Moving back into my apartment after renovations, I’ve been unpacking things packed for a year or two. I packed some of those things fourteen years ago when I moved here and it seems I packed some of those things before then. I’ve tried to come up with definitive conclusions on dealing with old things that connect with memories, but haven’t. I’m getting rid of stuff, but it’s harder than I[…] Keep reading →

‘Tis a gift to be simple, ’tis a gift to be free ‘Tis a gift to come down where we ought to be, And when we find ourselves in the place just right, ‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight. When true simplicity is gained, To bow and to bend we shan’t be ashamed, To turn, turn will be our delight, Till by turning, turning we come ’round[…] Keep reading →

This week I came across the news that The city of New York has agreed to pay $18m to settle a civil rights claim from hundreds of protesters who were rounded up and detained in overcrowded and dirty conditions after they rallied outside the 2004 Republican National Convention. For those who don’t remember, the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City, shortly after the Iraq Invasion, faced protests by[…] Keep reading →

Despite getting lucky that my computer dying ended up with a simple solution (turns out you can put an old hard drive into a different computer and it works fine), seeming to lose something important, which my computer has become to me, helps you realize what’s important and what isn’t. Losing a computer used to paralyze me with fear. Now it’s a problem, but not debilitating. Things might change if[…] Keep reading →

Welcome to my series on turning rejections into motivations. Click on the Table of Contents entries to the left to read the posts in the series. I’ve learned to view what many people call failure as experience and lack of failure as not experimenting enough. If you avoid failure absolutely, I would guess I would sound annoying to me. Not that I’m special in this way. The entrepreneurial community celebrates[…] Keep reading →

I don’t know about you, but a lot of people see me as nerdy and geeky. Growing up, the labels intimidated and debilitated me. Athletes seemed to get more attention and respect. I associated doing well in science and math with being made fun of. Since I did well in those subjects I hid my ability and didn’t make a show of it. When I started college I took a[…] Keep reading →

A longtime reader and friend told me a way he put together to make himself feel better, going back to my 2009 post, “Less, please“. He said “You know how I get to feel better when I’m feeling down? You have your burpees and SIDCHAs. I do my Joshua Spodek Ten. Whenever I feel down, I set a goal of getting rid of ten things.” He described that he had[…] Keep reading →

On another forum I got into a dialog about the mental models of introversion and extroversion I found relevant, given my posts here. My goal on treating the mental model of the one-dimensional introversion-extroversion is deeper than examining this one mental model. It’s to show how much people can confuse mental models with actual observations. Without that confusion you can reject models that inhibit you. They see the mental models[…] Keep reading →

If you read this page, you know I consider the government’s spying one of the greatest threats to freedom we face. Even wars we enter with some intent to stop some day, but I don’t see anyone who wants to increase the spying acknowledging any intent to scale it back. It looks to me a one-way increase in the executive branch’s power at the expense of the other two branches’,[…] Keep reading →