What’s So Funny?

In 1990, during a performance of my stage play, I kept focusing myself on one particular member of the audience. While everybody else laughed, there she sat, staring at the floor, with her fingers in her ears. I’ll never forget her look of discomfort. That woman was my mother. I wish I could say her reaction that evening was an incident, but it was one of many I remember when I was first starting out as a playwright.

Although I’d established myself as a humourist, my mother never found me or my work particularly funny. We loved each other deeply, of course, but she was my hardest critic. “Is Drew really that funny?” she’d ask family members. To make matters worse, the feeling was mutual (相互的): though our social circle swore that she was funny, I never saw it. How could she be funny? My mother was supposedly very funny in her first language, Anishinaabemowin, but I didn’t speak it. One of the characteristics of the language is that it is structured for maximum amusement.

For a while I was convinced I would never make her laugh. Then, in 2005, I succeeded. I had published a book called, Me Funny. In it were dozens of essays deconstructing (解构) the humour in Anishinaabemowin. They cracked her up so much that she looked at me and declared, “Wow, that was funny!” I remember being relieved and very pleased.

In 2009, my mother passed away. I was in charge of planning the funeral along with two cousins. Because my mother was a shy woman, I can guarantee she would have found our group effort quite embarrassing. During the funeral, amidst the tears, family member after family member got up and recounted things she had done and said over the years. To my surprise, I found myself laughing. More and more stories about her surfaced. We laughed as we remembered her.

I couldn’t see my mother’s forest for my own trees. I wish I could have shared those laughs with her while she was alive, but I’m glad I finally made the connection.

Molly Boylan is one of the most successful business women in Canada after setting up her cosmetic (化妆品)company Blazes in 1992.Though she is very successful,she says that she finds it harder every year in balancing her business with her family life.She sometimes feels that her two children know more about their baby-sitter than about her.

Molly employs around eighty people in her factory and warehouse,and ten others in her two new fashion stores,but her newest employee is the most important one for her.After years of worrying about her business more than her family,she has decided to make Sally Pamonte new general manager in her company.Molly will still be involved in decision-making,and she’s going to stay in touch with the people who work for her,but Sally is going to look after day-to-day running of the business so that Molly can spend more time with the kids.

The new arrangement (安排)is going to start on Monday,and both of them are already excited about it.Sally says,“I’m very nervous,actually,but I’m sure Molly will help me a lot in the early days,even though I hope she feels she can trust me not to make too many mistakes.”

Molly,on the other hand,seems quite relaxed about the whole thing.“I know that Sally’s going to be a very nice manager.” she says,“She’s only been here a couple of days and she’s already shown me how to work out a few problems.The best thing though is that I feel a hundred times happier than I’ve been in years.I mean,I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt as relaxed as this,and my kids are really excited about my being at home more.To be honest,I wish I had made this decision years ago.”

Snapchat is rolling out parental controls that allow parents to see their teenager’s contacts and report to the social media company — without their child’s knowledge — any accounts that may worry them.

The goal, executives say, is to enable parents to monitor their child’s connections without giving up teens’ autonomy (自主性). Named Family Center, the new suite of tools released Tuesday requires both caregiver and teen to be involved in.

“It allows parents to see who’s in their teen’s universe,” said Nona Farahnik, director of platform policy for Snap, the company that makes Snapchat. “It offers parents the ability to ask who someone might be, how they might know a contact, which improves those real-time conversations about who teens are talking to.”

Farahnik says Family Center is modeled on real-life parenting. “If your teen is headed to the mall, you might ask who they’re going with. ‘How do you know them? Are you guys on a sports team together? Do you go to school together?’” said Farahnik. “But you won’t be sitting there at the mall with them listening to their conversations.” Similarly, parents cannot see the content that their teen is sending or receiving on Snapchat. They can only view whom their child has communicated with in the past seven days. Snapchat is popular with young people, partially because messages on the platform disappear within 24 hours.

The company says it consulted with safety experts and academics and conducted focus groups with parents to develop Family Center and it plans to roll out more features in the coming months. The tool is only for parents of kids under 18.

With Family Center, Snap follows other social media platforms, including Instagram, which recently have advanced parental controls. By at least one survey, Snapchat is the second-most popular social network among teens. The first, TikTok, offers “Family Sharing,” which gives parents a few ways to limit the videos shown to their kids.

“I think these platforms want to show that they can take steps to protect kids, that they can self-regulate and that they’re capable of doing it themselves without getting the government involved,” said Irene Ly, policy counsel for Common Sense Media, which reviews apps, games and media for families.