Hands on Practical Experience

Year five, day 2 no refrigerator. Did you know power companies promoted them to use more energy (not for health, safety, or flavor)?
Doof / Fitness / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Nature

Year five, day 2 no refrigerator. Did you know power companies promoted them to use more energy (not for health, safety, or flavor)?

The first time I unplugged my fridge was December 2019. A few months later Covid hit and I lived outside the city a couple months. My fridge remained unplugged, but I don't count that time since I wasn't home. The next time I unplugged earlier in the year: November 2020, and made it six months or so before spring warm weather made keeping things fresh harder. The next year I started yet earlier: September 30, 2021. My goal was to make May, I think, but that May I unplugged the whole apartment so made it a year with the fridge unplugged and didn't see a reason to plug back in. Along the way, I learned from the book The Grid that fridges became widespread not…

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October 2, 2025
If you build a home where it’s unlivable, on what grounds to you complain when you can’t live there?
Hands on Practical Experience / Nature

If you build a home where it’s unlivable, on what grounds to you complain when you can’t live there?

First and foremost: any preventable death is tragic. The goal of this post is to prevent deaths while making people's lives more safe, secure, and healthy. Any reading to the contrary misunderstands me. You've seen tragic headlines of people not surviving difficult environmental conditions. A couple recent ones from Phoenix include 'This should be a necessity': Hundreds in Phoenix area die at home without air conditioning and Lack of air conditioning in metro Phoenix can kill. These are the recent victims. Some quotes from the articles: On July 1, 2021, Louis Hernandez Jr. woke in a house already sweltering from the blazing summer heat. His air conditioner had failed the day before, and inside their Peoria home, he waited for the repairman to arrive. Outside,…

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September 29, 2025
My top thought about Climate Week
Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

My top thought about Climate Week

With a podcast and book on sustainability leadership, I've been invited to many events at so-called Climate Week. It's when people fly from all over the world to talk about what other people should do. I wrote the following as constructive criticism. It's what I would expect people who take personal responsibility for how their actions affect others would want to know. My top thought is surprise, even as jaded as I am about so-called environmentalists: Everyone I heard speak, when they talk about polluters, they talk as if it's different people than themselves. This makes no sense. They are among the greatest polluters on the planet, who have ever lived. Why do they act like the big polluters are other people? It bears repeating:…

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September 24, 2025
“Do the reps, you get the results. Don’t do the reps, you don’t get the results.”
Education / Fitness / Habits / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

“Do the reps, you get the results. Don’t do the reps, you don’t get the results.”

I've been saying these words lately. Do the reps, you get the results. Don't do the reps, you don't get the results. I've said them to myself, my teammates, and my coaching clients. As regular readers know from my sidchas and standard procedures, I live them. When I search the web for them as a quote, I don't find them, so maybe I created the quote. They ring true, particularly based on the Martha Graham and Jocko Willink quotes I live by. Graham: The dancer is realistic. His craft teaches him to be. Either the foot is pointed or it is not. No amount of dreaming will point it for you. This requires discipline, not drill, not something imposed from without, but discipline imposed by…

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September 17, 2025
835: At last! I can access my roof to charge solar for the first time in 18 months.
Hands on Practical Experience / Nature / Podcast

835: At last! I can access my roof to charge solar for the first time in 18 months.

This week, I charged my solar panel and battery on my roof for the first time for over 18 months. My building had to do maintenance during which no residents could access the roof. They told us the job would take 5 months, but it took over 18. They also didn't say exactly when it would start until one day I got an email that said I couldn't access the roof until they finished the job. What a relief! This episode shares some of my experiences. Some I liked, like that it helped me develop resilience, it saved me more money, it led to my food being fresher, and it led me to connect with people ranging from local residents to indigenous people around the…

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September 11, 2025
I reduced my social media use even more.
Addiction / Hands on Practical Experience / Tips

I reduced my social media use even more.

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 it was worth using. I don't read my feed. I rarely met people there. Yet logging on took time. Also, those tabs seemed to slow my browser most. I had to install a browser add-on to fix tab names. LinkedIn kept making them change as a notification, which distracted me from effective work. I knew…

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September 10, 2025
Another summer without air conditioning. What’s the problem?
Hands on Practical Experience / Nature / Perception

Another summer without air conditioning. What’s the problem?

