Colin and Samir are a YouTube duo who experimented with many different approaches to filmmaking, having focused, most recently, on conversations with YouTubers about YouTube.

As a starting point, I recommend How Hasan Minhaj escaped the YouTube Algorithm and The Nearly Impossible Job of Managing MrBeast: Samir and Colin are skilled interviews, and the “behind the music” approach, diving into the mechanics of influence, the algorithm, and how “content creation” works is fascinating, both as a watcher and a maker.

Bruce MacNaughton writes, in It Was a Big Night, about his early kitchen experiences:

The custom was to serve old food to staff who were further down the pecking order in the kitchen brigade. The dishwashers usually received food well past its prime, covered in a gravy of some sort to mask it.

What will I cook for these men? I couldn’t imagine cooking this way for three 80-year-old Portuguese characters who were very hard-working. They always spoke Portuguese while working. They grab half-smoked cigars from the plates, wipe them off, light them and smoke them while washing the pots and pans. They were real characters.

It was 4 in the afternoon, so I cooked breakfast. I pan-fried potatoes with onions, eggs sunny side up, bacon, toast and jam. Being nervous how they would receive the plates, I rang the bell and watched the three men shuffle up to the counter. They looked at the plates for what seemed like forever. Then, finally, they turned and looked at each other in dead silence. Then they looked at me with tears flowing down their cheeks. It still gets me when I remember that moment. The men were so grateful for a fresh meal. I agree with what Don Miguel Ruiz once said, “Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love.”

The personal thing category of Bruce’s blog is a steady source of compelling tales well-told.

Two years ago I wrote about my first visit to M. Vrac, the zero-packaging store that had just opened in West Royalty. I wasn’t entirely sold:

All that said, I’m not sure whether I’ll go back to Monsieur Vrac: I’m completely on board with the philosophy, and seeing how much packaging I didn’t use was enlightening, but I wonder if I have it in me to bus my own tables week after week. I will try. I hope others will try. In the meantime, I have a lifetime supply of vegan 70% chocolate chips.

M. Vrac closed its Charlottetown store this week; from Facebook, in part:

We regret to inform you that we have decided to close down our zero waste store. Our last day of business will be on November 1st. After that date, our Zero Waste Store will no longer be offering any kind of products and services @ 171 Buchanan Drive in Charlottetown

All our inventory and equipment has to be sold. Starting tomorrow you’ll find lots of discounts on all of our products.

The decision to close down this business was not easy, but the impact of the pandemic on our sales as well as the recent storm Fiona have forced us to review our business model.

As if to mark the occasion, I managed to cut myself this morning trying to wrangle an extension cord I purchased from Staples this morning that was encased in a seemingly-impenetrable tomb of plastic for seemingly no reason whatsoever.

I lament the passing of M. Vrac, as it was a showcase for the wide variety of how much typical packaging isn’t needed, and can be removed without harm from the logistics ecosystem. At the same time, I only shopped in the store once or twice more after that initial visit: the convenience penalty was simply too great.

Ultimately I don’t think the sustainable ecological answer is for there to be special-purpose “zero-packaging stores,” but for all stores to move toward zero-packaging.

By Opening This Book is a limited-edition 200-page book from artist Jonas Lund that is “not exactly a book”:

This is a book, yet not exactly a book, more a contract between Jonas Lund and You, the reader.

While browsing the Internet we all click mechanically and blindly on the boxes confirming that we “agree to the terms of service”, entering into a legally binding contract with the corporation behind the website, yet the omnipresence of the legal pop-ups (and the near physical impossibility to read them) has gradually emptied the agreement of any substance beyond a legal function.

In a similar move, by opening this book, you agree to all of the following terms as presented by Jonas Lund. Somewhere among the 200 blank pages, the artist has handwritten a URL giving the reader access to a unique page, on which the reader’s experience will begin. Each copy of this book is unique and no one but the artist knows what terms the reader agrees to by opening this book.

Lund has an interesting body of work; Walk with Me is a good place to start.

A few days ago I walked to my mailbox up the street and opened it to find just one piece of mail, a postcard featuring a Shanghai street scene:

On the back was a short handwritten message about how Zephyr Berlin, a Kickstarter project launched by my friend Peter, and partners Michelle and Cecilia, had just started shipping its intriguing travel trousers. Inasmuch as I was under the impression that Zephyr Berlin wrapped up operations 2 years ago, this struck me as odd. But perhaps, I thought, Zephyr had risen from the dead? 

I greeted this prospect of a possible rebirth with some enthusiasm: while I was an early backer of the Kickstarter, by the time the pants got from concept to production it turned out that the largest size, large, was for a 34 inch waist; at the time I sported a 38 inch waist, and there was no way they were going to fit. I had to downgrade my backing from “One pair of pants sent to you. First dibs from our production batch. Special Kickstarter edition” to “supporter” and sit out the production run.

