Taking back the Canadian flag

The Canadian flag has been appropriated by people with a slurry of anti-mask, anti-vaccine, and freedom-at-the-cost-of-others sentiments. This sucks.

One approach I’ve noticed to help take back the Canadian flag for an inclusive and mainstream use is to combine it with the pride/rainbow flag (and I realize there are many variations therein).

Emoji Canada flag and Rainbow flag side-by-side

If I see 🇨🇦, I think: “Are they going to shout at me for wearing a mask?”

If I see 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈 side-by-side, I think “They like Canada, and they don’t like alienating people who are different than them.”

 

Boys of Summer was from a Heartbreaker?

I’ve always found the song The Boys of Summer by Don Henley to be a great song, but it also felt like a guilty pleasure. It shouldn’t – there should be no such thing as a guilty pleasure, but that’s how it felt.

Still from video of Mike Campbell smiling and wearing a had and sunglasses, holding a Broadcaster guitar in front of some guitar amps.

I learned today from a YouTube clip that the music for The Boys of Summer was written written by Mike Campbell from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. Now I can feel like I knew it was cool all along.

If the original is pure 80s, this cover of The Boys of Summer by The Ataris is pure 2000s.

 

Automatic math for thinking in REM units in Figma

If you are trying to think in REM units in the Figma design tool, you can use the simple built-in math capabilities on most numeric inputs. You can enter a width like 16*24 and it will automatically resolved to 384.

Until Figma learns about units other than pixels, this helps a bit. Math!

Quick demo of using math in numeric inputs in Figma.
 

Good guy with “AI”

It occurred to me today that building “AI” tools that can detect content generate by “AI” tools is a bit like saying that the best defence against a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.