Category Archives: Uncategorised

This is a little longer than most of the videos I share on this blog, but it was well worth my time.

It’s incredible to think that humans were hunter-gatherers for the vast majority of our time on earth. The narrator goes into a lot of detail about what their lives were like and how slowly things changed for our ancestors.

I highly recommend checking it out to anyone who is even slightly interested in history or palaeontology.

This post is a response to my friend Colleen’s latest post, Please Tech Gods, Don’t Give Us Self-Driving Cars.

People have been dreaming of self-driving cars for nearly a century.

“An early attempt at a self-driving vehicle came with the help of remote control, as the so-called “Phantom Auto” drove through the streets of Milwaukee in 1926,” Alanis King writes in a recent article.

Colleen worries about what will happen to modern society when self-driving cars replace the traditional ones people are currently using.

I worry about history repeating itself.

 Car Accidents Kill and Injure People Every Day

My mother was in a frightening car accident when I was a kid. The person who hit her was an inexperienced driver who had no idea how to navigate winter roads. There was a semi truck that narrowly missed my mom’s vehicle when she was shoved across the road by the inexperienced driver. Had anything happened in even a slightly differently sequence of events, we would have lost far more than a car that day.

A childhood friend died in a car accident one foggy night. He was 16, and he’d proudly shown off his brand new driver’s license to everyone just a few weeks his death. There were so many people packed into his viewing room that we spilled over into an adjacent room where someone else’s viewing was taking place. I’ll never forget what it felt like be surrounded by all of that raw grief.

This isn’t even to mention all of the injuries that happen when cars veer off the road or smash into each other. A family friend was paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident. Another family friend fractured his leg in a car accident. While he did eventually fully recover, he spent weeks immobilized and in a great deal of pain first.

I think about these stories every time I crawl into a car and put on my seatbelt. While most trips are perfectly safe and mundane, driving a two-ton hunk of metal down the road can end terribly if anything goes wrong.

Not All Drivers Are Safe Drivers

It’s not only your driving abilities that you have to think about, either. There are many people on the road who really shouldn’t be there that day. They may be drunk, fatigued, distracted by a text message, doped up on cold medicine*, or unfamiliar with the local driving laws.

There are also times when people who had been safe drivers for decades refused to stop driving when their mental or physical health status deteriorated. It’s pretty difficult to take a license away from a senior citizen who is slowly becoming less and less safe on the road, who hasn’t caused any serious accidents yet, and who refuses to give up their keys.

*someone I knew when I was younger was once stopped by the police for erratic driving. She had a bad cold that day and had taken so many different over-the-counter products for it that she really didn’t know what she was doing. She was very lucky that she didn’t hurt herself or  anyone else.

Different Kinds of Freedom

I understood where Colleen was coming from when she talked about how much she loves the freedom that comes with hopping in her car and going wherever she pleases without a computer controlling the steering wheel or telling her to buckle up.

Freedom is relative, though, and there are many different types of it.

I still wonder what kind of man my friend would be he’d be if he’d lived to become one. He was so creative and energetic. Maybe he would have channelled his love of skate-boarding into some kind of incredible small business? Maybe he would have gotten a degree in Social Work and spent the last decade mentoring kids who reminded him of his sometimes-wild teenaged self?

A few hundred dollars per car and some extra regulations are beyond worth it if they prevent deaths. My grief was a drop in the bucket when compared to what my friend’s family went through after he died. That isn’t the kind of pain I’d ever wish on anyone. Even when the wound heals, the scar stays with you for the rest of your life.

A Car Is a Means to an End

Colleen clearly has an emotional attachment to her car and to the memories she’s made of various trips she’s taken. I respect that even though I don’t necessarily understand it.

To me, cars are a means to an end. If I need to get from Point A to Point B, I don’t care if it’s in a traditional car, a self-driving car, a gondola, Santa’s sleigh, or on the back of a large, purple dragon named Frank.

Getting there as safely as possible every single time you travel is all that counts.

Once they’ve been tested and programmed fully, self-driving cars are going to be much safer than the traditional ones. Human error is a real thing, and it can never be eliminated.

