A quick look at the movies, television shows, music, and books that have captured my attention over the past month. Perfect Days A quiet, contemplative film that not only reminds me to relish the small moments that bring me joy in my life, but to also notice when I’m moving too quickly to enjoy the beauty in the mundanity. Also, I’m very impressed by the public toilet infrastructure in Japan. The Brutalist I’ll admit that I thought this movie would be too long to hold my attention, but ...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
A few weeks ago, I had a small medical procedure that ended up addressing a relatively major medical issue that I did not know I had until the procedure.| www.inthemargins.ca
Sameer Vasta is an epistolarian, anthropologist, urban explorer, and over-user of the discretionary comma.| www.inthemargins.ca
Sameer Vasta is an epistolarian, anthropologist, urban explorer, and over-user of the discretionary comma.| www.inthemargins.ca
Sameer Vasta is an epistolarian, anthropologist, urban explorer, and over-user of the discretionary comma.| www.inthemargins.ca
A few weeks ago, we spent some days in the Cotswolds and had the opportunity to dine at a few memorable places along the way.| www.inthemargins.ca
Some people love getting behind the wheel of a car, revving up the engine and just going wherever their whims will take them. I am not one of those people.| www.inthemargins.ca
Below, a quick roundup of a few of the things I learned over the past few months. There could be billions more people living on Earth than currently thought, according to a new study which claims rural figures worldwide could be vastly underestimated. (The Independent) Women tend to outlive men around the world. In 2021, this difference amounted to a 5-year gap in global life expectancy: the average life expectancy was 73.8 years for women versus 68.4 years for men. (Our World In Data) Resear...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
A quick look at the movies, television shows, and books that have captured my attention over the past couple of months.| www.inthemargins.ca
In the absence of anything substantial to say, a few passing thoughts.| www.inthemargins.ca
We are planning a summer vacation. The big plans—flights, accommodation, transport—have been sorted out. What’s left is the smaller things: activities and meals, mostly. Trip planning is difficult. I know some people find joy in making the plans for upcoming travel; I am not one of them. Still, we plan. We plan because we want to have memorable experiences, to build memories that will last for years, moments that will leave indelible marks on our lives. Growing up, we didn’t go on man...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
Sameer Vasta is an epistolarian, anthropologist, urban explorer, and over-user of the discretionary comma.| www.inthemargins.ca
Sameer Vasta is an epistolarian, anthropologist, urban explorer, and over-user of the discretionary comma.| www.inthemargins.ca
I’ve been thinking a lot about civic advocacy recently, and was pondering about entry points into civic action and how I could engage in small ways while still trying to juggle all the things that are taking up a lot of time in my life. One thing I’ve had to come to terms with is that my engagement in civic life doesn’t have to be formal, or formalized, and can instead be organic; most of my civic work in the past has been on formal boards or well-organized issue campaigns, but there is...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
The thing about being among the mountains is that your gaze is constantly drawn upwards. At first, it is the snow-capped peaks that catch your attention. Eventually, your sightline extends past the peaks and to the clouds, floating among and above the snow caps, like delicate sculptures floating in the air. And then, past the clouds, the empty expanse of the sky, blue and grey—the color depending on the day—and seemingly endless. It is this sense of endlessness that makes me love being in...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
A quick look at the movies, television shows, and books that have captured my attention over the past month.| www.inthemargins.ca
My favorite conversations with Zoya all seem to happen on our early morning walks to the bus stop. It is during those walks that she is most wide-eyed, taking in the outside world for the first time that day, noticing what has changed and what has grown and what has slowly faded away. She is alert and aware, full of energy before the day starts to drain some of that élan, slowly, as it does for all of us. One morning last week, she looked up at me as she held my hand and asked quizzically:...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
A quick look at the movies, television shows, music, and books that have captured my attention over the past month. Challengers L asked me why I liked this movie so much and I wasn’t quite able to articulate why. Yes, the story is gripping and I haven’t been this invested in a sports movie in a long time. Yes, the acting is superb — Zendaya is truly a gift to all of us — and the cinematography and directing is sublime. (That under-the-court POV? Mesmerizing.) Yes, the music is percuss...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
I set up a new mesh WiFi system today at home. The previous one had stopped working, and was over a decade old. It wasn’t the best when we first got it either, so it’s not surprise that it began to give us trouble a couple of years ago and the“mesh” capabilities eventually died. I dithered on setting up the new system, mostly because I assumed it would take a long time and just couldn’t find time in my days where I could devote an hour or so to getting it done. The old system had a ...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
Below, a quick roundup of a few of the things I learned over the past few months. It takes approximately 700,000 megawatt hours of electricity to power Chicago’s more than 400 municipal buildings every year. As of January 2025, every single one of them — including 98 fire stations, two international airports, and two of the largest water treatment plants on the planet — is running on renewable energy, thanks largely to Illinois’ newest and largest solar farm. (Grist) On the early ...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
A few snippets from the week gone by involving ice cream, birdsong, bubbles; Nowruz, and a whole lot more.| www.inthemargins.ca
In the winter, the step counter on my wrist reminds me that I’m way too sedentary. I spend most of the day, every work day, sitting in front of a computer, often in front of a camera where I’m lost in an endless slew of Teams meetings, only resurfacing to make a cup of coffee or tea, use the bathroom, and when I remember, to have lunch. I know I should be more active, doing more to get outside and to get my heart pumping, but when the temperatures are hovering at twenty degrees below zero...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
