I’ve always resented the idea of voting strategically: voting for someone other than your ideal choice in order to prevent a worse outcome.

I thought (and wished and hoped) that people should vote for the candidate they think is best. Otherwise we’ll always end up in the middle-of-the-road, at best.

Then Donald Trump became president of the United States. Twice.

The middle-of-the-road sounds great.

I’d vote for a toad if it meant keeping a demagogue (or whatever Trump is) out of power.

Here in Canada, we’re voting later this month. While I don’t think Pierre Poilievre is exactly like Trump, I do think he would move Canada closer to a system that devalues journalism, environmentalism, social support systems like health care, and organized labour.

Given the frightening instability we’re seeing from the United States, voting in a stable, predictable leader who believes in climate change is the least we can do.

There is a trade off in voting strategically. We need more than just stability and sanity in political leaders. We need to push back hard on racism, nationalism, and general selfishness.

For now though, let’s vote in a Liberal party in Canada that won’t set things on fire.

On a related tangent, if Conservative Party of Canada leader Pierre Poilievre actually believes in all of the “Political positions” listed out on his Wikipedia page – addressing climate change, access to abortion, same-sex marriage, pro-immigration, etc – then why doesn’t he vote for the Liberal Party?

I’ve written an article about adding a bit of fanciness to a design and was proud to have it published at Smashing Magazine. The article is called Gild Just One Lily.

The phrase “gild the lily” implies unnecessary ornamentation, the idea being that adorning a lily with superficial decoration only serves to obscure its natural beauty. Well, I’m here to tell you that a little touch of what might seem like unnecessary ornamentation in design is exactly what you need.

When your design is solid, and you’ve nailed the fundamentals, adding one layer of decoration can help communicate a level of care and attention. [read the entire article]

With this article, I’ve reduced the time between publishing articles for myself down from 17 years to only 7 years.

My kids keep getting text from Pierre Poilievre and his campaign. Where did they get these phone numbers?

I understand why our new Prime Minister of Canada felt he needed to eliminate the consumer carbon tax in Canada. His opponent managed to weaponize it with a stupid rhyme.

Prime Minister Carney explains that the carbon tax had become “too divisive.” At least he’s honest about why he’s removing it – not because he thinks it’s a bad policy or because it’s ineffective.

Let’s take a moment to lament how even when receiving hundreds of dollars in direct rebate cheques from the carbon tax, we’re collectively too stupid to endure the most mild perceived imposition.

Around 20 years ago, I used ThinkPad laptops. Back then, they were still IBM ThinkPads, not Lenovo. My primary workstation was always a laptop with an external mouse, keyboard, and display at my desk.

The ThinkPad laptops supported a docking Station you could physically ‘click’ your laptop into, and then everything on your desk was plugged into that docking station.

I remember thinking, back then, that someday we’d have a single cable you could plug in to your laptop and it would do everything. Display, power, audio, mouse/keyboard, would all run through one super cable.

Imagine the seconds I would save each morning when I plugged in my laptop! What a world it would be!

The future is now – and has been for a couple of years. I can plug a single USB-C cable into my laptop, and it gets power and connects to a display and an array of other peripherals.

Now that I live in this dream world, I look back on my past self and think: Dream bigger, nerd.

A staple of CBC Radio on PEI, Matt Rainnie, is retiring today. I’ve had the opportunity to speak to Matt on the radio a few times over the years (once about Firefox in 2004 and about music in 2019).

Matt was made for that radio hosting job. He was somehow genuinely curious about every person he spoke with. It didn’t seem to matter if they were talking about their music project, history, technology, or farming.

That curiosity kept his many thousands of conversations on the radio from ever feeling routine. It also made him easy to talk to for those of us being interviewed, who were often nervous and not gifted at speaking naturally in an unusual circumstance.

I can’t imagine a career where you were live on the radio every day for years. You can’t be late for that job. You can’t ‘phone it in’. That takes a special kind of person.

Thanks Matt!

My colleague (actually, let’s upgrade that right now to friend-and-colleague), Nikki, has written a delightful post on how and why she came to work at silverorange.

It was a near-miss, with her husband happening to catch a talk at a meet-up by one of our co-founders. I’m so glad Nikki found us.

Brad Sucks has a new album out! Congrats Brad. It’s great.

I’d start with Learning to Lie, which is a great song and has a robot-pickleball-themed video.

I managed to get my Canadian passport renewed before it expired, and not at the last minute in a panic before a trip.

I feel this is an achievement of “having it together” at a level that warrants a congratulatory note from the Prime Minister, like when you turn 120 years old.

It was fun to be featured on Manuel Moreale’s People & Blogs series this month. Manuel asks bloggers a series of regular questions about they writing and process. He’s interviewed lots of great writers. I saw that my friend Peter Rukavina had done it, so I was in.

It’s a clever setup he’s got going: ask people who like to write (often about themselves) to write about themselves. I was happy to oblige.

You can read my full interview here: P&B: Steven Garrity