As I write, I’m comfortably wearing a pair of blue jeans from The Gap with a 34 inch waist: perhaps I could ride the Zephyr now that I’m trimmer?

It was only today that I thought to look at the postcard in more detail: it was sent on November 4, 2016, six years ago:

Somehow this postcard, placed, Peter reported to me today, in a Shanghai post box that “looked a little shady,” took 2,214 days to arrive. 

Where has it been?

Stuck in Shanghai? Stuck in Charlottetown? On a really, really, slow boat. The mind boggles.

So, no Zephyr Berlin trousers for me. But a mystery to ponder, and a welcome opportunity to ping Peter in Berlin.

Alicia Kennedy, on taking a vacation:

A vacation is taken to escape the daily, to appreciate something new—I suppose I’ll be wondering whether it’s a good thing to do, or perhaps a neutral thing, or maybe even a bad thing, for the rest of my life. I do know I desperately wanted one, perhaps more than any other time in my life.

An announcement from Hai at The Shed on Facebook:

The hardest thing to share, for us these days is to close the sweetest spot which is our original shop at 99 Pownal. Just to do more crazy things such as installing the new bigger roaster, transforming our lovely coffee shop into a coffee roastery. Meaning,
- New roaster set up
- New coffee cupping/tasting events coming
- New kool product launching
- New obsession’s foods/bakeries offered.
We will be back even sweeter. 
P.S Just repost a reel capturing our sweetest customers, partners, friends who are non stop encouraging us to make better coffee everyday. Some were gone, some moved away but you’re always in my ❤️. 99 Pownal will see you again, soon.

I’m archiving the Instagram reel here for posterity; points for finding my footprints:

Paul, in England, has been reflectively -vembering this month; this is an homage.

I’m perched on a stool on the Starbucks that’s embedded in the Superstore. I don’t have enough psychogeography vocabulary to be sure, but I expect this qualifies as a liminal space. It is, approximately, nowhere.

I am here amidst a multi-step dance that involves snow tires and gnocchi and massage and fudgsicles.

Beside my perch is the cough drop section of the store pharmacy. It has been well picked-over, as befits the cough and cold that is making its way through young people here. All the Fisherman’s Friends are gone, and only the fringe Ricola flavours—Honey Lemon with Echinacea, Extra Stong Icy Menthol—remain.

On the cold walk from my car into the store I was thinking of the road maps of my youth, and how the only way we knew how far it was from, say, Buffalo to Rochester, was to carefully add up the tiny numbers on all the road segments connecting the two.

I was thinking of this in the shadow of watching a love-father-conflict-cancer-death drama on Netflix, a show reported to have left some inconsolable. Unusual fare for me, who knows the terrain, but it’s my season for turning-to-face, and I’m discovering feelings I didn’t know I had in its wake, rivulets of anger and sadness and relief and disresolution. It feels good to connect with these things, and reminds me that, as I’ve already been through an inconsolable phase, I have superpowers that let me see the other things.

How far is it from Buffalo to Rochester? Anxious Sunday night. Cold Monday morning. Tired daughter. Bracing morning walk with Lisa along the trail, where I talk about my fear of loneliness. Poinsettias. Christmas concerts. Birthdays. Work victories. Endless advocacy, writing about crises while in crisis, asking for help.

Grab your PC festive favourites, fast!

Home Depot in Charlottetown has a vat of Ecosmart 60 watt-equivalent LED lightbulbs at the front of the store near the customer service desk, on sale for 98 cents each.

They give of a lovely warm light, and the rooms I’ve placed them in have been transformed from hospital-waiting-room to serious-hygge.

As an aside, Ecosmart is a Home Depot house brand, which has become an issue for the Eco-$mart company:

We do not sell any LED or CFL lamps to Home Depot, nor do we manufacture any lamps. We are a distributor. Home Depot simply uses a similar name to our website URL (www.ecosmartinc.com) for their private label lamps “Ecosmart”, made for them by several different manufacturers, none of whom are us. 

Chair of the Health PEI board, Derek Key, delivered an address at the Health PEI Annual General Meeting last night that highlighted, with eloquence and precision, jurisdictional quagmires that are holding back the efficient delivery of health care on the Island.

In his introduction:

Health PEI was created 12 years ago as an arms-length Crown corporation responsible for the operation and delivery of publicly funded health care within the province. As chair of the board for the last two years, I can share with you, of course, that the board has not always been as successful as it should be; most importantly it’s important that we all understand that Health PEI is not actually an arm’s length Crown corporation; in fact there are many areas where Health PEI has no authority at all in the operation, or the delivery, of publicly funded health care services in the province.

Later in his address he elaborated:

Our other notable failure is jurisdiction.

