Tolstoy was helping me review my meetings this morning.
Some things (and some people) don’t change
Had an impromptu video chat with an old (so old, so very very old) friend.
Hot agnostic buns
Made some chocolate & orange hot cross buns. But since Easter is passed and we’re heathens, they became hot agnostic buns. And they smell phenomenal!
The world has loved, hated and envied the U.S. Now, for the first time, we pity it.
Writing in the Irish Times, Fintan O’toole says:
“Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
“It is hard not to feel sorry for Americans,” he states. “Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.
“It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time — willfully, malevolently, vindictively,” he added. “It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.
“The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.”
My new meeting aide
Tolstoy has volunteered to sit in for me in some meetings. It would probably help if he knew how to type – or at least look directly at the camera.
We iz serios team doing serios works
Someone suggested we have a “theme” for our weekly team Kanban. The first one was “under the sea”… It wasn’t pretty. It was funny though.
Update: “medieval” theme:
Update: “my country” theme:
Tomorrow will be better
Working from home
So it might have taken a viral apocalypse, but I’ve never been as productive as I am now. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism to hide in the bedroom as much as possible to avoid the chaos otherwise being wrought by the small person. In any case, my home kanban board is moving in the right direction with a very healthy “done” section.
Quarantaine… day whatever
I’ve been working from home since March 11th… Mixed feelings about the possible re-opening. I think it’s a bit soon, and worry about a 2nd wave, but on the other hand, we’re all going stir crazy.
Testing the great biscuit debate with science!
which biscuit is the best for dunking? We tested chocolate-oats, chocolate digestive, Oreo, traditional butter Shortbread, stroopwaffles and lotus Biscoff biscuits with cold milk, tea and coffee. The concensus winner was that Oreo biscuits are best with milk and lotus biscuits won both hot drinks.
Science, bitches! And as the mythbusters say: “remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down”.