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 I think it happened six times, maybe five, maybe seven. Whatever the number and however annoying in the moment, I didn't feel I suffered. I think many Americans consider sleeping in heat and humidity a fate worse than death, or nearly so, when the option to use an air conditioner exists. They know Oscar Schindler…

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September 4, 2025
Another 70-pound Turkish Get-Up, also more lifting personal bests
Exercises / Fitness / Habits / Hands on Practical Experience / SIDCHAs

Another 70-pound Turkish Get-Up, also more lifting personal bests

You may remember me posting about Two personal bests in a week: Freedom, in which I jumped 8.4 pounds (3.8 kilograms) in my Turkish get-up to 70 pounds, plus lifted more in my presses. I think I commented that part of why I tried it when I did was because it was the end of a month with 31 days. I do a six-day exercise cycle starting on the first of the month, so several times a year I have days to experiment. Well, last month had 31 days, so I tried my next 70-pound Turkish get-up. I had a few wobbly get-ups in August so even though I had done it before, I treated this attempt with respect. I concentrated on form. I was…

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September 1, 2025
Some ups, downs, ins, and outs of writing a book
Art / Creativity / Hands on Practical Experience

Some ups, downs, ins, and outs of writing a book

I'm deep into writing my next book. It takes a lot of work, and I don't just mean time and attention. As part of the process, I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art today. I wanted to see finished great works of art to inspire me, but I also hoped to see something in particular, and I found some examples. I wanted to see sketches and studies. Sometimes a museum will show early practice attempts. I found some such examples today. One was Georges Seurat's A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. The original is almost 7 feet high and over 10 feet wide, but the study I saw at the Met was a few feet tall. You've seen sketches da…

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August 27, 2025
The problem with sleeping in summer weather in cities
Hands on Practical Experience / Perception

The problem with sleeping in summer weather in cities

You'd think the problem with sleeping in summer weather would be the heat and humidity. I wake up sweating several nights per summer and it's annoying. I don't want to touch the sheets and it's hard to fall back asleep. Still, I think of many places that are hotter and more humid than here where people have lived for thousands of years. Also, after a few nights of it, I find I can tolerate the heat and humidity of regular days more after such nights, even though the days are hotter and more humid than the evenings. I think my overall summer misery ends up less that that of someone who sleeps in air conditioning every summer night. Which brings me to the most annoying…

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August 23, 2025
When did you last prepare a full meal from scratch, not one packaged product?
Hands on Practical Experience

When did you last prepare a full meal from scratch, not one packaged product?

I wrote last week about how people decline free produce in my post More fresh juicy local peaches and heirloom tomatoes than I can handle, saved from waste by rich and poor alike. The people declining them include from homeless, probably crazy maybe homeless people as well as volunteers who appear mainstream, likely without a worry about money or food. Here's an heirloom tomato I got for free that many others declined. Without its bruises, at the farmers market it probably would have cost 5 or 10 dollars. Actually, I have no idea since I don't buy them. They're too expensive and my CSA provides incredible tomatoes. But no way am I going to let them go to waste, especially when making gazpacho in a…

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August 22, 2025
Read my plucky quote in today’s Washington Post
Hands on Practical Experience / Stories

Read my plucky quote in today’s Washington Post

The Washington Post's Climate Coach column by Michael Coren quoted me today. Here's the part with my quote, which responded to his column last week about people figuring out solar on their own when they can't install it on their buildings, which is my case. Did I let my coop board or the Department of Buildings stop me? No, because I live by values including Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You, Live and Let Live, Leave It Better Than You Found It, and Love Your Neighbor As Yourself. Here's the text of the quote, one my only times using the word pluck: Last week, I wrote about how I tried plug-in “balcony solar,” designed for those who can’t put panels…

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August 19, 2025
Libertarians confused on pollution, sacrificing their core values. At the root: lack of hands-on practical experience.
Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

Libertarians confused on pollution, sacrificing their core values. At the root: lack of hands-on practical experience.

