Justin Timberlake facing backlash, apologizes

I am not a particular big fan of Justin Timberlake, to put it mildly. His music is frequently misogynist, and his career has to some degree been at the cost of career of women, such as Janet Jackson.

Now, the documentary Framing Britney Spears has led to a backlash against him, and he has come out and apologized for some of his past behavior.

Justin Timberlake Apologizes to Britney Spears, Janet Jackson: ‘I Know I Failed’

The apology has been long in coming, and seems to be mostly caused by him actually getting some push-back, rather than him reaching the need for apologizing on his own. Having said that, his apology is quite good:

“I’ve seen the messages, tags, comments, and concerns and I want to respond. I am deeply sorry for the times in my life where my actions contributed to the problem, where I spoke out of turn, or did not speak up for what was right,” Timberlake wrote in his Instagram statement. “I understand that I fell short in these moments and in many others and benefited from a system that condones misogyny and racism.”

Unlike many non-pologies, this is actually a clear admission of guilt – both for actions and inaction. A lot people could learn from this. Still, even the apology is pretty good, the timing shows that it was forced out by the reaction to the documentary about Britney Spears which obviously makes it seem less genuine.

Reading challenge

Goodreads allows you to set a reading goal for the year. I have done so since 2011, with varying degrees of success.

Of course, I am going to do it this year as well. For now, I have set my goal at 26 books, which is one every two weeks. It is definitely on the low side, and if I manage to take a long vacation, I will upgrade my challenge to reflect that I have more time.

Me taking a long vacation obviously depends on when it is possible to get a vaccination and when the borders open up again, allowing traveling.

I have a huge to-read pile, but I am always up for book suggestions related to science, skepticism, science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, and history.

Restless in the time of COVID-19

I am sorry that I have been quiet, but I have somewhat overburdened with work. Denmark has gone into lock-down again, which means that there are a lot of companies that are entitled to compensation, as soon as the politicians hammer out the details (often while going through an approval process in the EU, ensuring that no countries sneak in illegal subsidies disguised as Corona relief. The involvement of politicians and the EU makes developing and supporting the compensation systems a bit of a moving target.

But enough about my work.

Or rather, instead of talking about my work, let me make clear how privileged I have been, having had work through both the lock-down starting in March, and now this current lock-down. What’s more, due to the extreme time pressure and ever-changing nature of the demands, I have had to go to work every day, meeting up with a core group of people, working on clearing the path for the developers of the systems (most of developers work from home).

This is probably what has kept me stable.

I am an extrovert, probably even an extreme extrovert. Social contact means a lot to me. If I hadn’t had regular contact with other people, I would almost certainly have sunk into something akin to depression, or at least have gotten stressed.

Going to work, instead of working from home, means that I have to be more careful about social contact outside work, than I would have been if I worked from home. Now, I am not only risking my health, but also the health of everyone working together with me.

As not only an extrovert, but quite a social person, it obviously pains me to not be able to see my friends. This is however a price I have to pay, and one that I think everyone in a position similar to mine (working with other people, living with at-risk people etc) should be willing to pay. The stop of the spread of Corona starts “at home”, and we all have to do our part.

This also means getting tested if we have been at risk at being exposed. In Denmark there is a track-and-trace app based on Bluetooth, which tells you if you have been close to someone who afterwards reported that they had gotten infected. This app is quite sensitive, and since Bluetooth can’t control for all the other factors for whether you have been at risk for exposure. Nevertheless, I have taken any warning I have gotten from it quite seriously, and Friday I went and had my 9th COVID-19 test, after having been told by the app that I had been exposed to a risk of infection. I am still waiting for the results, but given that I have no symptoms and I haven’t heard that anyone, that I have actually spent time, is infected, I am expecting the test to be negative as were all the tests before it.

In usual times, I spend a fairly large part of my spare time socializing and traveling, both things which I can’t really do at the moment. I have been to short trips to Vienna, Austria and Rome, Italy this year, but this is nothing like what I had planned, or what I normally travel in a year.

The lack of socializing and traveling makes me restless, and makes me miss the social aspects of the internet 20 years ago, where I used to hang out on chat boards, discussion forums, and blog comment sections. These communities don’t seem to exist the same ways as they used to. Now, there are Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and Discord, and while there is nothing inherently wrong with these things, I am not part of any communities there, like I used to be in e.g, the Mercedes Lackey Mailing List, Salon’s Table Talk, The Doonesbury Town Halls, Readerville, the comments at the blogs over at ScienceBlogs etc. Even places I used for social purposes a decade ago, e.g. Twitter, has become much less so now, as the medium has grown, and becomes such a hose of information.

