Smart People I Know

If you’re like me, you find all the screens and tasks you have to deal with make it hard to stay focused. I don’t know how many times in the day I find myself forgetting what I was working on...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/05/01/to-stay-focused-set-5-min-timers-and-log/

Starting during the pandemic, I wrote a series of posts on restaurants loved and lost, inspired by a piece in the New York Times on places that vanished due to the pandemic. I’d like to go in a...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/26/restaurants-loved-and-living-le-paradis/

Here’s 12 good pieces on artists that capture a range of feeling, from sadness to gladness and more. Sadness: the great Richard Serra passed away recently. So too did Patti Astor, head of the ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/24/another-dozen-good-pieces-on-artists-from-richard-serra-to-robert-mapplethorpe/

It’s shocking how much of your iPhone storage the New York Times app can use. Recently I was going to apply a software update to my iPhone and I was told it didn’t have enough free storage sp...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/22/if-you-use-the-new-york-times-app-you-should-clear-your-cache-from-time-to-time-heres-how-to-do-it/

If you didn’t know much about Keith Haring other than what you read in the recent piece in the New Yorker (which I criticized, here), you might a poor impression of this great artist. Fortunate...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/22/two-good-pieces-on-the-recent-keith-haring-bio/

We here at this blog have always been fans of tiny homes and have written about them often. It turns out the New York Times are fans as well, and have a section of their web site devoted to them ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/19/for-fans-of-tiny-homes/

Do you wish you could do gym workouts but you don’t have access to a gym? If that’s you, IKEA is here to help, with their new pastel-colored DAJLIEN collection (shown above). Especially good ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/17/the-real-cost-of-a-peloton-and-other-good-fitness-and-health-links/

If you want to merge PDF files on a Mac, you might be tempted to use a tool like www.ilovepdf.com. Worse still, you might try and do it from Adobe’s Acrobat site and end up signing up to pay ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/15/how-to-simply-merge-pdf-files-on-a-mac-for-free-with-no-additional-software/

It’s not the end of the Post yet, but it could soon be. Saltwire, the company that owns the Cape Breton Post and 22 other papers from Eastern Canada, is seeking creditor protection. It’s poss...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/12/on-the-end-of-the-cape-breton-post-and-other-stories-of-the-maritimes/

One of the best meals I’ve had around 7 years ago this month was also one of the greatest value meals I’ve ever had. It was the lunch in the lounge at Le Bernardin and back then it was $55, �...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/10/the-city-harvest-lunch-at-le-bernardin-is-still-a-good-deal/

Happy birthday, Gmail! According to the Verve, you are 20 years old! The big two-oh! Sure you had some growing pains at first. And then there was the whole period when you and your users felt sno...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/08/happy-birthday-to-gmail-from-this-old-yahoo-email-user/

Normally when I think of Lego, I think of using it to make something recognizable (e.g. things from Star Wars). So I was surprised to see this: Piece Together Your Own Wall Art With the LEGO Mode...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/05/making-art-for-your-wall-with-lego/

According to CNN, Barcelona’s famous Sagrada Familia will finally be completed in 2026. That’s amazing. Miraculous, in fact. For much of the 20th century it was in a state of semi completion....

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/03/its-a-miracle-gaudis-sagrada-familia-will-be-completed-in-2026/

I spotted this post — Eponis | Sinope (Everything Is Awful and I’m Not Okay: questions to…) — and as usual I thought: I should share this because it contains a few nuggets of good advice ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/04/01/some-thoughts-on-blog-posts-vs-reels-for-advice/

Happy Spring! Happy Easter, to those who celebrate. This is my quarter end cornucopia of things I found interesting and worth reading but don’t really fit into any specific category. It used to...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/31/happy-spring-heres-some-thoughts-and-ramblings-for-the-first-quarter-of-the-year-i-e-the-march-2024-edition-of-my-not-a-newsletter-newsletter/

Well no sooner did Banksy paint his latest mural in London then someone else came along and defaced it with white paint. Or did they? In some ways the defacement gives greater meaning to the work...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/29/the-defacement-some-thoughts-on-banksys-latest/