I found a podcast episode from the Cato Institute, where I spoke last year and met some wonderful people: How Does Libertarianism Deal with the Problem of Pollution?. I'm posting quotes from them mainly for future reference. Sorry if the post isn't my most readable, but my main response: Lack of hands-on practical experience leads them to opposed their own values. They think no pollution means the end of civilization, when Adam Smith didn't pollute. Were ancient Athens, Sparta, Rome, China, and India not civilization? They think banning pollution means a band on a modern economy. A ban on modern economy? What value is an economy if it undermines freedom? Do they not believe a free market can solve the problems of keeping people healthy…

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August 16, 2025
My CPR training certificate
Education / Fitness / Hands on Practical Experience

My CPR training certificate

If I'm going to post my certificates from Leadership Institute and Hillsdale College classes, you can bet I would post that I got certified in CPR. The training was provided to auxiliary police officers. It was optional, but once I heard it was offered, I knew I wanted to do it. I hope no one around me ever has their heart stop, but if it happens, I hope my training enables me to save their lives. We also learned about helping with choking and using a defibrillator. I don't remember a situation where I could have used the training before, but you never know. I should have done it a long time ago.

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August 13, 2025
A comment on refrigeration and freezing to a zero-waste blog
Hands on Practical Experience

A comment on refrigeration and freezing to a zero-waste blog

I responded to a blog I follow on zero waste cooking and didn't think much of the response. I'll give the context then what I wrote, then the author's response. Context: The author wrote about how to use freezers to reduce food waste. I know from hands-on practical experience that home refrigerators and freezers may help leftovers from a given meal from going bad, but systemically, they lead to more food waste, less fresh food, higher costs, less availability of fresh produce, and other effects that are the opposite of the intended effects. For more background, I wrote more in We think appliances are to save labor, but General Electric created them to grow demand for electricity, hence General “Electric”. My response to the post:…

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August 8, 2025
Professions and people NOT to ask how to solve our environmental situation
Education / Exercises / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership / Nature

Professions and people NOT to ask how to solve our environmental situation

I have a PhD in physics, the most advanced degree in the most fundamental science. It was my priority for most of a decade. I loved and still love the field. I believe if you want to understand our situation, you must understand science or at least its findings. I also consider nature among the most beautiful thing to learn about. Scientists found out about our environmental situation. They project possible resolutions. Nonetheless, I don't consider scientists people to ask how to solve our environmental problem. Why not? Here's an example. When I started graduate school at Penn, there was a professor there, Howard Brody, who studied the physics of tennis. In his youth he played varsity tennis. He apparently led the field of the…

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August 7, 2025
Do you think BP tricked us? Here’s a way to respond.
Doof / Hands on Practical Experience / Models

Do you think BP tricked us? Here’s a way to respond.

Environmentalists constantly point out BP promoting personal carbon footprints and bizarrely use it as an excuse not to act. It would seem counterproductive except when you remember that people are less rational than rationalizing. Whatever their words, if they pollute and deplete without meaningful attempt to change, their deeds oppose their words. Environmentalists rarely have hands-on practical experience trying to live sustainably. Do you know any who are trying to live sustainably beyond a few little changes? Since they haven't experienced that living more sustainably improves their lives, they generally still think it makes their lives and cultures worse. Ignorant and sad, but how things are. They prattle on about people "in communities" who can't afford to buy expensive things, not realizing actually acting as…

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August 5, 2025
Consent of the Governed and NIABY: Not In Anyone’s Back Yard
Oil refinery
Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

Consent of the Governed and NIABY: Not In Anyone’s Back Yard

Context: The United States has a region called Cancer Alley. Flint, Michigan is known nationwide, maybe globally, as a place where water is poisoned. We're "solving" that problem with bottled water, which poisons others, so it's more like kicking the can down the road. Actually, by accelerating a cultural distrust in municipal water, it accelerates bottling, so it's more like accelerating a snowball or avalanche. Nobody consents to cancer, birth defects, or lacking access to clean water. The founding principle of our government being based on the consent of the governed couldn't be more clear: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty…

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August 2, 2025
I love a good leadership or entrepreneurial challenge, but few others seem to
Education / Entrepreneurship / Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