I know this sounds like an old man complaining about change, but I quite understand that a lot of things are pretty similar to back then, I am just the one who hasn’t followed along. Until earlier this year, I hadn’t even looked at Discord, even though it is a major networking/community tool for a lot of people. I just miss the comfort of the past, obviously ignoring all the bad parts from back then.

Even after apparently becoming a bit of a Luddite on the internet, I have still managed to keep some contact with friends and family around the world, even making some new friends along the way.

This is part of what makes it possible to keep my restlessness in bay. Knowing that it is still possible to socialize and make friends around the world. It also gives me something to look forward to: being able to meet my friends (new and old) when we can travel again.

Because we will be able to traveling again. And socialize.

We just have to be patient for a little longer – the vaccines are here, but they need to be produced and distributed in large enough numbers. As someone said, it is not the vaccines that stop the pandemic, but the vaccinations. And that’s the stage where we are now. Vaccinations have begun, with the most vulnerable and exposed people getting them first, as is entirely proper.

Later the rest of us will get the chance. When enough have, we can normalize things. Things will probably not go entirely back to normal – I can easily see a situation where proof of vaccination/negative test is required for traveling and for participating in sporting events, festivals and other places where a lot of people are gathered.

When it is possible to socialize again, I will be throwing a party, inviting all my friends, and then start planning my travels.

Until this happens, I will stay restless, getting tested occasionally, and spending all too much time on work.

42

Tomorrow it is the International Women’s Day, and I have a couple of posts planned for that, but I also want to note that according to The Economist tomorrow is the 42th birthday of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

EVERY YEAR the world celebrates the anniversaries of masterworks and maestros. In 2020 there will be a host of events and publications commemorating the lives of Ludwig van Beethoven, Raphael, Charles Dickens, Anne Brontë and William Wordsworth. Such milestones usually come in neat multiples of 50. The 42nd anniversary of anything is rarely observed.

Yet on March 8th fans of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” (“HHGTTG”) will pay tribute to the comedy science-fiction series, which had its radio premiere on that day in 1978 and was subsequently adapted into novels, TV series, video games and a film. To mark the occasion, Pan Macmillan has reprinted the scripts and novels in colourful new editions (“HHGTTG” was the first book published under their “Pan Original” imprint to sell more than 1m copies). The British Library will host a day of “celebrations, conversation and performance”. BBC Radio 4 has aired the original episodes; Radio 4 Extra will put on a “five-hour Hitchhiker’s spectacular” including archival material and specially commissioned programmes. Such is the enduring interest in Douglas Adams’s story that it is due to be adapted into a new television series by Hulu, a streaming service.

I first read Hitchhiker’s Guide in the Danish edition when I was a teen (it was published in Danish as Håndbog for vakse galakse-blaffere in 1985), a couple of years later in the English edition, and I have re-read it multiple times since then. It is at least 5 years since I last read it, so it is probably time to dust it off, and re-read it again (together with the sequels).

As most of you probably know, the Hitchhiker’s Guide didn’t start out as a book, but rather as a radio comedy, and has been turned into a TV series, several other radio shows, a movie, stage plays, vinyls, comics, and of course, a book (with sequels). I think the book is the best medium, but no matter what you medium you prefer, take a moment to appreciate the fact that Douglas Adams created this fantastic work 42 years ago.

 

The 100 best books of the 21st century

The Guardian has created a list of the books they consider the 100 best of the 21st century (so far). The list and the description of each book can be found here.

As always with such lists, people are looking at it, and trying to figure out how many they have read, and as a bibliophile, I am no exception. So, I have recreated the list below in order for me to share.

If a title is bold, it means I own the book. If I have struck through a title, I have read the book. If a title is in italics, the book is on my to-read list.

