The card paradox

Years ago in high school I read about a possibly apocryphal university professor who had lost his mind thinking about a puzzle written on two sides of a piece of paper. The card paradox. Turning it over in my mind, I recently realized I could have saved him.

When I was in high school years ago I read about a university professor had gone insane thinking about a puzzle.

Front: The sentence on the other side of this card is True.
Back: The sentence on the other side of this card is False.

It's stuck around in the background over the…

— argc (@tookalito) September 9, 2025

Kate and Allie and Ted

There was a discussion about plumbers lately. Years ago a TV show called Kate & Allie had a plumber named Ted as a secondary character. A Kate & Allie reboot with a more prominent Ted could interesting

There has been some discourse about plumbers lately.

I can only think about one time a plumber was portrayed as a character on a tv show. Ironically it was the feminist show Kate & Allie which had Ted as a secondary cast member. Ted was a plumber and somewhat ambiguous love…

— argc (@tookalito) September 3, 2025

two work from home jobs at the same time

My work at this time is "hybrid". It's primarily work from home. Going to the office is generally optional. Sometimes there's some kind of special event and everyone is expected to be on site in person. Some members of my team are not in the city where the office is. They would have to travel to appear in person at the office. For myself I live nearby and I try to go to the office at least once a week.

There is some anecdotal and other stories about people who simultaneously work two or more WFH jobs at the same time, each employer unknown to the other. While I don't recommend this and I don't do it myself, it is possible and has been done with some levels of success. Of course the most successful at it are the ones where it is never found out, never disclosed. The stories that come out are those that sooner or later got caught. Some thoughts on how to manage it occurred to me

the mouse mover is also a part of having two work from home jobs at the same time.

I got thinking of what it would take to have two wfh jobs at once. 80 hours pay in an exchange for about 35-50 hours of work a week.

— argc (@tookalito) August 30, 2024

now ads free

If there were still any regulars they would have noticed that the ads are no more on this site. The blog loads faster now.

After a long run of nearly 20 years I disconnected from Google AdSense. There was enough in there for a modest cashout. There was no realistic path to the required AdSense cashout level so I just closed the account to get what was in there and call it good.

The original dream from 2005 was to hopefully pull maybe $30 a month blogging for dollars. That dollar a day dream never materialized. Back then 30 a month would have been material. See debt. Today I'd rather have an extra 30 than lose 30 at the end of each month but as of this moment I'm fortunate it doesn't make much difference one way or the other.

Onward and upwards. There were a few regulars for a few years. The site never generated much search engine traffic for whatever reason. Blogging had a good heyday. Blogs were a bit sadly kind of displaced by social media Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. This site will live on demonetized.

Working on Sunday

My dishwasher hasn't been working well lately. A busy repairman said he was fine to come by on a Sunday to look at it. Usually I try to take it easy on Sundays and avoid work. He had a bit of a point that it was him doing the work

The dishwasher has been on the fritz at my townhouse. I rent, the landlord is pretty good. She got her repairman Johnny in touch with us.

We went through his checklist. Check the spinner arm works and isn't clogged. Run hot water before and during. Fill the rinse aide. Tried…

— argc (@tookalito) February 1, 2024

survivors bias and nervous breakdown

I grew up believing that nervous breakdown was very rare, and being on the verge of a nervous breakdown was somewhat common. Years later I wonder if nervous breakdown was more frequent than I believed.

When I was young going to church they sometimes did this thing called testimony. In testimony people in the congregation could stand up and talk for a short time about their experience with God in their lives.

A theme I noticed back then was some would describe some difficult…

— argc (@tookalito) January 12, 2024

The Russian front

There was an interview on CTV News a couple of days ago. The talking head felt that if Russia won in Ukraine, then this was just the first phase in an eventual Russian invasion of Western Europe. The Ukrainian supporter theory was that the West should thus bring greatest effort to the Ukraine conflict. I thought about this a bit and what the West perhaps should do at this point at the end of 2023 and into the beginning of 2024

if the West is to fight Russia, as Ukraine supporters claim it will have to. if Russia indeed plans to conquer Ukraine and then continue into Western Europe. what is the best strategy. if this is inevitable

it seems logical to figure out where and when the fight should be in…

— argc (@tookalito) January 1, 2024

themes for 2024

I didn't set out to write an end of 2023, New Year resolutions for 2024 post. It just kind of came to me early on Christmas morning.

I awoke at 4:26 on Christmas morning. I’m older now, was in bed before 10 on Christmas Eve.