If you’re lucky, you got to see the the Keith Haring show, “Art is for Everybody” at the AGO and elsewhere. I did, and it was a good sampling of the artist and his life. A sampling, but not...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/27/keith-haring-was-great-people-who-say-otherwise-are-biased-and-wrong/

So Trump’s new company opened with a bang on the stock market, according to this here. Let’s see how it is going in a year from now. Personally I think this is all just Trump puffery and over...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/26/a-marker-on-trumps-new-company/

I was walking around Great Jones Street in lower Manhattan recently and came across the place that Basquiat lived for a time in the 80s. (Now it’s owned by Angelina Jolie. More on that, here.) ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/25/on-walking-around-new-york-thinking-of-basquiat/

After being away for awhile, I recently spent a long weekend in New York. Not surprising, it was great! I stayed in the Lower East Side and as usual, I went and ate at a number of good places. If...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/22/back-to-new-york-a-tale-of-eating-and-walking/

  The good folks behind the web site Open Culture recently did a story on the surreal 1933 animation of Snow White (shown above). The only thing more fascinating than the story of the video is t...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/15/friday-night-music-cab-calloway-betty-boop-doing-st-james-infirmary-blues/

While fashion is more associated with youth, this post is going in a different direction, starting with that fashion icon Iris Apfel. Sadly she passed away recently but she was shining right up u...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/12/what-do-fashion-and-aging-have-in-common/

If you are feeling your work from home (WFH) work area needs some new ideas, I think you should check out the following links for inspiration. For example, this setup was designed to maximize pro...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/11/does-your-wfh-desk-work-area-need-a-refresh/

I was glad to come across this piece at artsy.com on these Anselm Kiefer’s watercolors. It’s a fine reminder just how great watercolor can be in the right hands, like Keifer’s. It was also ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/08/on-anselm-kiefers-watercolor-paintings/

Since I last wrote about Toronto in the fall the Mayor has been busy doing the hard stuff of getting the city’s finances in order. She worked out a deal with the province to upload the costs of...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/06/toronto-is-ramping-and-opening-up-random-updates-on-hogtown-march-2024/

It was a weird week last week at Wendy’s. First they were talking about introducing dynamic pricing only to walk it back later: Wendy’s clarifies no surge pricing after CEO ‘dynamic pricing...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/04/a-weird-week-at-wendys-and-a-few-thoughts-on-dynamic-pricing/

For people who have a hard time say “no” to people, I highly recommend this piece: How a Notebook Taught Me to Embrace Saying No in The New York Times (gift article). Among other things, it�...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/03/03/the-power-of-saying-no/

I found this was a good piece on the state of the creator economy right now: the creator economy can’t rely on patreon. I have no doubt what the author is saying is true: it is very difficult t...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/28/on-the-creator-economy-and-the-weakness-of-1000-true-fans/

If you want to make your Apple Watch more useful, you want to change your App View. Here’s how. On your iPhone, find the Watch app icon and click on it. Look for App View and click on it. From ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/26/the-way-to-make-your-apple-watch-more-useful-is-to-change-your-app-view/

The short answer? No. Definitely not. The long answer is found in the Toronto Star, here. The next time you hear someone ranting otherwise, show them this.  

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/24/are-people-with-non-urgent-problems-clogging-up-ontario-ers/

I want to point out this fantastic essay on the baseline scene in Blade Runner 2049. I loved reading it because I learned some fascinating background about the film and I reexamined both films in...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/23/thoughts-on-the-baseline-scene-in-bladerunner-2049/

In discussing the value of an education, things often get muddled up. That comes across in this essay in the New York Times, where the author who teaches humanities confesses she is not sure of t...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/22/how-to-assess-the-value-of-an-education-in-the-humanities-or-indeed-any-college-education/

It seems like IKEA is making forays into things other than furniture these days. For example, here’s a story on their smart home monitoring products. Here’s another piece on the  exercise e...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/16/ikea-is-expanding-their-product-lines/

There was a lot of chatter around private jets last week as a result of Taylor Swift’s lawyers threatening to sue a person tracking her jet on social media. There’s a whole bunch of PR and le...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/14/private-jets-are-a-sign-of-excess-in-general-not-just-for-one-individual/

