Nikon leaving the dSLR business

In a surprising if not shocking move, Nikon has announced that they will stop making new digital single lens reflex (dSLR) cameras. It’s shocking to me because ever since digital cameras have existed, Nikon dSLRs have been considered among the best by professional photographers. They’re even used on the International Space Station, where shipping anything up from Earth is so costly that there’s no reason to send anything but the best, not to mention how great photos have always been a key means of outreach for the space program.

COVID-19 in summer 2022

Despite what you might think based on the behaviour of governments and many Ontario residents, the COVID pandemic continues: ‘It’s the real deal’: Doctors warn about future wave fuelled by Omicron variants.

I am continuing much as I have for the last two years: mostly going out only for groceries and exercise walks, avoiding group events and wearing a mask when I do attend, and generally not trying to get sick at a time when illness could interrupt my dissertation completion and wedding travel plans, not to mention threaten vulnerable family members in August.

My advice: get vaccinated, keep masking, and ignore the pushy folks who will try to bully you into taking fewer precautions because they don’t want to follow them.

Readers creating writers

Readers expect to be argued with, and persuaded by. They don’t want to be told, repeatedly, what they already know, and they’re rarely tolerant of being lectured at. Writing happens among; writing is an exchange.

I’ll go further with this point, so bear with me. Readers aren’t just people out there who buy, borrow, or download your written words. Readers engage with texts, giving them a life those texts otherwise lack. Readers, we might even say, create writers. They do this by creating the books that writers make, sort of the way a musician creates a piece of music by playing the notes the composer has set down on paper.

Germano, William. On Revision: The Only Writing That Counts. University of Chicago Press, 2021. p. 30 (italics in original)