This week I finished: A Man at Arms, by podcast guest Steven Pressfield: I hear Steven has two groups of fans — those of his The War of Art-type books and those of his historical fiction — and they don’t overlap much. I was in the first group. His latest book, The Acadian, comes out soon. We’re scheduled to record our second podcast episode on it this week. It stands[…] Keep reading →

I see more and more ads for artificial intelligence. This evening on the subway one ad promoted how AI could turn the workplace task of creating a slide deck from two weeks of many sub-tasks like compiling data and designing slides into one prompt followed by a complete slide deck. The task would take minutes now. I’ve heard a lot of uses for artificial intelligence. I haven’t heard of one[…] Keep reading →

Fixing the results of a problem is not the same as stopping it from recurring and you rarely can undo all the problems, especially if you do it persistently. For example, exercising doesn’t make up for an addiction to doof. Even if you burn off the calories, it doesn’t fix the health problems or make back the wasted money. More importantly, since you keep consuming doof, you’ll likely miss exercising[…] Keep reading →

After chopping down half a continent’s forests, coal must have seemed like manna from heaven, and later oil, gas, and uranium. Bounty of nature. But you could see why they’d love it. It rewarded people for being smart, for being clever, and most of all for helping others. It enabled people to cross distances faster than ever, to build taller and stronger, to warm the cold, to cool the hot,[…] Keep reading →

I attended an event in midtown by Trump Plaza in midtown over the weekend. A friend who is very liberal said how uncomfortable the space made her feel. She also mentioned how she just got back from Mexico and planned to return there, as well as New Orleans, in the next few months. I didn’t point out to her how much of the cost of her plane tickets is funding[…] Keep reading →

I posted last month about a Spodek Method commitment to walk in a park with my sister in Queens based on walking in the park with my dad. Yesterday, I walked in the same park I did with my dad, this time with my other sister, plus her husband and son, my brother-in-law and nephew. To refresh your memory, that post, Another Spodek Method commitment: a walk in the park[…] Keep reading →

I just posted The first warm day of the year means overflowing doof garbage, of course, which showed how Americans celebrate spring: polluting and depleting, funding the production of garbage, and driving themselves to obesity. We also celebrate winter by killing trees. I hope the picture below is the last Christmas Pagan tree of the season. It goes to show you how many trees we kill in our pagan rituals[…] Keep reading →

In Monday’s post, Today’s blizzard, February 2026, I wrote how the blizzard led to another day when I could find no litter in Washington Square Park. As usual, even with over a foot of snow, I found plenty of litter and garbage elsewhere, but at least not in the park, which is like my back yard. That post shows several beautiful pictures of my neighborhood covered in virginal snow. In[…] Keep reading →

I’ve done a lot of Spodek Method commitments. I’ve loved them all, at least I don’t remember disliking any, but haven’t recorded many of them here, but liked posting My Spodek Method commitment to make water ice from snow: A photo essay last month. I did another one over the weekend and took a few pictures to share. The memories of nature stemmed from Wissahickon Creek and the park around[…] Keep reading →