD]
First, it got the Faculty and Graduate School Councils to delegate approval power to their committees, which reduced the steps from 3 (or 5 if a graduate program) to just 2 (or 3). Second, it made approval of new programs by the committees simultaneous rather than sequential. And third, it opened the door to allowing committees to comment upon and approve programs on a continuing basis (i.e. no waiting for an-in person committee meeting, everything can be done electronically).
(“Concordia’s Quiet Revolution”, Alex Usher)
I think economics and policy people don’t necessarily understand how serious a problem this is. There’s always the tendency to believe that “this data’s not perfect but it’s better than nothing” or that “it’s better to have something independent and objective than let the Chancellor mark their own homework”. In fact, the model based on partial data might be considerably worse than nothing, and the hypothetical problem of a dishonest finance minister less serious than the real problem of a deflationary bias. If all you have is a piece of number-eight wire where a fibreoptic connection ought to be, then you aren’t going to be able to watch Netflix, and a similar thing is true about channel capacity in economics.
(“a question of capacity”, Dan Davies)
In October 2025, Policy Options published an article by a contributor identifying himself as Daniel Robson, who said he was an independent Canadian journalist from Montreal. Before publication, the writer pointed us to work published recently under that name in several Canadian media outlets. Those bylines – together with our extensive correspondence and his receptive attitude to detailed feedback and editing – gave us the confidence necessary to publish the article.
We no longer have that confidence and have removed the article and his biography along with their French translations. We have been unable to independently establish that the person who wrote for us is who he represents himself to be or that the biographical information he provided is accurate.
(“Why we took down an article published under the name Daniel Robson”, Les Perreaux)
Last weekend I worked both Saturday and Sunday at the hospital which I do not normally do and that threw off my groove because 1) I missed my usual soul-cleansing therapeutic Sunday morning hiking time which provides a kind of complete psychological reset and reminds me that nature is the most real thing of all and allows me to enter a fresh week with something like a fresh mind, and 2) I did not have time to do the usual small but essential logistical things like GROCERY SHOPPING and LAUNDERING THE TOWELS and PLANNING THE WEEK AHEAD and STARING OUT THE WINDOW BLANKLY and IGNORING SEVERAL OTHER IMPORTANT LOGISTICAL THINGS IN ORDER TO READ JUST ONE MORE CHAPTER as I usually do on Sundays so anyway I came into Monday a bit ragged and rumpled, if you will.
(“I can wear a sweater // W39”, Annie Mueller)
All the best for the week ahead!
Lucas