So bring on the self-driving cars! I’m thrilled at the prospect of living in a world where this cause of so much human suffering  over the last century can be eliminated.

Here is this week’s list of tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

From What Straight Allies Need To Realize About Pride:

I know many of you attend Pride Parades for the fun, not for the political significance. It’s time you realized that Pride is so much fun because it’s the one day we exist in a place where people are free to be themselves. Imagine the beauty of a life where that was true every day.

Yesterday I had my first grease fire… via lizmeldon2‬. I can’t remember the last time I scrubbed out my oven. This post is making me think I should change that.

What to Grow to Survive an Apocalypse. If I had a backyard, I’d grow a lot of these foods. Would you do the same?

5 Yoga Thoughts You Should Think Right Now via YogaMatMonkey‬. This was wonderful. #2 was my favourite of them all.

Psychologists Recommend Children be Bored in the Summer. Could the same thing be said for adults? Most adults don’t get the entire summer off, of course, but while reading this I did wonder if boredom is just as good for you when you grow older.

Giving the Finger to Romance Snobs via MtnMoxieGirl‬. I couldn’t agree with this more.

What have you been reading?

Those of you who follow me on Twitter may have noticed me talking about this yesterday, but I’ll quickly recap it for everyone else. I’d just come back home from a dental cleaning that went really well. I jokingly told Twitter that I thought I should get to eat ice cream as a reward for having a healthy mouth. The funny thing is, though, that I seem to be losing my sweet tooth.

I’ll still have treats on occasion, but I don’t crave soy ice cream, cookies, or doughnuts like I used to. This is something I first noticed a few years ago when I cut soda out of my diet. After months of going without it, I was surprised by how cloyingly sweet it was when I tried it again. I still don’t like it.

I noticed this change even more last autumn when I picked up some doughnuts I used to love at a little vegan bakery in my city. They’d been delicious in the past, but now they were a little too sweet for me. I appreciated them, but I haven’t been back for more since then.

The same thing has also happened with alcohol. On the rare occasion that I used to have a glass of it, I’d pick something that was full of fruit and sugar to mask the taste of vodka or other alcoholic ingredients that I’ve never found tasty. My husband and I went out to dinner at a nice restaurant earlier this month. The menu was full of mixed drinks that might have tempted me a few years ago, but I shrugged off the idea of ordering one within seconds. Ice water sounded so much better.

Did that original decision to stop drinking soda start it all? I think it might have. They say your palate can adjust to all kinds of dietary changes if you give it enough time. What was once perfectly sweet (or salty) might not taste very good once you’ve gotten used to a different way of eating.

How have your tastebuds changes?

Fun fact: I used to count sheep right before going to sleep when I was a kid.

It never made me sleepy, though. My sheep wore such creative costumes that imagining them only woke me up.

Something is happening today that only happens once every 70 years: a Strawberry Moon. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime event for the vast majority of people.

A Strawberry Moon happens when a full moon occurs on the Summer Solstice. It also signifies the beginning of strawberry season. The link I shared above has many more details about where the term came from and why people like it so much.

Today reminded me of some childhood memories. There were a few times growing up when mom and dad took us outside to show us rare meteorological or astronomical events. Every time this happened they’d tell us that we’d remember those sightings for the rest of our lives.

I’ve forgotten the specific names of some of the ones that happened when I was very young, but I will always remember what it felt like to stare at the sky while we watched something special happen. It was like standing outside of time itself. Everything was quiet and still, and I felt like those moments would last forever every single time we were called outdoors to see whatever it was that was going to happen.

It’s odd to think that there are people living now who weren’t alive back when those comets flew by, those planets lined up neatly (or seemed to grow bigger and brighter for a while), or when those strange weather patterns showed us things we’d never seen before.

Someday there will be people who don’t remember today’s Strawberry Moon.

You and I will, though.

I hope you look up at the full moon tonight and soak up every detail about where you’re standing and what that moments looks like that you possibly can. Make it so vivid in your mind that you’ll be able to step back into it 50 years from now and make someone who is hearing the story for the first time feel like they’re living in a time as old-fashioned as 2016.