Too early to be up. Nothing to do but lay there. During that time between awake and asleep some thoughts crossed my mind. Eventually I drifted back to sleep. When I awoke Christmas Day… pic.twitter.com/ZY3PM02oXD

— argc (@tookalito) December 27, 2023

returning to work after being retired

Lately out and about I've noticed older workers in the stores and restaurants. I wonder if they are previously retired and now have to return to the workforce in their sixties for financial reasons

in the last few months I’ve noticed more older people, well into their sixties, working at retail and restaurants.

mostly older women and some older men. perhaps sign of these times people having to come out of retirement to make ends meet

— argc (@tookalito) December 22, 2023

decomposing a cube into a tetrahedron

starting with a close to square kleenex box I created a tetrahedron by successively removing corners, vertices in geometry terms, to come to a tetrahedron

I made a tetrahedron by removing corners from a cube pic.twitter.com/IEcmfL1WsP

— argc (@tookalito) November 23, 2023

I'm experimenting with posting content on Twitter, with a link from here. Will see how it goes.

CanaGold

continuing this exciting series on crypto and pegged tokens in Canada. in my last post I sketched an outline for CanaCoin, a Canadian dollar (CDN) crypto pegged token.

it occurred to me since thinking about currencies and pegged tokens. how about the "ultimate currency", the one still standing after all these centuries, gold. unlike CDN, which may be more niche, gold or a "gold crypto coin" is likely more developed in the crypto thought space. gold, like US money (USD), and crude oil is of course global. everyone knows about it and has to care about it. search around and some such products may well already exist.

gold is the gold standard, heh. now gold is a bit different than USD or CDN. it is typically valued not in its own unit. so 1 USD = 1 USD, and 1 CDN = 1 CDN (kind of a tautology, but I hope you get the point). gold is generally expressed as its value in USD, as opposed to its value in, well gold. 

then the Canadian or US dollar is backed by gold. again this is a bit of the specialness, the uniqueness, the mystique about gold. typically people don't talk about using gold to buy something, or trading say land or valuable hockey cards for gold.

so CanaGold then is a pegged crypto token valued at 1 oz of gold.

how to get the gold to back CanaGold

unlike CanaCoin, users probably wouldn't be expected to send gold, or acceptable gold certificates. with CanaCoin you send 50 CDN and get 50 CanaCoin tokens. CanaGold I'd think the user would have to send enough CDN to purchase on market an ounce of gold to back the minting of a CanaGold coin. see the CanaCoin post for kyc, auditing and all those fun administrative details.

at TD Wealth Precious Metals I saw a link go by where they can get gold for clients. They offer both certificates, as well as secure storage, and the real physical bullion. CanaGold would want the certificates. Setting up and operating a secure facility to manage physical gold like Barclays or TD Wealth would be cost prohibitive. CanaGold is looking like a premium high end service but managing physical gold would be too hard and costly. 

I'm not personally a client of TD Wealth at this time. Just showing it as an example where it should be possible to acquire gold. A CanaGold authority would have to get a real gold provider for bona fide gold certificates. One option I guess would be for the client provides the gold certificate for the CanaGold, instead of CDN to purchase gold. That sounds hard and I'm not sure CanaGold authority would want that, to be receiving gold certs.

the cashout issue

So redemption is a bit trickier with gold. A $1 Canadian Tire money issued in 1995 is still worth $1 today at Canadian Tire. Same as a Canadian $1 loonie minted in 1999 still buys $1 of candy at a corner store today. Maybe not as much as you could have purchased in 1999, but still $1 worth. 

The token redemption would be onto gold, as that is what the token is pegged to. One option would be to send the gold certificate as the redemption. Client now owns gold. Another option would be the gold certificate is sold to some kind of gold market provider, the same one the gold was purchased from in the first place, and proceeds sent to the redemption client. 

In a way sell at market makes sense as it as CDN into gold at the creation of the CanaCoin, then gold to CDN on the way out. What must be avoided is CanaGold assuming any kind of risk or exposure to changes in the price of 1 oz of gold in CDN. All risk for the price of gold in CDN going up or down has to be assumed by the client for better or for worse. 

So if client spends $1000 CDN for 1 CanaGold token, price of gold declines to $900. at cashout, client loses $100. So the peg is to gold, not to CDN. I guess if the client wants a CDN peg then use CanaCoin. For a USD pegged token use some USD product. So just saying, it's a bit different than a peg to currency.

again like CanaCoin, the product CanaGold does not exist at the time of this writing. this crypto series has been an interesting exercise for me to organize some ideas around it. I've covered a few concepts and some of the challenges around bridging between the digital crypto world and the more conventional real world wealth.

