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[…] Keep reading →

Two people are walking down the street. There’s litter on the ground. One picks up some of the litter. The other doesn’t. Which person has more love in their life?

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.[…] 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 →

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[…] Keep reading →

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[…] Keep reading →

I should have written about this fun interaction with the core team working on the alumni community site this spring. Four of us were on a call. We were struggling to figure out a technical challenge. We wanted to do something that the host software didn’t seem capable of doing. We felt close to giving up. Would we have to pay for the higher tier? Pay for a service call[…] Keep reading →

I wrote the other day in Why I love the heat, even when it’s 95F (35C) on the way to 102F (39C) about how the heat, while uncomfortable, gave me reason to grow, learn, and connect. Among other things, it connected me to the countless people around the world and back in time who live and lived in such conditions. I can learn from our grandparents and people in other[…] Keep reading →

I didn’t realize the media had covered the heat spell so much. I only knew people kept asking me about sleeping without air conditioning the past few days. Now that I looked up the news from a couple days ago, I see they were going nuts about a heat dome. All I know is that for the past three nights, I woke up sweating and had trouble falling asleep, even[…] Keep reading →