On July 11, 2019 there was an exchange between the Hon. Peter Bevan-Baker and Hon. Darlene Compton in the Legislative Assembly surrounding a question by Bevan-Baker about government investment from fossil fuels:

Government funds divest from fossil fuels

A question to the minister: Will the minister commit to ensuring that all provincial government funds divest from fossil fuels?

Ms. Compton: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I will not commit to that, unless you’re willing to drive a bicycle to work every day. I mean, we have to have fossil fuels. It’s as simple as that.

Ms. Compton: Everyone in this place, except for maybe the hon. Minister of Environment, Water and Climate Change, have fossil fuel vehicles, so it’s pretty hard for me to say that we could do that when everyone in this place is driving a vehicle that needs a fossil fuel.

Leader of the Opposition: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I should perhaps clarify this is not about the personal choices we make. Indeed, I own a fossil fuel car as well. −

Leader of the Opposition: It’s about the value of those investments and what the potential future value will be as more and more fossil fuel investments become stranded assets.

There are a number of places, both jurisdictional and private companies that are divesting in fossil fuels strictly for financial reasons. I’m not talking about any sort of ethical issue here at all, although there may be something attached to that. I’m talking purely from a financial point-of-view for the wellbeing of the finances of this province.

The province invests a significant amount of money and these investments have an influence on developments within and even beyond this province, private prisons and fossil fuels are just two examples of investment practices that are not socially or environmentally responsible, and increasingly acceptable.

A question to the minister: Does the province have a policy to ensure its investments are done in socially and environmentally responsible manners?

Ms. Compton: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I cannot say a definite yes to that, but I would be assuming that we would have looked at ethical reasons. I never really thought of fossil fuels as being something that’s unethical, but I guess we have to change the lens that we look through. It’s very hypocritical for all of us to say we’re going to say ‘no’ to everything involving fossil fuels when we’re all still using fossil fuels on a daily basis.

Leader of the Opposition: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Clearly, I don’t think I stated that there was anything unethical about the use of fossil fuels, indeed I own a car. Hybrid car, but it’s still a car and it burns gas.

This was an unsatisfying exchange for several reasons:

1. Bevan-Baker was asking a question on divestment from fossil fuels for reasons not directly related to their role in climate change; in essence he was suggesting that investing in fossil fuels is a bad investment because the bottom is going to fall out of the fossil fuel market, and the investments will lose value. But then, in the follow-up, things got tangled up with social responsibility, which is an entirely different issue. The effect of the question was thus blunted.
2. Compton’s “unless you’re willing to drive a bicycle to work every day” comment was unhelpful in a discussion about divestment; to suggest that until we achieve individual net zero we cannot take collective action is disquieting to hear from the person charged with managing the province’s finances.
3. Both Compton and Bevan-Baker appeared to initially be willing to admit that our use of fossil fuels is unethical, but both backed away from this. That is unfortunate: there’s a clear case to be made for the continued use of fossil fuels to be considered thus. It is possible to label something as unethical and to also act unethically; the two are not incompatible. Unfortunate, yes. Hypocritical, perhaps. But we cannot reserve “unethical” to describe actions only once we’ve stopped taking them.
4. Investment in detention camps is something to be examined, but invoking this example, in this exchange, was another unfortunate distraction.

Put all this together, and a clear opportunity for important action on fossil fuel divestment was missed by both sides.

The dishwasher wasn’t draining.

I methodically (read: in a random, chaotic, increasingly raging fashion) tracked the clog to a tiny piece of plastic that had found its way into the drain near the sink.

I did not, I’m happy to report, break the dishwasher.

Indeed, I learned a lot about how the dishwasher works, and how it’s installed, something that had previously been locked in the “black box that makes dishes clean” realm.

This is good, as a broken dishwasher can plunge our household into despair.

Also good for my psyche, which has been sending me dreams about intractable infrastructure issues for the last week.

There’s this standard, which seems mostly ignored by mostly everyone, called USB On-The-Go, that allows mobile phones and tablets to connect to USB peripherals like flash drives, keyboards and mice.

It turns out that my Moto G7 Play Android phone has support for this standard. I bought a UGREEN USB C OTG Cable Adapter from Amazon¹ for $8.99 to try this out. And it worked!

Here’s a little video of me using my Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard with my phone: I plugged the keyboard’s wireless dongle into the OTG cable, the OTG cable into the USB C port on the phone, opened up my email client, and started typing. The phone automatically recognized the keyboard; I didn’t need to configure it or set anything up.

I also tried the OTG cable with my Apple Mighty Mouse, and with a USB flash drive, and both worked as expected.

I hate typing on the tiny glass keyboard of my phone, so this is a good way for me to try out the idea of getting a Bluetooth portable keyboard to allow for typing-on-the-road.

I’m also interested in seeing whether I could plug the OTG cable (likely with a male-to-male USB A adapter) into one of the scanning-photocopiers at Robertson Library and thus gain the ability to “scan to my phone.”

