Ali Horriyat founded a group called Compassiviste. In its words: Compassiviste is a non-profit organization dedicated to fostering a more compassionate society. We actively promote empathy, social impact, and environmental conservation through various initiatives. Our mission is carried out by encouraging mindful consumer activism, leading influential charitable drives, and leveraging impactful innovative technology to make a tangible difference. Join us in our endeavor to create a more caring, sustainable world[…] Keep reading →

Regular readers know I volunteer to deliver overstocked perfectly good food from stores that would throw it away to a community fridge and pantry for anyone to take for free (there’s a fair amount of doof in it). I do it mainly to reduce waste to landfills, with feeding people as a bonus. It replaces watching TV, browsing the web, or feeding a social media addiction. I don’t understand how[…] Keep reading →

Everyone talks about how individual action doesn’t matter when they have to do something. What could seem less relevant to protecting national security then an individual making his or her bed? There are nuclear weapons in the world. Terrorists fly planes into buildings. What do the top military officers suggest about meeting these threats? Admiral and SEAL William H. McRaven says to make your bed in his If You Want[…] Keep reading →

When I mention shopping at a food coop—a grocery store where the shoppers are the owners and workers—people kept saying not everyone had access to coops. I wondered why they suggested they were a privilege. I know there aren’t as many food coops as supermarkets and bodegas, but I didn’t understand why they acted like people without access were helpless. At last I realized people saying such things didn’t know[…] Keep reading →

I posted last week At last, I dropped my electrical utility account. They sent me this bill off-sequence for a smaller amount than usual. Might it be my last electric bill ever? I don’t know how far I should extrapolate. I’m sure life will change in ways I can’t predict, maybe necessitating reconnecting to the grid. For now, at least, I’m enjoying the freedom, fun, and discovery of keeping my[…] Keep reading →

The United States has a Bill of Rights in its Constitution guaranteeing several freedoms around religion, speech, the press, bearing arms, search and seizure, speedy trials, and a few others. Imagine you woke up to headlines that for some technicality no one had noticed for over two centuries, the Bill of Rights had been improperly processed and turned out it was invalid. That is, imagine the Bill of Rights didn’t[…] Keep reading →

Consider a team sport like the Americas Cup, where technology plays a major role. The winning boats have long needed to be at the leading edge of ship design, requiring aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, materials science, and more. Today with the foils, people describe the boats as flying more than sailing. Many skills to pilot these ships didn’t exist a generation ago. The scientists and engineers who design the ships are part[…] Keep reading →

Why not think about what you’d do if you ran for President? How do you like this platform? My Six-Point Starting Plan The environment affects everyone, therefore my strategy starts: Top-down, bottom-up, everywhere, all at once, starting with you and me, here and now Great American Role Models I would lead in the style of many role models, but especially: Common interview question: What would I do if I were[…] Keep reading →

Bill McKibben wrote about economic growth yesterday in the New Yorker, asking “To Save the Planet, Should We Really Be Moving Slower? The degrowth movement makes a comeback.” He referred to a 2020 New Yorker piece “Can We Have Prosperity Without Growth?.” The latter piece nearly exclusively looked at how economists looked at growth. Why should we listen to economists? Is it a science? Consider physics. In 1896, the renowned[…] Keep reading →