I’ve written about Robert Carter III a bunch here. He figures in my book a lot, as someone who could have remained corrupted by slavery, as everyone around him did in Virginia after the American Revolution, but he freed his slaves. Thomas Jefferson didn’t, despite his brilliant words on freedom. [EDIT: Here’s someone else’s post on Robert Carter III: The Forgotten First Emancipator. An excerpt: Robert Carter, then, stands as[…] Keep reading →

I haven’t filled a load of trash in my apartment since 2019. This week I cleaned out my stuff from my father’s basement. It turns out he put stuff there after I went to college. He didn’t tell me and I forgot about it. I wish I’d known about it between then and now, but didn’t. I’m saving some and giving some away through Craigslist (putting it back in circulation,[…] Keep reading →

I value learning from people who think differently. A lot of people seem to value cultural exchange. Probably the most different place from the United States I’ve visited is North Korea, twice. I grew up equating flying with travel and the only way to explore other cultures. Now that I’ve stopped flying, I see how I had made myself dependent and ignorant by a practice (flying) that is destroying cultures,[…] Keep reading →

Following up my last two posts, on my recent sailing lesson, we ended up in Newport, Rhode Island. The others wanted to go to a boat show held there that week. Our skipper/teacher had hosted a booth there for years, though not this year. I was open to going but didn’t want to do something big and commercial that much. One of the other crew members told me about Newport’s[…] Keep reading →

Long-term readers know I took sailing lessons after extending my year avoiding flying to more and more years, even before realizing I’d never fly again (also before Greta got a ride across the Atlantic, which somehow no one has offered me yet, though I’ve worked at it for years). My Sailing 101 lessons were in New York harbor, which I followed up by joining a club that allowed me to[…] Keep reading →

I’ve posted about my September 11, 2001: We called the company I co-founded Submedia. We filed the patent in 1998. Our first investment came in 1999, enabling us to pay ourselves salaries and hire people to develop prototypes and create partnerships with subway systems. Atlanta’s system signed first, followed by the PATH system connecting New York City and New Jersey. Coca-Cola signed in 2001 as our debut advertiser, beating Nike[…] Keep reading →

Insouciance, colonialism, and sustainability

On my birthday, I find it fun to calculate how much of history I’ve lived through. Depending on your age, you might have lived through similar percentages of history. [EDIT: I attached the spreadsheet to calculate the numbers below if you want to calculate for your life.] Some numbers, for example: I’ve lived about 2.6 percent of the time Christianity has existed, but only 0.3 percent of the time since[…] Keep reading →

Despite using zero watts over more than a year, I’ve been paying over $20 per month for an electric bill. Part of it was to a power company that uses more wind and solar that charged me a monthly fee of another $6 or so. The other part was $17 a month to Con Ed, the power company, simply for being connected to the grid, not even using power. I[…] Keep reading →