1. Not an affiliate link.

I took a cycle out Riverside Drive and into the Hillsborough Hospital grounds and back tonight.

On the return journey I stopped to make a sketch of the Energy from Waste Plant; while I was sitting there, on a stoop in front of a storage trailer, Darcie Lanthier, among other things our federal Green Party candidate for Charlottetown, pulled up on her own (electric pedal-assist) bicycle. We ended up chatting about a number of things. In the most unlikely of places.

By the way, the Hillsborough River Cycle Path makes for a lovely after-supper bicycle route in the summertime. If you’re more ambitious, you can connect with the Hillsborough Park Cycle Path, the Riverside Estates Connector and the East Royalty Cycle Trails to get all the way out into the heart of East Royalty.

Indeed, with all the talk of hellish traffic from East Royalty into town, perhaps the wonders of 23 minute cycle ride along the river is should considered a viable alternative to building more capacity for cars?

The City of Charlottetown has recently installed drinking water fountains in Orlebar Park, Connaught Square and at the Dog Fun Park. The fountains are striking, and have novel water-bottle filling and dog-watering features. I have become a regular customer of them when cycling about town.

Something that might have escaped your attention is that, in addition to having a mobile app, T3 Transit also provides real-time bus location information on the web.

Here, for example, is a screen shot of the Route № 2, as I type, traveling through Parkdale. I’m about to catch this very bus, in front of the Polyclinic, and knowing when it’s time to walk over to the stop is a huge time (and pressure) saver.

(That said, I have not clicked “Save” on this post until now, an hour later, as I realized that the bus was getting very near; it not for a daring dash across traffic, I would have missed it).

In addition to being a talented visual artist, Stephen B. MacInnis is also a talented framer-of-things, and when he casually mentioned to me, in a conversation at the Farmers’ Market, that he picks up and delivers, that was enough to help me overcome my framing friction and to engage him to frame a number of pieces.

I’m incredibly pleased with the results. Here is one of the three he framed, one of the ACT QUICKLY SUMMER IS ALMOST OVER series from 2013. Perfectly time for the period of July when this advise must be seriously heeded.

Stephen can frame your things too. And he picks up and delivers.

Remember how I found that Spotify requires up to 30 days to provide me with a copy of my personal data? It turns out they turned it around in 6 days. Still longer than makes any sense at all, but, still, faster than a month.

The download link I was emailed today provided me with a ZIP file with these JSON files compressed inside it:

FamilyPlan.json

My mailing address.

Follow.json

How many people I’m followed, how many people are following me (but not their names, in either case) and a list of the bands I’m following:

{
  "followerCount": 10,
  "followingUsersCount": 57,
  "followingArtists": [
    "Anna Of The North",
    "Ben Lee",
    "Craig Cardiff",
    "Port Cities",
    "Siv Jakobsen",
    "The Weather Station",
    "William Prince",
    "the bird and the bee"
  ]
}

Identity.json

The basics about me:

{
  "displayName": "",
  "firstName": "",
  "lastName": "",
  "imageUrl": "https://profile-images.scdn.co/images/userprofile/small/d8ef6639b84a9ca697c456f3cfad144cb4d7e917",
  "largeImageUrl": "https://profile-images.scdn.co/images/userprofile/default/355873943e7307fffd422ca1d3e80ea8950d241b",
  "tasteMaker": false,
  "verified": false
}

I suppose I’ve never given Spotify my first or last names; it came up with its own determination that I’m not a “tasteMaker.”

Payments.json

My payment information (with all but the last four digits of my credit card redacted). Oddly, my credit card is out of date, but they keep billing me anyway.

Playlist.json

All of the my playlists and all of their tracks, like this:

{
  "playlists": [
    {
      "name": "DinnerParty",
      "lastModifiedDate": "2018-08-28",
      "items": [
        {
          "track": {
            "trackName": "Small Victory",
            "artistName": "Garnet Rogers",
            "albumName": "All That Is - The Songs Of Garnet Rogers"
          },
          "episode": null,
          "localTrack": null
        },

SearchQueries.json

The last 90 days of my search queries. For each query there’s the date, the platform (DESKTOP, ANDROID), the country, the query (typed or selected) and something called userIntent, which is one of “navigate-forward,” “nav-back-up-toolbar-button,” or “play.”

