My thinking exactly. I try and ignore all reviews. I avoid the thrill of the good ones and the valleys of the bad ones. I do, however, seem to find the "unfair" ones - mostly people saying "I can't believe they said that" or "It's like they didnt read the book" and then my instincts are out the window.

Yesterday I thought of doing something and instead I took a walk, met up with friends for a coffee, bought some things I’d need to cook and came home. I had a scotch with a friend on the sidewalk in front of the house. Then I had another one on the back deck (by myself). Then I thought about starting to cook.

The scotch is a single malt made under the imprimatur of The Scorpions. Yes. The Rock You Like A Hurricane guys. German pop-metal dudes. It is distilled by Swedes. My friend bought me the bottle because he hasn’t…

Building a media brand (where trust lies) is difficult at the best of times, but even more difficult when the media brand itself is a sub-brand, and where the umbrella brand is so strong itself. Is the reader loyalty to publication or the larger brand? And if there is so much "other" content housed within the larger brand do the sub-brands have a chance (hope?) of building the kind of loyalty that leads to true engagement? This is a problem, too, with custom publishing (a larger one) but the problem created here is unique. One could say that the Medium umbrella is more powerful than, say, Condé Nast's (for example), and the push-pull of where to build is ingrained within Medium. And, probably, part of its own attraction. DNA is hard to change. Gravity harder yet.

Because it can’t and it never will

It is March and that means, here at least, that winter refuses to leave, though the sun may feel warm(er) and the length of the days creep longer, but it’s Montreal in March and that does not mean it’s spring it just means some days the snow on the ground melts and then freezes overnight to render the sidewalks sheets of ice. In some parts of the world, March heralds nice things. In Montreal, it means you can start to see all the dogshit slowly being exposed by the slowly melting snow. April…

Product labelling. Just like all packaged food comes with nutritional labelling, all products should come with a full list of products used in manufacture and the footprint of the whole lot. Minus shipping because that will depend on too many factors. A lot of people won't care (we're still eating fast food, after all) but some people will and that's good enough.

Random thoughts on thoughtlessness.

It’s been a year. Read that with any intonation you want and that’s how I meant it. The year has been a dreamscape, a random series of interconnected randomness. Of snippets. Memory and memories. The relentlessness of time and also its absence. A year of lack and, if you’re one of the lucky ones, of great love. Though I don’t assume anyone’s luck or good health or happiness. It’s not the right time for that. Not yet.

Last year, around this time, the world started to figure out what was up and how vast it was…

This is Peak Geek. Or something.

It’s 2021, we’re still stuck in the plague and I’m still going to have thoughts. And then some of those thoughts will find their way here. So this is a series. Of thoughts. Published randomly. For no reason. Thank you for coming.

For the past few years, my brother and his family have come over to our place to watch the Super Bowl. I make a lot of chicken wings (his kids can go through their weight in wings in one sitting), my brother picks up some smoked meat and rye bread, some cole slaw and potato salad, and we…