The great conductor Seiji Ozawa died last week. The New York Times has his obit here. If you don’t know much about him, I recommend you read that obiturary. Regardless of how much you knew of ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/12/do-you-love-music-then-you-want-to-read-absolutely-on-music-by-murakami-and-ozawa/

Nowadays movies seem to be getting longer….many creeping up to 2.5 hours in length. (Don’t believe me? Check out this.) That’s fine if you have the time to settle into a film, but what if y...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/10/its-the-weekend-youve-much-to-do-but-you-still-would-like-to-watch-a-movie-got-90-minutes/

I love this: truly a vending machine for our times! Instead of scratch tickets that promise us fortune, these scratch tickets promise us fame! Well, if not fame, then many more social media follo...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/07/a-scratch-ticket-vending-machine-win-fame/

Apple is a computing hardware company: if there is a market for a new form of computing hardware out there, Apple will make it. It was true of digital watches, smart speakers, and various forms o...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/05/some-quick-thoughts-on-the-apple-vision-pro/

The great  Cindy Sherman has a show at Hauser & Wirth on Wooster Street in SoHo NYC. The Times took the time recently to do a long profile on her. I really enjoyed it. It also has a straight up ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/02/02/five-good-pieces-on-five-great-artists-for-a-friday/

After missing last month’s newsletter due to being in the hospital with life threatening injuries, I thought I might just skip on writing my weird newsletter this year. But then I found some go...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/01/31/im-back-and-rambling-into-2024-i-e-the-january-2024-edition-of-my-not-a-newsletter-newsletter/

This obit of Red Paden, the “Juke Joint ‘King’ Who Kept the Blues Alive” is great not just because of the man himself, but the culture and history his life embodied. Well worth a read. (...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/01/29/six-cool-things-to-start-off-your-monday/

While I do love Philippe Starck for his designs both personal and furniture,  I also admire his work with regards to industrial design. Take the Hydrogen refueling station he created above. Yank...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/01/24/philippe-starck-industrial-designer/

Wow. I have not posted about tech links since last September. Needless to say, I’ve been doing alot of reading on the usual topics, from architecture and cloud to hardware and software. There�...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/01/22/its-winter-time-to-curl-up-with-a-good-list-of-tech-links-what-i-find-interesting-in-tech-january-2024/

The ad says: greatness is just something we made up. I’d refine that and say: the limitations on greatness is what we made up. In truth, there are endless ways to be great. Find your way to you...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/01/18/find-your-greatness/

If you are looking for an app that can help you form good habits, I highly recommend this one: Habit List Things I like about it: it is easy to add new habits to your list you can decide the … ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/01/15/habit-list-an-app-that-has-really-helped-me-with-keeping-my-habits/

It looks we have reached peak chore coat, based on this: How Paynter Jacket Co. Found Success With Limited-Edition Chore Coats in The New York Times. I’ve seen more and more men wearing them, e...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/01/13/have-we-reached-peak-chore-coat-yet/

Here’s a really good list: 11 Things to Pack When Heading to the Emergency Room. A few thoughts/additions: take your smartphone. Much of this information can be found there. Indeed, you can put...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2024/01/11/things-to-pack-when-heading-to-the-emergency-room/

How to think about week 52, the last week of the old year before the first week of the new year? It’s a good question I’ve been considering since I read this post by Austin Kleon over on his ...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2023/12/27/dead-week-week-52-janus-week-the-last-week-of-the-old-before-the-first-week-of-the-new/

Merry Christmas to all the smart people I know! I’ve written quite a bit on the topic of Christmas over the years, as you can see if you follow that link. As a small present, so to speak, I’v...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2023/12/25/merry-christmas-from-me-in-2023/

Well this is fascinating. People have been claiming that Bob Cratchit from A Christmas Carol was a) destitute b) still earning more than the current U.S. minimum wage. So USA Today did some inves...

https://smartpeopleiknow.com/2023/12/24/dickenss-bob-cratchit-from-a-christmas-carol-then-and-now/