  {
    "date" : "2019-07-02",
    "platform" : "DESKTOP",
    "country" : "CA",
    "terminationReason" : "INTERACTION",
    "msDuration" : 0,
    "typedQuery" : null,
    "selectedQuery" : "lovers in a dangerous time",
    "userIntent" : "navigate-forward",
    "viewUri" : "spotify:search:lovers in a dangerous time"
  }

StreamingHistory.json

A list of all the tracks I’ve streamed, the date and time I streamed them, and how much of the track I listened to (in milliseconds) like this:

  {
    "endTime" : "2019-07-12 18:41",
    "artistName" : "Henry Jamison",
    "trackName" : "Real Peach",
    "msPlayed" : 151837
  },
  {
    "endTime" : "2019-07-12 18:44",
    "artistName" : "This Is The Kit",
    "trackName" : "Bullet Proof",
    "msPlayed" : 17452
  },
  {
    "endTime" : "2019-07-12 18:44",
    "artistName" : "Maisie Peters",
    "trackName" : "I'll Be There For You - Recorded at Metropolis Studios, London",
    "msPlayed" : 9503
  },

The streaming history continues up to yesterday, despite my request for the data being submitted on July 6.

I got a quick overview of which artists I’ve been streaming a lot of with:

grep artistName StreamingHistory.json  | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | more

which showed me these as the top 10:

  59     "artistName" : "Port Cities",
  42     "artistName" : "Thomas Newman",
  35     "artistName" : "Max Richter",
  30     "artistName" : "Mark Isham",
  26     "artistName" : "Ingrid Michaelson",
  23     "artistName" : "Jane Siberry",
  21     "artistName" : "Ólafur Arnalds",
  19     "artistName" : "Barenaked Ladies",
  17     "artistName" : "Christine and the Queens",
  15     "artistName" : "The East Pointers",

I went on a Barenaked Ladies kick this week when I got a little obsessed with the line “I just made you say underwear” in the song Pinch Me.

Userdata.json

Some more information about me (I’ve redacted a few bits myself):

{
  "username": "peter.rukavina",
  "email": "XXXXX",
  "country": "CA",
  "createdFromFacebook": false,
  "facebookUid": null,
  "birthdate": "YYYY-MM-DD",
  "gender": "male",
  "postalCode": "C1A 4R4",
  "mobileNumber": null,
  "mobileOperator": null,
  "mobileBrand": "Android",
  "creationTime": "2014-08-06"
}

YourLibrary.json

All the tracks in my “Library.” To be honest I’ve never understood Spotify’s high-level concepts, including “Library.” But certainly I have some things in it, like:

    {
      "artist": "The Weather Station",
      "album": "The Weather Station"
    },
    {
      "artist": "Jóhann Jóhannsson",
      "album": "Orphée"
    },
    {
      "artist": "Martha Wainwright",
      "album": "Goodnight City"
    },

Oliver’s Data

On the same day I requested my data, Oliver requested his, and he got his download link today to.

The structure of his dump is identical to mine, except that he has a lot more of everything. For example, his Playlist.json file is 2.9 million lines in it, and contains 4,582 playlists containing a total of 318,762 tracks.

Unfortunately, going back to the spark that took us down this road in the first place, nowhere in the data dump is anything about the podcasts Oliver has subscribed to.

Further confirming that Spotify is, indeed, a prison for podcasts.

As a kind of beta test of a possible cycle ride from Charlottetown to South Melville, we drove the route in our car this afternoon as our way of getting from town to Crapaud for Oliver’s weekly art lesson.

If you remember grade 10 geography, you will recall that the closer together contour lines are, the steeper the terrain: as you can see on the map here, which overlays our route (in red) on top of the province’s 2 metre contours layer, you can see that we got into some serious steepness once we turned left off the Kingston Road and entered the northern Bonshaw Hills.

Here’s the trip GPX file (recorded with OsmAnd) converted to an elevation profile by Trackreport.net (don’t compare the map above to the chart below, from left to right, as they run in opposite directions!):

Not alpine terrain, certainly. But also not flat.

Once we left the Kingston Road it was mostly clay roads through to South Melville–some of the most beautiful roads you’ll ever drive. Not ideal terrain for a first-time longer-distance bicycle ride, electric-assisted or not. But certainly something to aspire to.

One of the less-recognized shames of the Plan B highway project is that there was no provision whatsoever made for cyclists when the new highway was constructed, despite that being the ideal–and perhaps only, in our lifetimes–opportunity to do so. Wouldn’t it have been amazing to have a separated cycleway running parallel to the route?

I did meet a gaggle of professional-looking cyclists in Victoria, and they’d cycled from town along the south shore, and spoke of the beauty of the route; perhaps that should be our next beta test.

Good on Hon. Brad Trivers for speaking the truth about the truly inane move to use carbon tax revenue to make driver’s licenses free-of-charge enacted by the previous government.

While it would be an exaggeration to say that the Liberal government lost the election on this issue, I know it was a galvanizing “wait, what!?” moment for many.

“Obviously, one of the ways to reduce carbon emissions is by burning less fuel,” Trivers said.

“If you’re actually giving people free drivers’ licences and discounts on registrations to go drive, you can see that it actually doesn’t help with decreasing the amount of fuel they’re going to burn in their vehicles.”

Exactly.

Sign me up to pay for my license again; let’s use carbon tax funds for real action on climate change.