If we remember what the Health Services Act says about Health PEI being an arms-length Crown corporation, responsible for the operation and delivery of publicly funded Health care services, there are questions that should arise in each of our minds such as:

Why doesn’t Health PEI recruit more people to address the shortages that exist today and more importantly the shortages that we know will exist tomorrow. Well the answer is simple: Health PEI has nothing to do with recruitment. Recruitment’s handled by the Department of Health, and I’m told that there’s a long history as to why that exists, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a significant jurisdictional impediment.

Second question: when qualified applicants approach Health PEI, why are these nurse practitioners or nurses or lab techs not hired? Again Health PEI is not responsible for hiring: the Public Service Commission is responsible for hiring, so the fact that it takes months between deciding that a position should be posted, or that there’s a need within Health PEI, and actually filling the position is a serious impediment, and unfortunately, given the barriers that exist, it takes far too long to complete a hiring process for someone who’s seeking a job at Health PEI.

Third question: why is it taking so long for Health PEI to construct the community health centers that were promised by government so long ago? The Department of Transportation and Energy is responsible for the planning design and construction of all physical structures, so while it took 14 months to construct the Empire State Building, a hundred and however many years ago, it takes longer than that to create a plan and a design for a community health center in Prince Edward Island. That’s fundamentally wrong from where I come from.

Fourth question: why are the work schedules for nurses and other practitioners within hospitals and long-term care facilities still being completed so inefficiently on paper and in scribblers; scheduling and call-out software has been a priority of Health PEI for years. We also have no learning management system technology, that ensures that our employees have the training to do their job safely and efficiently. In fact we do not even have a Health PEI intranet that allows for internal employee communications. All of our technology needs fall under the responsibility of ITSS, and given their responsibilities, in fairness, throughout the government structure, legitimately, the needs of Health PEI are not always the first priority. But that doesn’t change the fact that those are critical elements that are outside the control of Health PEI, and they lead to significant problems in the delivery of health care services.

And my final obvious question, that I’m sure is in all of our minds: how about addressing the scope limitations the pharmacists and nurse practitioners? If there is low-hanging fruit that exists that would allow better, quicker, more accessible health care delivery for many day-to-day needs, would be in expanding the scope of pharmacists and health care practitioners to a level at least comparable with other provinces. Again, Health PEI, as an independent Crown corporation, has no authority over that; instead that requires legislative attention and the necessary cooperation to make the changes that are required to improve health care delivery in Prince Edward Island.

So, in short, while the legislation contemplated creating an arms-length Crown corporation responsible for the operation and delivery of publicly funded health care services in Prince Edward Island, in reality what was created was an entity that necessarily must cooperate, and collaborate, with the Departments of Health, Public Service Commission, Transportation and Energy, ITSS, Treasury Board, and of course the Legislative Assembly, for everything from recruitment, to hiring, to facilities, to technology, to scope a practice for our professionals.

What should be simple is unnecessarily complex, and in many instances outside the jurisdiction of Health PEI.

None of these are new issues, and they are not issues unique to Health PEI: the decade I worked closely with the provincial government, the notion of centralization vs. decentralization was not far from discussion of any issue.

Should there be one website for the Province, or should each department have its own?

Should every department have dedicated IT staff, or should IT staff be centralized and doled out to departments as needed?

The centralizers, in recent generations, have won the day, and through government you will find centralized structures for IT, communications, infrastructure, hiring: those that Key outlines that serve the healthcare system in addition to all other public bodies.

Temperamentally I am a decentralizer: I have structured my work life to allow me end-to-end control over all the systems that touch on my role, from server specification on up. There is nothing I find more confounding than having to submit a ticket to have someone somewhere do something, on their schedule, that’s a bottleneck to me doing something quickly and efficiently.

I’m equally mindful of the issues with scale this introduces: there is only one me.

The same tensions exist in systems planning for government: it’s great when Jimmy is the dedicated IT technician for the Bark Inspection Division, but what happens when Jimmy goes on vacation?

In theory it makes sense, for all manner of reasons—efficiency, cross-training, scaling, being a few—to centralize government services, to have one entity for HR, one for building buildings, one for managing computers. And in a situation of abundance and plentiful skilled leadership, in practice this can work well and smoothly.

But it rarely does, or at least it’s rarely perceived to work, and the clients—the line departments and crown corporations and agencies—are frequently vocal about this. Centralization might make sense, they argue, but not for them, as they serve a special and important function that requires dedicated attention. This is often not the case, and is simply frustration with having to wait, as scarce resources require deliberate triage, and not every project can receive attention first.

Key makes a cogent argument, however, that health care delivery actually is a special and important function, and does require dedicated attention, and I tend to agree with him. Health care delivery is complicated, and demands focused resources working in unison, not disparate teams stumbling to cooperate. Health PEI, now more than ever in the hands of a competent, focused board, and an experienced and skilled senior leadership team, should be unshackled, and empowered to recruit and hire staff, build its facilities, and manage its own IT systems, and to guide scope of practice regulations. It should, in other words, be empowered to carry out its mandated responsibility for “the operation and delivery of publicly funded health care within the province.”