CanaCoin

Follow on from my last post about pegged crypto tokens. I was thinking about pegged crypto tokens and the Canadian dollar (CDN)

Offhand I can't name any or any prominent CDN tokens. I thought it might be fun or interesting to think about how to define a CDN pegged token. That is, a crypto coin whose value is pegged to the Canadian dollar. I came up with a name anyway, CanaCoin.

So to be pegged, each CanaCoin is backed by one real-world Canadian dollar. I'm thinking some kind of database of guid or whatever, one for each CanCoin. Each CanaCoin may have some kind of digital signature or something establishing who owns it. Technical details are still sketchy. I would say as it stands it would be based on trusted and centralized authority, the CanaCoin issuer. So not anything as sophisticated as trustless or decentralized like Bitcoin.

A user in Canada could send an Interac e-transfer of the amount of CanaCoin to purchase. So would be using Interac to serve as the know your customer (KYC) requirement. CanaCoin authority would still need to find some kind of bank and financial institution with Canadian money to hold the backing money side.

So Interac e-transfer $50 and be issued 50 CanaCoin tokens. On the redemption side redeem 50 CanaCoin and get back Interac e-transfer $50. The CanaCoin authority accepts CanaCoin at $1 CDN.

While the CanaCoin tokens are issued. How to manage the backing money. Something like 50% in plain bank account (immediate access to settle cashouts), 25% maybe in money market (can be accessed in about one week), 25% maybe in max 3 month Canada savings bonds, Canada government or government backed. (can be accessed in max 3 months). So in event of a mass cashout, then make it clear that in an extreme situation some fraction cashouts may take up to three months. The money behind the tokens is safe, it's there. These accounts should generate a bit of interest which could help offset the operating costs of running CanaCoin. Other funding options might include say a modest annual custodial fee on the coins. Would have to think about that. The idea would be a minimal bare bones, part-time operation.

To keep the money safe, could bring in regular proper auditors. They would verify that the coins in the database are backed 1:1 by the money in the accounts. Perhaps verify that the liquidity of 50% immediate is adhered to, and that the money is in what is considered effectively minimum/no risk holdings.

I haven't quite thought through how CanaCoins could be listed on crypto exchanges, or how the digital signatures of ownership might change hands after purchase, without having to redeem the coins at the CanaCoin authority. I mentioned KYC above, along with third party auditing the reserves, which indicates I'm at least aware of the concept of regulatory.

Now CanaCoin doesn't exist at the time of this writing. This is all just conjecture and speculation at this point, a thought exercise.

pegged crypto tokens in Canada

 Lately with FTX and everything I got thinking about crpyto a bit more.

One subject of interest was pegged coins. Where some crpyto object value is kept in sync with some other currency such as the US dollar (USD). With Canada and pegged tokens there was an interesting tweet

Canada’s original pegged token #Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/LJZVJkIdTO

— argc (@tookalito) January 31, 2023

ah yes Canadian Tire money. The original pegged token. A $1 of Canadian Tire money earned in 1990 is still worth $1 today toward merchandise purchased at Canadian Tire.

I remember back when there were newspapers that people read. There was something of a market in Canadian tire money. Around 75 cents on the dollar as I recall. So someone would post a classified ad offering to sell or buy $100 of Canadian Tire money for $75.

How does this relate to crypto today. I wasn't sure what the point was of pegged tokens in crypto. After all if I wanted to own USD I can just get USD at any bank. Why use a crypto representation of USD. 

Then it occurred to me that the tokens can act as a kind of bridge between conventional real world money and the new digital crypto currencies. So you can "convert" your crypto coins into or out of conventional money without necessarily selling them and having to "leave" crypto. There becomes a path where I can keep some of my money in crypto, in a way that holds its value relative to the real reference currency, the USD say. avoiding the volatility of Bitcoin

Plus with the stable pegged token it gives a way to value other crypto coins or assets such as Bitcoin, dogecoin, NFT, etc. against a digital reference currency with predictable value (at least in terms of its value in USD). thinking about it a bit more, it's almost a medium of exchange say to sell litecoin, and buy bitcoin for example.

This post has run a bit longer than I expected. I was going to get into CanaCoin and CanaGold but that will now be in later posts in this series.

hello 2023

It's 2023 now. Into February at this point. Still standing somehow. Still posting here, occasionally anyway. 

I posted more in the past. There were more readers too. The post count in the archive in the bottom right on this page shows a definite trend. I may have just covered most of the ground and that was that. It seems blogging is less over the years and twitter is more. A twitter tendency to be brief, compact, and to the point is not necessarily bad. Still I've got some ideas for stuff to post I should get to it.