  • I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron (2006)
  • Broken Glass by Alain Mabanckou (2005), translated by Helen Stevenson (2009)
  • The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (2005), translated by Steven T Murray (2008)
  • Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by JK Rowling (2000)
  • A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara (2015)
  • Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan (2004)
  • The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
  • Darkmans by Nicola Barker (2007)
  • The Siege by Helen Dunmore (2001)
  • Light by M John Harrison (2002)
  • Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck (2008), translated by Susan Bernofsky (2010)
  • Bad Blood by Lorna Sage (2000)
  • Noughts & Crosses by Malorie Blackman (2001)
  • Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood (2017)
  • Adults in the Room by Yanis Varoufakis (2017)
  • The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (2006)
  • The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy (2018)
  • Tell Me How It Ends by Valeria Luiselli (2016), translated by Luiselli with Lizzie Davis (2017)
  • Coraline by Neil Gaiman (2002)
  • Harvest by Jim Crace (2013)
  • Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang (2002)
  • The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett (2009)
  • The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin (2015)
  • Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera (2009), translated by Lisa Dillman (2015)
  • Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2011)
  • Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (2009), translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (2018)
  • Days Without End by Sebastian Barry (2016)
  • Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick (2009)
  • The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
  • Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware (2000)
  • Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller (2003)
  • The Infatuations by Javier Marías (2011), translated by Margaret Jull Costa (2013)
  • The Constant Gardener by John le Carré (2001)
  • The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker (2018)
  • Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli (2014)
  • Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn (2012)
  • On Writing by Stephen King (2000)
  • The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (2010)
  • Mother’s Milk by Edward St Aubyn (2006)
  • This House of Grief by Helen Garner (2014)
  • Dart by Alice Oswald (2002)
  • The Beauty of the Husbandby Anne Carson (2002)
  • Postwar by Tony Judt (2005)
  • The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000)
  • Underland by Robert Macfarlane (2019)
  • The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (2006)
  • Women & Power by Mary Beard (2017)
  • True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (2000)
  • Small Island by Andrea Levy (2004)
  • Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)
  • Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood (2003)
  • Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson (2011)
  • Night Watch by Terry Pratchett (2002)
  • Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (2000-2003), translated by Mattias Ripa (2003-2004)
  • Human Chain by Seamus Heaney (2010)
  • Levels of Life by Julian Barnes (2013)
  • Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit (2004)
  • Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine (2014)
  • Moneyball by Michael Lewis (2010)
  • Atonement by Ian McEwan (2001)
  • The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion (2005)
  • White Teeth by Zadie Smith (2000)
  • The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
  • The Green Road by Anne Enright (2015)
  • Experience by Martin Amis (2000)
  • The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Waal (2010)
  • Outline by Rachel Cusk (2014)
  • Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (2006)
  • The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2010)
  • The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson (2015)
  • The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (2016)
  • A Death in the Family by Karl Ove Knausgaard (2009), translated by Don Bartlett (2012)
  • Rapture by Carol Ann Duffy (2005)
  • Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro (2001)
  • Capital in the Twenty First Century by Thomas Piketty (2013), translated by Arthur Goldhammer (2014)
  • Normal People by Sally Rooney (2018)
  • A Visit from The Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2011)
  • The Noonday Demon by Andrew Solomon (2001)
  • Tenth of December by George Saunders (2013)
  • Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (2011), translated by Harari with John Purcell and Haim Watzman (2014)
  • Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (2013)
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night‑Time by Mark Haddon (2003)
  • The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007)
  • The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
  • The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen (2001)
  • The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert (2014)
  • Fingersmith by Sarah Waters (2002)
  • Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
  • The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (2004)
  • My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante (2011), translated by Ann Goldstein (2012)
  • Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)
  • Cloud Atlas David Mitchell (2004)
  • Autumn by Ali Smith (2016)
  • Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015)
  • The Amber Spyglasse by Philip Pullman (2000)
  • Austerlitz by WG Sebald (2001), translated by Anthea Bell (2001)
  • Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005)
  • Secondhand Time by Svetlana Alexievich (2013), translated by Bela Shayevich (2016)
  • Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2004)
  • Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009)

All in all, I have read 10 books on the list, and want to read 32 more of them. I have already bought some of those books.

We have had some site issues

As happens all too frequently, this blog has been quiet for some time – this time, however, it wasn’t (just) due to my inactivity. Last week we had some issues with the blogging network, making it hard for us bloggers to blog. It should be fixed now, so I guess I have to find a new excuse for not blogging enough.

It has been awfully quiet around here, hasn’t it?

Sorry for the lack of content, but my offline life has been busy, so I haven’t really gotten around to posting here.

This week I have just moved back to my apartment after having stayed at some friends’ place since early January. This was due to some remodeling of my apartment (a new bathroom was build, and my toilet and my kitchen was pretty much completely replaced).

During March, I did go traveling to Lisbon in Portugal for a couple of weeks. A lovely city, and well worth visiting. There are a few pictures from my trip there on my Instagram. My Instagram account mostly contains pictures from my travels and from events I go to (very few selfies and no pictures of friends as a general rule), so it makes my life seem more glamorous than it probably is.

The technologies of days past and days future

PZ has made a post about a video about Zebrafish development, which originally came out on VHS. He made a throwaway comment “If you don’t know what that is, ask your grandparents”, which got me to think about VHS tapes, and what technologies similar to those, that I have seen the rise and fall of in my lifetime.