A question I’ve been asking myself more often these days is: what is my work? The question was spurred by Mandy Brown, as many of my thoughts these days are. She asks: When talking to people about their work, one question I often ask is,“what is your work now?” Not what is your job or career, but what is your work. Jobs and careers are, at best, the means by which we get our work done while also keeping a roof over our heads; but our work is always bigger than that. Our work is not only...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
As part of the recent tumult in US politics, Trump/Musk/DOGE recently laid off all the staff at 18F, essentially shuttering the agency and with it destroying years of digital experience in government.| www.inthemargins.ca
To London City Council: I am writing you to request that the City of London stop using X (formerly Twitter) as a method of distribution for official city communication. The X platform has become increasingly associated with hate speech, intolerance, and bigotry, and has failed to adequately address harmful content that targets marginalized groups based on race, gender, sexuality, religion, and other protected characteristics. Additionally, information is hard to find due to the algorithmic na...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
February is the cruelest month. The snow has been unrelenting; when it hasn’t been snowing, the cold has been frightening. The early morning walks to the school bus stop, once one of the best parts of the day, have become forays outside that I don’t look forward to anymore because of the inevitable frostnip I will have on my extremities and face when I return. We slip and fall on the ice-covered sidewalks. I shovel again and again. This February, the world seems more tumultuous than usual...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
There is no escaping any discussion of Percival Everett’s James without first mentioning the central conceit: that this is reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved companion. This, of course, is what draws readers in: a novel way of experiencing something have known before, a tension in their comfort, a different narrative on stories that seemed so simple. What James is, however, transcends a mere reimagining. It is an adventure novel,...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
I recently read an interesting look at how the stable, impartial civil service was created, and how it was different from the partial, ever-changing system of government workers before it—and how it’s slowly being dismantled by the Trump administration. Essentially, the old system used to prioritize jobs for allies and friends of the elected officials, which understandably led to turmoil and upheaval when new people came into office. In order to have a more efficient and effective public ...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
I’ve read quite a few great things about parenting over the last few years since becoming a father, but this short paragraph by gowns (via Kottke) made me tear up a little and it’s worth quoting in full: man the crazy thing about babies is that like, some people would think that reading a baby a book about farm animals is teaching them about farm animals, but really it’s teaching them about the concept of a book and how there’s new information on each page of a single object, but real...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
It’s so easy for a week to fly by without really feeling like we’ve fully lived it. If we only have four thousand of them, there’s an important impetus to live each one with intention.| www.inthemargins.ca
It had been almost 30 years since I last went on a water slide. There was a water park near us growing up and we would occasionally go there when we’d get cheap tickets through a group rate or something; the park had dozens of water slides and I would enjoy going on each and every one of them. I haven’t really had the chance to go on a water slide since then, so when I saw the water park across the path from our hotel room, and knew I had a few hours before we had to get the little one fr...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
I went to buy some band-aids at the resort boutique this week and had to sign a receipt to put the charge on my room bill. The lady behind the counter didn’t look twice at my signature, but I noticed something that has become a bit of a habit: when in a rush, my signature has become a rudimentary cursive“S” with a bunch of squiggles after it—a pretty consistent shape of squiggles, but illegible nonetheless—rather than the carefully crafted first-initial-last-name stylization of curs...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
A quick look at the movies, television shows, and books that have captured my attention over the past month.| www.inthemargins.ca
This week, I returned to my job working in employee experience and organizational culture after six months of managing a team of talent and operations professionals. And I am relieved.| www.inthemargins.ca
The holidays ended and everything sped up. We got home on Sunday afternoon and spent the evening unpacking, doing laundry, packing lunches, preparing for the week ahead. Nighttime crept up on us: we were busy doing all the things that needed to be done and had to put it all down in order to get to sleep in time to wake up for school and work the next day. On Monday, aside from the regular busy-ness of school drop-offs and pick-ups and prepping dinner and packing lunches, I spent the day crawl...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
Below, a quick roundup of a few of the things I learned over the past few months. Regardless of any reduction in emissions, climate change will raise the sea level of Pacific Island nations by at least six inches in the next 30 years. (NASA) Three people with severe autoimmune conditions have gone into remission after being treated with bioengineered, CRISPR-modified immune cells. (Nature) Botanists have grown a long-lost tree species from a 1,000-year-old seed found in a cave in the Judean D...| Flashing Palely in the Margins
A quick look at the movies, television shows, music, and books that have captured my attention over the past two months.| www.inthemargins.ca
Sameer Vasta is an epistolarian, anthropologist, urban explorer, and over-user of the discretionary comma.| www.inthemargins.ca
When I was young, still living in New York, I would often wake from my sleep, deep in the middle of the night, and wake up my grandmother.| www.inthemargins.ca
On weekday mornings, early enough that the sun is still creeping up past the horizon, we bundle up in our jackets, grab the backpack, and walk to the bus stop.| www.inthemargins.ca
A quick look at the movies, television shows, and books that have captured my attention over the past two months.| www.inthemargins.ca
A quick roundup of a few of the things I learned over the past few months.| www.inthemargins.ca
Reading Jennifer Pahlka’s Recoding America was a perfect reminder of why I do the work I do. Pahlka provides a number of examples of how thinking differently about the way we deliver services leads to better outcomes for people, and how thinking differently requires having digital talent inside government.| www.inthemargins.ca
I laugh and tell people that I have a bad memory, but perhaps I am not working hard enough at remembering.| www.inthemargins.ca
Tell your friends you love them when you can. You never know when you may not be able to say it again.| www.inthemargins.ca