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 →

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 →

I joined a group trying to find ways to fly less. One of the themes of the group was to show that “taking the train is just as good as flying.” I found this approach counterproductive. It set flying as the norm and other ways of traveling as alternatives. I think some people saw flying as the best and other ways of traveling as trying to measure up as best[…] Keep reading →

My posts about addiction aren’t about the addicts in the pictures or videos. They’re about our culture. I see the person in the video below as the inevitable outcome of our culture. He is a more extreme example in one direction, but only a few steps ahead of many users of McDonald’s, Instagram, Delta Airlines, and Netflix. Context: I was walking home, saw this guy, and decided to get my[…] Keep reading →

Following up a recent post I love where I live. How it’s being destroyed, part 3: Drugs, here are a few more pictures and videos of addicts in my neighborhood. To clarify, I’m not going out of my way or looking for these images. As a New Yorker, I’m usually in a hurry. Most scenes like the ones below I pass by without taking pictures or videos. These images are[…] Keep reading →

A recent article on artificial intelligence in the New Yorker wrote about how people who are suffering from loneliness are finding help from artificial intelligence. Some people can’t help loneliness, not out of character defect but circumstance. It gets the reader thinking about the elderly, for example, who outlive everyone they’ve been close to, or it describes as worse, if those who remain are senile. Sorry to give away the[…] Keep reading →

I’ve posted plenty on the heavy drug use in my neighborhood. The police and parks department recently cleaned the northwest corner of Washington Square Park, but, as they predict, the junkies move to other nearby places. I believe the effort is worth it. I talk to neighbors about forming local groups to occupy spaces the junkies would go to before they get there and make it hard for them to[…] Keep reading →

I was walking home from the food coop past NYU and saw this truck. They’re all over Manhattan, basically limousines. Rich people travel by giant truck, I guess as some luxury. It was sitting there not moving. The passengers weren’t in it but it wasn’t empty. A guy in a suit—the driver—was sitting in it, engine idling, I presume with the air conditioning on because it was around 90 F[…] Keep reading →

The title says it all. Here are pictures of more junkies shooting up in broad daylight in the park. Sorry the exposure isn’t brighter for the people but I was trying not to draw attention to myself. I was in the park charging and trying to work. There were half a dozen people in the group shortly before I took these pictures. If you magnify the second image you can[…] Keep reading →