Off-hand I can think of:

Video-media

  • Betamax
  • VHS
  • DVD (to some degree)
  • Laserdisk
  • HD-DVD

Audio-media

  • Tape (well, didn’t see the rise, just the fall)
  • Compact Discs/CDs (to some degree)
  • MiniDisk (very limited rise)
  • Digital Compact Cassette/DCC (very limited rise)
  • Digital Audio Tape/DAT (very limited rise)

LPs could probably be included in this list, though I didn’t experience their rise, and the final part of their decline seems to be stretching out.

Storage media

  • 5¼-inch Floppy Disk (well, didn’t see the rise, just the fall)
  • 3½-inch Floppy Disk
  • CD-ROM
  • CD-RW
  • DLT (very limited rise)
  • Zip drive (very limited rise)
  • DVD (as a computer media)
  • DVD-RW

Picture types

  • Slides
  • Polaroids (which has made a comeback)
  • Disposable cameras (their niche was pretty much killed by the cameras in phones)

I could continue, mentioning things like different computer types (C64, Amiga etc.), technologies (cordless phones, anyone?), file formats (remember when BMP was king?) and so on.

These lists indicate how much things have changed since in my lifetime, but they only show part of the picture. What they don’t show is how widespread many technologies have become compared to the past. Yes, I did come across 5¼-inch Floppy Disks, but they were hardly a normal household item, like e.g. USB sticks are these days.

Those of us who were born in the seventies and eighties have experienced some major changes, most notable the world wide web and the mobile phone, which has been incredible game changers, for better and worse. When I graduated high school in 1993, it was hard to imagine how the world would look 25 years later, and a lot of the work avaliable now, couldn’t be imagined back then (and a lot of the secure work back then, has since become redundant).

This is something I think is important to remember.

I think most of us groan when we see yet another article complaining about the Millennials, but it is worth remembering that these are usually written by people who haven’t kept up with the development – usually because they don’t have to, since they are secure in their debt-free houses and jobs. If their jobs suddenly becomes threatened, they are quick to blame others (e.g. Millennials, immigrants, robots), rather than facing the possibility that they have become obsolete, much like the many of the media types I mention above.

So, where am I going with this? Well, basically, I am trying to say that it is fun to try to look back and see what you have experienced, and what has changed in your lifetime, but I think it is more important to look forward, and try to keep up, and develop, along side with the technology. The type setters became obsolete, because their function were taken over by the computers – this was not something that was generally considered a possibility, until it suddenly happened (the speed was helped along by the behavior of the type setters, who by all accords were quite difficult to work with for everyone else).

In other words, it might be worth looking around at the technology you are dependent on today, and try to figure out what alternatives there are in the future, and see if you can start preparing for either the change (e.g. reading up on the new technology), or for moving elsewhere in your career (get qualifications needed for new positions). It is not easy, but unfortunately, most of us are not in positions where we have much of a choice.

New Year resolutions

Since this is the first day of the new year, it seems like an appropriate time to post my New Year resolutions – if nothing else, then because I can look at the post, and see how well I am doing.

Blog more on this blog – I would like to get into a habit of blogging more. I’d like a couple of substantial posts, and maybe a couple of filler posts, per week (on average).

Blog more on my other blog – I have a IT-related blog (Ending error-driven development), which I also want to become more active. If nothing else, I have ideas for 4-5 posts, which I think I ought to write in the next few months.

Read more books – In the pre-internet days, I used to be a book-a-day reader. Since the internet has come along, my online reading has cut into my book reading to a point where I don’t even read a book per week. I want to change this, so I read at least one book per week, and at least one non-fiction book per month.

Speak up for feminism – It is hardly a secret that women that blog and write about feminism are heavily targeted by harassment and treats. For this reason, it is important that pro-feminist men speak out, supporting these women, and help spread feminism. As part of this resolution, I also want to talk more about the (sorry) state of feminism in Denmark.

Speak out against bigotry – The successes of Brexit and Trump has shown that bigotry is alive and well in these days. Those victories have embolden the bigots, which means that those of us who fights bigotry have to stand up and be counting.

Eat more healthy –  I think this one speaks for itself.

Go to more events – I am lucky enough to live in a city where a lot of stuff is going on, and where you can go events of all types just about every day of the week. This year, I will attempt to make better use of this, and go to more events, both work-related and otherwise.

See friends more – Last year I traveled a lot and spent a lot of time moving apartments, so I didn’t get to see my friends and acquaintances as much as I would have liked. This year, I will prioritize this.