Coming up on 3 years ago now. We were sent to work from home on a Friday in March 2020. Then it was three weeks. Now three years on of 15 days to flatten the curve. 

The office has reopened a few months ago. Anyone who wants to can book online and sit in the same cubicle five days a week. Free coffee can be found again. The times I've been in it has been kind of sparse. Cavernous and quiet. Definitely not the same feeling. We're moving to a newer, smaller, nicer, office in the next few months. Maybe that will help.

Yep things were never the same after 15 days to flatten the curve in 2020. Not the same in a worse way.

Things weren't the same after 9/11.

Things weren't the same after the financial crisis of 2008.

So it is. Darn. Still we carry on. Well into middle age. Trying to find the right path somewhere between acceptance and objection. I have work and a place and no debt so there's that. 

I didn't make any resolutions coming into 2023. I haven't made a resolution quite a while. In 2022 I was able to finally complete a matter that had been a burden for a number of years. There's always the saying that you can make positive change anytime, don't have to wait for January.

a progression in spending

this is how government spending, and the financing of government spending, has progressed in the last few decades. these the first decades of the post WWII welfare state

1960s: tax and spend
new and higher taxes normalized to pay for major social programs

1970s-1990s: tax and borrow and spend
deficits normalized. government spending surpasses taxes collected. public debt rapidly increases at all levels

2000s-today: tax and borrow and print and spend
printing becomes normalized. spending outstrips taxation and borrowing capacity. a new term quantitative easing appears. fifteen years after the financial crisis of 2007-2008 there is still temporary printing aka quantitative easing. the appearance of Covid-19 provides cover for more extraordinary measures

the concept of a structural deficit is introduced. units of discussion switch from billion to trillion

an interesting idea for the baseball strike zone

Sometimes when flipping channels I'll stop on a major league baseball game and watch a few batters or a half inning. I used to watch a lot of baseball when I was young. Not so much the last few decades. If the Blue Jays have a good team in the playoffs I might watch a game if I remember when it's on.

So I'm randomly watching this game with the terrible California Angels. The announcers to fill time in this game between bad teams. They mention in their random banter this idea being kicked around baseball executives.

The idea is to make the strike zone both lower and wider.

I hear this and it's like aha! that would work. This change would simultaneously accomplish the following

• reduce walks
  
• reduce strikeouts
• reduce home runs

Baseball would immediately benefit from this change. They should make it. The number of at-bats resulting in some kind of ball-in-play has been in decline for decades now.

The analytics guys are geniuses. But the problem is that they "solved" baseball. Through intense and computer-assisted analysis they found "flaws" in the design of baseball rules. This led to overemphasis on walks and home runs as the optimal offense strategy.

The simple change in the strike zone would (for a while anyway) defeat or at least set back the analytics wonks.

With more batters putting the ball in play, then defense and baserunning becomes more important again. Walks, strikeouts, and home runs will still be an integral part of baseball, as they have been since the start in the nineteenth century, but just not quite as much. I hope MLB makes this change.

Australia central bank is insolvent

Surprisingly little coverage of recent financial news out of Australia. The Australia central bank has technically failed.

Australia's Central Bank Says It Is Bust

Australia’s central bank has equity wiped out 

Reserve Bank of Australia reports loss of $37bn 

hmmm. so the lender of last resort is itself insolvent. what to make of all this.

ah no worries mate we're assured

• bank of Australia losses are apparently backed by the people of Australia
• the bank of Australia is apparently free to just print money to meet its obligations
• if they hold the bonds to maturity, as they say they intend to, and the borrowers make good (by rolling over into newly printed bonds on payment day no doubt), then it's just an unrealized accounting loss
  

I'm sure the taxpayers of Australia will be thrilled to hear that first point.

For the second point, I'm shocked at such a flip attitude toward printing money. For years we've been assured by such as the Bank of Canada that there's no printing to see here. The money is all "backed" by gold or "other" assets AAA bonds (i.e. the money is backed by itself, money). But now all of that is weakened, thrown into some doubt.

could uncertainty increase the effectiveness of icing the kicker

I remember when I stated watching football decades ago now, in the early 1980s. There was this novel strategy that coaches used when the opponent was facing a late and crucial field goal attempt.

The coach would call a timeout before the opponent could kick. This strategy is known as "icing the kicker". The timeout is supposed to disrupt the kickers preparation routine, and make the kicker spend more time thinking about the critical kick he has to make. The idea is that the kickers will miss more of these kicks as a result of the timeout.

