Mississauga, Ontario; Toronto, Ontario
Heartland neighbourhood: Annual Superbowl ritual featuring hamburgers grilled outside, cold but not blizzard conditions this year. Broke vegan regime as indulgence with family. Larger attendance of millennials this year, some boomer regulars cancelled last minute due to colds. (Heartland neighbourhood, Mississauaga, Ontario) 20200202Celebration of Life: Leaving long message at memorial for a friend who passed away in October. DY was a few years ahead of Mary at the same primary and high schools in Vancouver, and only got to know her through PY in Toronto. Honoured by her relatives flying into for the occasion, and coworkers relating stories of adventurous career in documentaries and journalism. (90 Broadview Avenue, Toronto, Ontario) 20200208Riverside neighbourhood: Sparkler means no candles to blow out. Departing from usual cake to accommodate preferences, donuts are less sweet, and the banana bread is even less. Packaging says plant-based, gluten-free, peanut-free, nut-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free and sesame-free, leaving us wondering what ingredients could potentially still be on the list. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20200211Factory Theatre: Coming down from tiered set for bows, #ftLadySunrise @FactoryToronto update by @magicalmudge to 2005 Vancouver sees societal similarities to #CaoYu original 1936 Chinese-language play set in Shanghai. Shallow, dislikeable female characters made even less sympathetic as competitive amongst themselves, with no men cast in the production. Quite a contrast to the conventional portrayal of Asian women as passive and graceful. (Factory Theatre, Bathurst Street, Toronto, Ontario) 20200218Riverside neighbourhood: Professional delivery of a new refrigerator, and old one hauled away, at home. Deliveryman had tape measure to check entry, asked for a hammer, and then removed door to accommodate width. We had cleared hallway, EKI and I took a few extra moments to finishing emptying contents, mostly onto our back deck in a Canadian winter day before freezing. Evokes memories of myself doing refrigerator deliveries for Kent Tv in Gravenhurst, in the 1970s. (Riverside neighbourhood, Toronto, Ontario) 20200219Woodbine Beach: Art installation of recycled sailcloth stuffed with straw #NoodleFeed @iheartblob attracts children @winterstations on a clear, bright day above the freezing point. Some took off their boots, others jumped with them on. First bicycling day in a while, wind felt heavy travelling east and then back west. (Woodbine Beach, Toronto, Ontario) 20200223SystemsThinkingTO: Relaunch of #SystemsThinking TO @acojoaca @CatarinavM_TO meetup, guiding conversation through #GarethMorgan #ImagesOfOrganization handout http://coevolving.com/commons/20200225-stto-imagesoforganization towards reframing metaphors. Fishbowl for 15-minutes, then breakout into small groups, ending with debriefings. Participant reported enjoying opportunity for dialogue, collectively making sense of ideas. Closed out session with plans for next monthly meeting, format will evolve with experience. (SystemsThinkingTO, Loyalty One, King Street East, Toronto, Ontario) 20200225 photo by CatvM
Very Fine Seafood Cuisine: Sister coming to town reserved time for family dinner. Ten courses with Peking duck, multiple fish dishes, and vegan selections. Joking about fusion tendencies, cranberries with duck, roasted potatoes with beef, lobster deep fried. Other local family out of town, otherwise we would have needed two banquet tables. (Very Fine Seafood Cuisine, Milliken Boulevard, Scarborough, Ontario) 20200229
The fourth of four lectures for the Systemic Design course at OCADU SFI focused on (a) situated practice + history-making (reframing disclosing new worlds), and on (b) commitments and the language-action perspective (applying conversations for action).
The third of four lectures for the Systemic Design course at OCADU covered value(s), the science of service systems, and the socio-technical systems perspective.
A lecture on ecological systems for the OCADU SFI master's program opened up opportunities to discuss wei and wuwei, and get beyond an anthropocentric perspective the Canadian beaver in its habitat.
The second session of the Systemic Design course in the OCADU SFI master's program was an opportunity to share the current state of knowledge on Systems Change, in light of recent interest in Systems Change and Theory of Change.
A workshop with David L. Hawk at the CANSEE meeting in May 2019 led to an invitation to publish an article, "Ecology and Economy: Systems Changes Ahead?" in WEI Magazine.
Questions about governance of online social communities led to launching on the Open Learning Commons and the Digital Life Collective, while issues of content moderation on a Facebook Group has reignited.
Complementing the idea of a @longnow , @nfergus provokes the challenge of a #shortthen as the online social media platforms distract the larger perspectives on history.Read more ›
Social ecology and environmental psychology described @dstokols @Social_Ecology , interviewed by @katiepatrick . References #WilliamsJames on attention. Book on Social Ecology in the Digital Age released in 2018.Read more ›
Concerns on #personaldata should be reframed as interpersonal, says @sheldrake , less the nodes and more the edge connections. “I want to take back control” superficial, @hartzog says control doesn’t scale. Agency is about negotiation in the world, more rhizomatic…Read more ›
Doing science should be wayfinding (pathfinding), says #TimIngold , gaining grounding in the art of paying attention, towards research as the pursuit of truth. Truth is more than objective facts, where science and art are embraced with materials, so that we can see the quality inside the natural world as it forms, rather than as […]
We should be more vigourous, says @MazzucatoM , in debating differences between value extraction and value creation, and between profits and rents. Lecture at Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford U., January 2019Read more ›
Most destructive analogy last 100 years @DavidGelernter @econtalker : Post-Turing thinkers decided that brains were organic computers, that computation was a perfect model of what minds do ... and that mind relates to brain as software relates to computer Read more ›
Two ways of thinking about practice put (i) “plans as determinants of action”, and (ii) “plans as resources for action”. The latter has become a convention, particularly through research into Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW). While the more durable explanation appears the Suchman (1987) book (specifically section “8.2 Plans as […]
Does “the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago and the second best time is now” date back further than 1988? It is time to look long and hard at the value of the urban forest and create the broad-based efforts — in research, funding and citizen participation — needed to improve […]
Workshop led by @RohanAlexander and @prof_lyons at #CASCONxEvoke on "Barriers to Data Science Adoption: Why Existing Frameworks Aren't Working". For discussion purposes the challenges are grouped within three themes: regulatory; investment; and workforce.
“You are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts” by #DanielPatrickMoynihan is predated on @Freakonomics by #BernardMBaruch 1950 “Every man has a right to his own opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts”. Source: “There Are Opinions, And Then There Are Facts” | Fred Shapiro […]
Satire can be an antidote, says Prof. #PaulBabbitt @muleriders , to #bullshit (c.f. rhetoric; hypocrisy; crocodile tears; propaganda; intellectual dishonesty; politeness, etiquette and civility; commonsense and conventional wisdom; symbolic votes; platitudes and valence issues).
