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5 min read 52

UofWinds 402, Week 52 2024: Toronto Event Generator, How We Communicate Will Decide Whether... They Own Us, Why Did Tens of Thousands of Chinese Students Go on Night Bike Rides?


Good morning. After spending Christmas with my parents, my family and I have returned home to spend the rest of the year engaging in various forms of rest and restoration, alone, together, and with friends. One Yuletide tradition that I keep is that I start this break by spending hours only working on a time-consuming puzzle while listening to podcasts or music. This year, I'm going to add the creation of one LEGO portrait before I will allow myself to start getting ready for 2025.

I have already done some reflection on the past year as I was prompted by my sister to do so before Christmas. My sibling and I trade New Year's resolutions which I love to do even though I fail at most of them (not a joke: this year I was 8/26). I am unbothered by this poor rate of return because many of the items on my list are meant to be aspirational. For example, for 2025 I listed a set of places in Detroit that I am still meaning to visit.

Because I don't have link tracking turned on, I have no idea which of the 600 links that I've shared over the past year were of greatest interest to you. I did consider sharing my top 10 items from the past year as a little self-aware portrait of myself in this moment, but 600 links is just too many to review at a time. I think it's best to get to the sharing of favourites of what I've discovered and learned over the last fortnight.

Toronto Event Generator


Because I review all of my past new year's resolutions from the past five years or so, I have learned to be more forgiving of myself when I don't make a resolution within 12 months because sometimes it takes a couple of years for me to manage tackling something that requires resolution. (This year I finally solved a Saturday NYT Crossword on my own and learned how to solve a Rubik's Cube). Also I have learned that sometimes, when a resolution has been ignored for over five years, it's time to retire it.

One new year's resolution that I have officially retired is to make a map of the lesser-known meeting spaces to rent in my city so people can more easily find affordable places to host community meetups or gatherings. I believe that my city very much needs such a map and I know how to make such a map, but I no longer spend my time doing event-planning. On the other hand, if this map is not created and maintained by someone like myself, who should be responsible for making this kind of catalyst for community engagement?

Who else could be inspired by Misha Glouberman's Toronto Event Generator?

I’m Misha Glouberman. Toronto event generator is a project I started with a few friends to make Toronto more fun. I am mostly trying to make Toronto more fun for me. It may also end up being more fun for you, to the extent that your idea if fun is like mine.

Toronto event generator does this:
- We provide microgrants to support cool events
- We help match up events with venues and volunteer help
- We run a newsletter to help promote events, and foster an events scene
- Offer mentorship and support to people hoping to learn how to run events

Events as places to meet interesting people
I’m especially interested in events that function as a magnet for smart people who are interested in ideas and in feelings, are high in openness to experience and curiosity, and who are high-agency and up for some social risk-taking. I’m interested in events where people can find connection and make friends.

How We Communicate Will Decide Whether... They Own Us


One podcast episode that I enjoyed while working on my Winterval puzzle was this re-broadcast from The Ezra Klein show from 2022 with the somewhat breathless title, How We Communicate Will Decide Whether Democracy Lives or Dies 🎁. The degree by which you believe that the headline is hyperbolic is not a bad litmus test for learning what you believe is happening to literacy in this moment, why that might be, and what you think might be at stake. I think you will find this a good episode no matter which side of the spectrum of opinion that might you find yourself on.

At the very heart of democracy is a contradiction that cannot be resolved, one that has affected free societies from ancient Greece to contemporary America,” write Zac Gershberg and Sean Illing in their new book, “The Paradox of Democracy.” In order to live up to its name, democracy must be open to free communication and expression; yet that very feature opens democracies up to the forces of chaos, fragmentation and demagoguery that undermine them. Historically, this paradox becomes particularly profound during transitions between different communication technologies. “We see this time and again,” Gershberg and Illing write, “media continually evolve faster than politics, resulting in recurring patterns of democratic instability.”

I thought of this episode as I watched this 45 minute video essay entitled, Can We Solve Canada's Monopoly Problem? that I learned from Vass Bednar. In the video, Aaron does his best to provide some policy reasons why Canada suffers from so many commercial oligopolies.

Aaron, in his introduction, tells us that actual monopolies are actually very rare but he can't call the video "Canada's Oligopoly Problem" because he needs to reach beyond the nerdiest nerds. Aaron's channel is a great example of the lessons that Neil Postman gave us about Sesame Street (which is discussed in Ezra Klein's interview): TV and video must be entertaining to watch first and educational second. This is why Aaron peppers his essay with regular cuts to visual gags and Simpsons references.

If you start the video and find that the constant cuts annoy you, I would suggest jumping ahead to at least watch this short bit about Canadian Tire because after watching this segment, I realized how badly I misunderstood this bank that gives you credit levels based on what you have previously purchased.

Why Did Tens of Thousands of Chinese Students Go on Night Bike Rides?


This is the energy that I want to bring into 2025 (minus the appeasements to the nation-state): Why Did Tens of Thousands of Chinese Students Go on Night Bike Rides? 🎁

The students would emerge on their bikes, in the tens of thousands, seemingly out of nowhere. Like a flash mob on wheels, they rode for hours in the night, by the light of streetlamps, sometimes bursting into verses of the Chinese national anthem. Some carried Chinese flags.

They were making the 40-mile journey from the Chinese city of Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan Province, to the neighboring city of Kaifeng, a cycling trip that can take up to five hours one-way. Why? For the sake of it.

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