Rob Cottingham

Every second ad in my Facebook stream for the past three years.

"Okay, team, gather round. As you know, nothing in this organization is more important than the health and well-being of the people who work here, okay? Which is why management has decided to launch a new Wellness Portal, going live in three weeks. It’s an ambitious deadline, but that only shows how much we care.

Of course, as the development team, we have to build it. And meeting that deadline will mean all hands on deck, so effective immediately, vacations and days off are canceled. Expect to be in here weekends and stat holidays, too."

"A lot of us want to feel that this planet is tangibly improved in some small way for our having been in it. But not all of us. Maybe that’s why companies like Purdue Pharma, Philip Morris and Palantir exist: so that people who are comfortable making the world a vastly more awful place can find meaning too."

In solidarity with everyone who's locked in the embrace of an overly amorous polar vortex at the moment, I'm thawing Noise to Signal out of its deep freeze for a cartoon or two. We’ll see how things go.