I love a good leadership or entrepreneurial challenge, but few others seem to

Why do my students give me reviews like: “This was the best course I ever took at NYU. There is no substitute for doing the exercises. Thinking I understand a concept and actually trying to execute the concept was difficult. Only in working through the exercises was I able to be aware of what I am currently doing. With these exercises, I now have a roadmap for how to be the kind of person I want to be. Thank you for changing my life for the better!”? I do because when I began teaching, I started learning experiential, project-based learning. I don't teach through lecture or assigning reading and writing papers. I don't claim to be the best in the world, but I try to…

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July 26, 2025
I love learning about nature from hands-on practical experience in helping people
Fitness / Hands on Practical Experience / Nature

I love learning about nature from hands-on practical experience in helping people

If you don't know my apartment, this picture and why it makes me feel so joyful and free will take some explanation. You're seeing the space below my window, which faces nearly due south. For the past two months, the sun hasn't shone directly into my apartment. On the solstice one month ago it rose almost exactly to the left, went overhead, and set to the right. Now, a month later, it's passing slightly lower from directly overhead at noon so that some sunlight around midday enters my apartment directly. One highlight of this picture is the sunlight directly hitting the counter and floor. It only just started doing so in the past week or so. You might at first think, "Don't you want the…

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July 22, 2025
To conservatives and libertarians annoyed at trash strikes: Sanitation systems are socialist. Most of your garbage promotes socialism.
Doof / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience

To conservatives and libertarians annoyed at trash strikes: Sanitation systems are socialist. Most of your garbage promotes socialism.

Sanitation systems across the nation are on strike. It started in Boston: and expanded to the west coast in solidarity: Since people who are conservative and libertarian often don't like strikes, which they may see as socialist, communist, or moving in that direction, Today I want to clarify for them: Sanitation systems are socialist and motivate waste, violate Enlightenment thinking and practice, and violate the original intent of the Constitution. (For liberals and progressives, they are also imperialist, colonialist, and contribute to racism, which I'll cover in another post.) First, a personal note: you can improve your life by reducing your garbage by well over 99 percent. Also your health, safety, security, freedom, family, budget, and longevity. I grew up generating as much or more…

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July 16, 2025
I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1
Addiction / Awareness / Creativity / Freedom / Hands on Practical Experience / Perception

I love developing resilience and strength: AI version, part 1

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 ending but it suggests that for however it helps people who can't escape, it will create dependence in far more. The article is A.I. Is About to Solve Loneliness. That’s a Problem: The discomfort of loneliness shapes us in ways we don’t recognize—and we may not like what we become without it. by academic psychologist…

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July 15, 2025
I love finding yet more ways to reduce how much I pollute (that is, hurt people)
Hands on Practical Experience / Leadership

I love finding yet more ways to reduce how much I pollute (that is, hurt people)

There's nothing like Hands-On Practical Experience. People who haven't tried keep telling me various ways of hurting people are impossible, that people wouldn't go for them. Yet, simply trying reveals ever more little advances. Once I learned to find it joyful and rewarding to reduce suffering instead of a burden or chore, as mainstream global teaches, I find ever more ways to create joy and find reward. Two examples I don't claim these examples make that much of a difference, but the Spodek Method leads to a mindset shift followed by continual improvement, not followed by perfection. For years, for some reason, I've had a hard time moving sound and video files from my computer to my cell phone to where I could listen and…

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July 7, 2025
Which way of living embodies more love: Picking up litter or walking past it?
Habits / Hands on Practical Experience / SIDCHAs

Which way of living embodies more love: Picking up litter or walking past it?

We didn't ask to be born into a culture that produces so much garbage, but we were. Now, nearly any place you live, if you walk in a public place, you pass litter. I don't go out of my way to pick it up, but when I pass litter and it doesn't take too much effort, I pick some up. I don't pick up everything. I give myself constraints to make it easier. I generally don't pick up: Things the size of a cigarette butt or smaller Absorbent things Wet things Flat things that are hard to pick up, like sheets of paper When no trash cans are near If my hands are full If I'm in a hurry With those restrictions, I commonly find…

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July 2, 2025

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