Now over the decades, I've never seen a coach fail to use the timeout to try to ice the kicker. So what does this mean from the kicker's perspective as he sets up and mentally prepares for the kick. Well he knows for certain that if the other coach still has a timeout, then the coach will call the timeout. 

So at this point the timeout has been internalized and incorporated into the preparation for the kick. The kicker, along with everyone, knows it is going to be called. So I believe icing now has little effect in reducing the success rate of these kicks.

So the alternate strategy I'm suggesting. Some of the time, maybe 25% say, on a random basis that only the coach knows, don't call the timeout. This will introduce uncertainty into the kickers mental preparation and kick routine. He doesn't know for sure now if he really has to kick, or if timeout will be called before the snap. 

I believe that the strategy of usually calling timeout to ice the kicker, combined with the uncertainty and unpredictability of sometimes not calling the timeout and just making him kick without delay, will result in overall lower success rate; than the current strategy which is to always call time.

mathematical strategies to increase vaccination rates

Lately the focus in public health has been getting people to get a vaccine for Covid-19. There's been advertising around it. Also an incentive game of "if this percentage, 70,80, etc. gets vaccinated by this date, then some of these restrictions might be considered to be lifted". Which is also pressure and punishment if the goal is failed to be reached, to identify and deal with the wreckers.

I got thinking about ways to increase the vaccinated rates for a population. Two basic tactics come to mind. Somehow persuade the unvaccinated holdouts to get a vaccine. Or remove the unvaccinated. I thought about it purely from which approach is mathematically more effective at increasing overall vaccination rates.

At first I thought this might be a hard to describe mathematically or set up an equation. However after a bit I realized if you describe the groups the right way, then it is easy to understand and the more effective strategy is clear.

So assume you have some kind of population, P. Within this population are vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. So the starting percentage S, is more than 0 and less than 100 percent.

The trick is to treat a target group of unvaccinated as "outside" the main population. Then apply each strategy and determine the effect.

With the conversion strategy, people in the outside target group choose to get vaccinated. In this case a subgroup of 100% vaccinated is added to the initial population P, which is under 100%. it should be clear that adding a 100% vaccinated group to P will increase the overall vaccinated rate of the combined group from S to a bit higher than S.

Now with the removal strategy, then the holdouts are just somehow removed, eliminated. In this case P is the same, and S is also the same. So the overall vaccinated percentage does not increase when the groups are set up this way.

So it is then mathematically clear that motivating holdouts to get vaccinated is a more efficient way to increase the overall vaccinated percentage than, ahem, removing the holdouts.

--

An example will demonstrate. This could actually be used as a junior high or high school math question on fractions, setting up a model, and reasoning.

Suppose there is a group of 10 people and 6 are vaccinated. Is it more effective to cast a holdout from the group, or to convince a holdout to get a vaccine. Which would be more effective to increase the overall vaccinated percentage.

In this case we would treat P as 9, with 6 vaccinated. So the starting point S is 6 of 9 vaccinated, or 67%

If you add a vaccinated to P then it becomes

6 of 9 + 1 of 1 = 7 of 10 = 70%

if you remove a holdout then it just remains as P

6 of 9 = 67%

--

So it should be clear that converting holdouts to get vaccinated is a more effective strategy than removing them to increase the overall population vaccination percentage.

how to fix Sonicare iPhone disconnect

I got a Philips Sonicare toothbrush last Christmas. I'd been with Oral-B before that. I'm glad I switched to Sonicare and I consider it a better product.

One thing Sonicare does that takes some getting used to is the smartphone app with the toothbrush. I wasn't used to turning on my iPhone and clicking on an app to brush my teeth - I still only use the phone at night. Still the app is handy and pretty well designed.

One problem I've noticed is that on iPhone at least, the Sonicare app can become "disconnected" from the toothbrush. This has happened twice in the three months I've been using it. When the problem occurs the app does not detect that the brush is turned on. Clicking retry or troubleshoot from the Sonicare app did not seem to help.

The solution is this for iPhone

go to Settings

select Bluetooth

cycle Bluetooth off, then back on

under My devices, for the Philips Sonicare device, click the information icon at the right

click Forget This Device

 

with the Sonicare toothbrush turned on, off the charger, and nearby, iPhone Bluetooth should then show it as an available device. click to pair with the Sonicare device and the Bluetooth connection should be good again for a few weeks. 

if it loses the connection again in a few weeks or so just repeat this process of forget device / re-pair and it should fix it

Philips Sonicare toothbrush