I avoid Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and most other social media. I still used LinkedIn more than weekly. Still, I had come to think of it as a place of spam. I don’t know what it’s like for you, but as best I can tell, the words “coach” or “author” seem to invite people I’ve never heard of to promote “quality leads,” book promotion services, and so on. I wondered if[…] Keep reading →

This nation’s government says it’s just only if based on the consent of the governed. Consider Cancer Alley. Nobody consents to being given cancer. Nobody consents to being born with a birth defect. Yet Cancer Alley and other sacrifice zones are growing. I don’t deny that people can benefit from perks that come from activities that pollute and deplete, but as long as they pollute and deplete, they violate what[…] Keep reading →

What does it mean to own something physical, like a book or a plot of land? I grew up knowing people owned things. I owned my shoes. My parents owned their houses. Nobody owned the sky. I had a vague sense that Native Americans found colonists weird for claiming to own land. Other cultures didn’t share the sense of ownership my culture did. People seemed to think their system was[…] Keep reading →

This week I finished: Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho: I had heard people and critics liked this movie. I hadn’t heard much detail about it. The title didn’t sound appealing. While watching it, I didn’t find it credible. Too many suspensions of disbelief caused me to pop out of being lost in the story to saying, “Okay, that part wasn’t believable, but let’s imagine it was and go with it”[…] Keep reading →

When we say someone has a right to something like life, liberty, property, free speech, the pursuit of happiness, and so on, what does “having a right” mean? I grew up thinking the phrase implied something about the person or reality. On the contrary, as best I can tell, it says something about government. I can talk without the “right” to speak. Having the right means that if someone tries[…] Keep reading →

Emissions of greenhouse gases are measured and reported as major indications of environmental problems. Emissions aren’t the relevant measure. They distract us from what is relevant to human well-being. They lead people to say, “I exhale and poop. Life requires pollution,” and conclude action won’t work. To be more precise, they feel like they conclude, they actually just rationalize and justify the preconception they wanted. They miss that fossil fuels’[…] Keep reading →

I thought we’d have another day or two hitting 90 F (32 C), but the forecast for the next ten days shows the highest temperature will be 86 F, so I figure it won’t hit 90 again this year. I didn’t use air conditioning in my apartment for another summer. A few nights I woke up sweating in the middle of the night. I didn’t write the number down, but[…] Keep reading →

People ask what the effects of artificial intelligence will be. In most of the talk I come across, people tend to ask what AI will do for them. Will using it help them? Will others using it lead them to miss out? Sometimes they wonder if it will help them directly, as opposed to helping them do their jobs. They wonder if it help them in their loneliness like a[…] Keep reading →

When people become corrupted—that is, when they act against their values—they come up with what I call cockamamie schemes. They create elaborate plans that a moment’s reflection would show are impossible. Before the Civil War, for example, people created schemes to colonize Liberia, Nova Scotia, and other places with freed slaves as a way to solve the problem of slavery. People then also came up with the “Diffusion Argument,” which[…] Keep reading →