Scott McCormack Blog

Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not much of an Apple guy. Never owned an iPhone and never owned a Mac.  But I really do like the iPad. One of my curiosities – pre pandemic - was to see how light I can travel, while still being 100% productive. I guess that comes from too many business trips in the past, lugging around big heavy laptops and always hunting for an electrical outlet and a Wi-Fi connection. My laptop is far lighter these days, but an iPad is so much more convenient, as long as you can get real work done . In that blissful period between the first bout of COVID and delta variant, when we were able to move around, go to the office and visit clients – I checked an iPad out of our project stock to see if I could really use it for a full day as my work device. It is the cheapest, most basic iPad 8. Is is protected by a simple cover, no keyboard, no pencil. Because I use it mainly for work, the most frequently used apps are Teams, Outlook, ToDo etc. I rarely use an Apple...

In the first two posts about Misinformation, I suggested there are three good questions to ask when we encounter misinformation. The first two are: 1. Who created this lie? 2. What is their motivation for creating the lie? This now brings us to the third question: 3. What role do I play when I spread the lie? When you repost misinformation, you are effectively furthering the goals of the individual or group who originated the lie. In the worst case, this could be a State-backed group, with the goal of creating division and conflict within your country. So, the role you are playing is supporting a foreign entity against your country. When I put it like that, it sounds a lot like treason, doesn't it? I'm being overly provocative, but hopefully you get the point. To make a small personal effort to combat this sort of misinformation, I now call it out very directly. Some of my Facebook friends probably find it uncomfortable. Some of them might think I'm a sanctimonious jerk. Bu...

In this post, I will break down a commonly circulated piece of misinformation, to demonstrate one of the common structures for how misinformation is designed.  Here's the story – In one school district in Western Australia (or in Germany, or some other country), the Muslim parents of a small number of children are demanding schools change the lunch menu to offer only halal food. The school district is predominantly white and non-Muslim, but this minority is forcing its religious practices on the entire community.  Every time this story surfaces, it is very quickly knocked down as being untrue. Usually by the very school district that is named. Many times, there are no Muslims in the school district and there is no lunch program in place!  Writers from Shakespeare to Hollywood have followed common plot structures. The misinformation industry is no different. Here is how it works –  There is a group of bad people, who don't share our values (in this case Muslims) They ...

I plan to write a short series on “misinformation”, because I believe it is one of the major challenges we now face as a society. And I also believe that as individuals there are practical steps we can take to combat it. In this first post, I want to focus attention on where misinformation comes from. I rarely hear anyone ask the questions: Who wrote this lie? What was their motivation? Let’s start with some definitions, to be clear what we are talking about. The terms “misinformation” and “disinformation” tend to be used interchangeably. Misinformation is false information spread either knowingly or unknowingly . Disinformation is false information, spread with the knowledge it is false.   I will use the term “misinformation” because most people I see reposting false information are not aware it is false. They are not the original creators of the misinformation.   In most cases, two minutes of online research would have confirmed the information was false, and there a...

The “hobby” I spend the most time on is learning the Thai language. I have plenty of motivation: my wife is Thai; we have chosen to settle in Bangkok as our long-term home; my in-laws are Thai; most of my work colleagues and clients are Thai. My goal is to be able to converse like a native speaker. Will I ever achieve that? Who knows. But I will keep trying. In this post, I would like to highlight the learning method I have been using since the start of the pandemic. I think it might be useful for others, in their language learning endeavours. First, a little background on my time learning the language. I was first assigned to work in Bangkok about 18 years ago, for three years. At that time I has a weekly session with a tutor, and gained a basic level of speaking proficiency. I did not learn to read and write Thai at that time. That basic level of capability stayed with me, more or less, until we moved back to Bangkok in 2019. I then started sessions again with a tutor, with...