Say you want to run a marathon. Someone says they developed an amazing exoskeleton. They tell you that when you wear it, it can help you run. You’ll be able to finish a marathon in one hour. In fact, it helps you so much, you won’t even break a sweat. Running a marathon with an exoskeleton doing the work for you achieves the opposite of the point of running a[…] Keep reading →

George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Jesus Christ didn’t have kids, but JD Vance said about “people without children,” that “How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” I guess Vance isn’t a fan of Washington or Christ, though he was referring at the time to Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and AOC as leaders of the[…] Keep reading →

[Note: I wrote the post below before last week’s post Artificial Intelligence and atrophy of mental ability like intelligence, self-awareness, emotional regulation, and expression, which it overlaps. I held back on posting it because of the question in the last paragraph. I’m finishing the third volume of The Gulag Archipelago and studying the effects of dominance hierarchy, which artificial intelligence is forming. People who criticized Stalin didn’t fare well. Should[…] 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 →

People consistently refer to life without polluting and depleting as returning to the Stone Age. The lack of historical awareness and imagination staggers the mind, or it would mine if I didn’t realize that humans fill our minds with lies, or legitimizing myths, when we are induced to act against our values, to mollify our feelings. I was listening to William MacAskill (bio below) on Sam Harris’s podcast. I’m not[…] Keep reading →

I keep thinking more about what I covered last month in my post Heritage Foundation promoting socialism, as usual. Charlie Kirk did too. Many factors go into how many children people have. One of them is finance: can someone afford to raise kids. I think a lot of people think it’s not fair that it should be harder for people with less money to have kids. Oddly, people also react[…] Keep reading →

I was talking to a coaching client about leadership, which works with people’s intrinsic motivations. Since our greatest motivations and passions tend to be our greatest vulnerabilities, we tend to protect ourselves by hiding them. A challenge, then, for the leader who wants to go beyond just managing, beyond just leading, to inspire people, is to learn their deepest motivations, which they often protect the most. I was working with[…] 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 →

When Donald Trump was first elected President ten years ago, since I didn’t know many Trump voters, I posted in the column I wrote then with Inc.com, “If You Voted for Trump, Let’s Meet.“ The post led to several conversations with Trump voters across the US. I found the conversations informative and lovely. How could people who promoted compassion and tolerance so much be so mean? One comment that one[…] Keep reading →