I’ll be doing the same thing. There are a lot of minutes in life that can be easily forgotten without losing anything important. These aren’t some of them.

Then go inside for a snack if you’re hungry. Have something with strawberries, perhaps, to celebrate the most delicious time of the year? This looks delicious, whatever it is.

Here is this week’s list of rants, comic strips, poems, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Mind Your Own Womb. This is fantastic. I’ve only asked a couple of people about their reproductive plans in the past, but I regret all of those conversations. They never should have happened. It’s no one’s business but your own when, whether, how, with whom, or how many children anyone has.

But What if the Princess Was in the Tower Because She Was the Dragon? I absolutely love it when people play around with traditional fairy tale stuff like this.

Pain Remains via parmis_rad. I really like the imagery in this poem.

My Strict Mother Forced Me to Marry a Stranger When I Was 15. What a story! The ending is what made me decide to share it with you all.

The Half-Life of Love: Eight Years Later via ElaineMansfiel7. This is one of the most beautiful essays about grief that I’ve read in a long time. My grandmother died when I was a child. My family lived a few thousand miles away from where she was buried, so sometimes I’d pick dandelions and leave them on a little hill beside a neighbourhood church when I missed her and wished I could see her headstone.

Orlando Tragedy Call for Poetry via ReverieJournal‬.  Are any of my followers interested in submitting something for this?

50 Father’s Day Jokes to Make Him Smile. Do dad jokes make me groan? Sometimes, yes. There’s something irresistibly fun about them, though, that I’ll never be able to deny. Only a parent can pull off that level of silliness and make their kids laugh no matter how old the kids are.

What have you been reading?

I blogged about this topic a year ago. While I still heartily endorse everyone I mentioned in my first post in this series, it’s time to add some names to that list! 

The cool thing about Twitter is that you can find anything there. Some people use Twitter for one specific purpose: to advertise their business; to debate; to be creative; to share cute animal pictures.

I tweet for many different reasons, and I follow a wide variety of accounts there.  This list is a glimpse of my timeline. There were many other amazing people who didn’t make the list simply because I couldn’t have my readers wading through thousands words. My posts here are generally much shorter than that!

If there’s someone on Twitter that you’d like to recommend, leave a comment below. I’d love to check out their account.

I don’t know if 1scatteredmind is okay with people sharing her beautiful pictures and paintings on other sites, but I strongly recommend clicking through all of the links she shares to them. They blow my mind.

OlliCrusoe is hands down one of the funniest writers I’ve met online so far.

BirdBrayn always has a thought-provoking link to share. This isn’t an easy thing to accomplish by any means! I either have a lot of links I want to share with everyone or nothing at all. The fact that he sends out such good stuff so consistently is amazing.

You don’t have to live in Toronto to appreciate what TPSChrisBoddy tweets. He is the most friendly and most personable public figures in Toronto that I’ve met online so far. I especially appreciate his sense of humour when he finds new and creative ways to remind people to stay safe on holiday weekends.

If you like Haiku or other forms of micro-poetry, everettpoetry is a wonderful person to follow. I  also appreciate the fact that she spends so much time sharing people’s best stuff. She’s introduced me to a lot of poetry that I never would have otherwise discovered.

What I find interesting about JeffreyGuterman is how quickly he finds out about breaking news. There have been times when he’s tweeted a link to a hot story that even my local news channel hasn’t talked about yet.

manwhohasitall makes me cringe and laugh at the same time.

There are a lot of parents out there who don’t understand social media at all. Luckily, TammySchoch and OpaRide aren’t among them! I love the fact that I can interact with my parents on this platform. It is almost as cool to see them retweet me as it is to see what kinds of interesting things they’ve found that I haven’t seen yet.

JudithAdanma‬ has had some very interesting things to say about her experiences as an artist and with Autism. She tweets about a lot of other topics, too, but these are the two things that originally drew me to her.

This made me want to avoid cleaning my house for a while.

Did it have the same affect on any of my readers?