Cultural relevance curiosity: What do these stripes mean to you (if anything)?
Answer in a reply (and avoid the replies if you want to considering without seeing the answer).
What do these stripes mean to you?
Author: Steven Garrity
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.
Spin Time Family
My brother Tim, who is the Chief Electoral Office for our province, is going to pick some songs as the Friday SpinTime DJ on CBC Radio this week. As I was the SpinTime DJ back in 2019, we’ve reached 2/5 of the Garrity siblings in this pinnacle of cultural relevance on Prince Edward Island.
Update: Here’s the audio. Beastie Boys, Pearl Jam, and Matt Maher.
Guitars of Super Bowl LVII
As far as I noticed, there were two guitars featured during Super Bowl El Vee Eye Eye.
During the half-time show, Nuno Bettencourt was supporting Rihanna with a theme-appropriate bright red edition of his signature Washburn, presumably the N4 model.
Before the game, Chris Stapleton performed the US National Anthem with what looks like a Fender Telecaster Custom.
Update: I missed Babyface playing America the Beautiful on an American-Flag Taylor acoustic. Interesting arrangement here, as it’s strung for right handed players, but he’s playing “upside-down” left-handed. Thanks to pmac for letting me know.
Tune in again next year for episode 2 of Guitars of the Super Bowl.
That’s Nuno
That was Nuno Bettencourt playing guitar behind Rihanna during the Super Bowl. Yeah, the More Than Words guy.
Jonathan Torrens for Governor General
Can you make nominations for Governor General of Canada? I nominate Jonathan Torrens. He taught me in the 90s on Street Cents that combination-shampoo-and-conditioner does neither well (I use it anyhow). Also, he’s buddies with the old drummer from Our Lady Peace. These seem like qualifications a’plenty.
Mount Washington
Reading about the extreme conditions recorded at Mount Washington in New Hampshire today (wind-chill of -77 Celsius) reminded me of my experience with Mount Washington.
I was on a hiking trip with a youth-group. We hiked to the summit, which felt pretty impressive until we saw that there were people who had driven their cars up the other side.
In the observatory at the peak, they played this great video of an outdoor breakfast on Mount Washington that I still remember almost 30 years later.
While it wasn’t -77, we did hit an extraordinary low of a -43 wind chill in Charlottetown last night. We were safe and warm in our home, but the weather felt dangerous in a way that reminded me of Hurricane Fiona.
Come design with me
We’re hiring designers over at silverorange, the company I helped found over 23 years ago.
It’s a great place to work. We’re looking for people able to work remotely from within Canada. There are two positions:
Senior Web & App Designer – We’re looking for an experienced designer who can help us design great systems for our clients.
Junior Web & App Designer – We’re looking for someone earlier in their career who wants to join our team, design and build great stuff, and get even better at it.
Our company blog is a great way to get a sense of who we are.
Cistercian Numerals via Kottke
Kottke.org shared an interesting numeral system: Cistercian numerals. It only takes a minute to understand how it works in a way where you could decode any numeral. I wonder how long it would take to internalize the system, see a shape, and just know it’s 1979.
Talking to kids
Saturday Night Live has a good skit about how to talk to kids. I’ve got my own tip for talking to kids.
Take whatever the kid has written in their shirt and read it to them on the form of a question. Here are some helpful examples:
Kid: [has a shirt with a surfer that reads, “Surf’s Up!”]
You: “Surf’s up, eh?”
Kid: […] “Huh?”
Kid: [has a Batman shirt on]
You: “You like Batman?”
Kid: [doesn’t recall which shirt they’re wearing]