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Preparing for opportunities

I strongly recommend you listen to today’s discussion between Ezra Klein and Ben Buchanan, former Biden AI advisor. A few months ago I wrote: This [“AI”] is...

The most interesting video I've seen recently; a Broadway Bleg

February 24, 2025

picture perfect. The most interesting video I've seen recently is this saleswoman explaining why she quit her job. It’s a timely story so expertly told that...

Wicked, Taxi Driver, Robot Librarians (4 minutes)

February 22, 2025

The good news: the movie Wicked is wonderful. It is a feast for the eyes and the soul. As a novice filmmaker, with a few mediocre movies under my belt, let...

He Who Controls YouTube Controls America

February 17, 2025

I was working Sunday night when I noticed, in passing, that Donald Trump has conquered YouTube. Not because he’s forcing Sundar Pichai to promote his posts...

February 12, 2025

Don’t quit. I don’t want you to read anything else from me, but the software that sends this email told me that if I sent only two words, some of your email...

February 7, 2025

Fun fact: I am one of the most radical conservatives you know. I want to conserve not just the recent past (say, Jim Crow) but also the Age of Enlightenment,...

three links (1 minute)

February 6, 2025

The new Paul Krugman newsletter is excellent. (His editors at the NYT were doing him dirty.) Today’s read is VERY STRONGLY recommended.I had a fun debate...

The hardest thing for an American to do.

February 4, 2025

As our future president said last night, I need you to lock in for a moment and consider the hardest thing that you, as an American, can do. You may not have...

Your future is our past.

February 1, 2025

I do not have anger at the men currently breaking many laws and robbing our country blind. I have anger at all my so-called centrist and liberal colleagues...

the dog is hollering

January 25, 2025

What was the one story that cut through the noise this week? The Bishop reminding the would-be king to be merciful. Why did it go viral? Because they’re bad...

January 22, 2025

In my defense, it was dark when I reached inside the plastic jar of melatonin gummies that my wife had bought at Target, and then recommended to me for...

the boy in the waiting room

January 20, 2025

I’m sitting in the Downtown Kia Service Center customer lounge, where I’ve been waiting for the last three hours for our car to get a software update,...

calling their bluff

January 19, 2025

The Jesuits on Manhattan’s Upper East side hired Mr. Eric DiMichele to teach us everything we needed to be useful, and Mr. DiMichele made sure we read...

corrections & predictions

January 6, 2025

I recently alluded to a rumor that the world’s richest man uses “sock puppet” accounts to defend his honor – not unlike John Barron, publicist...

Enough. Genug. Basta.

January 3, 2025

Have you ever had sushi? A small piece of rice. A small piece of fish. And it is perfect. To get something – even pain – in just the right amount, is the...

December 26, 2024

The police were right. We are spirits in a material world. The materialism is what constrains us. Right now we have prominent figures who self-identify as...

Psychology today

December 15, 2024

You’re not supposed to achieve your goals. They’re guides. Stars, you can’t touch. If you’ve ever actually achieved a goal, you’ll know the resulting feeling...

I believe in Crystal Light

December 8, 2024

You finished the sentence in your head. “I believe in Crystal Light because I believe in me.”1 It’s a genius turn of phrase: how can you doubt this...

December 1, 2024

I dreamt a giant wave crashed over me, I was underwater, in the dark, being buffeted about, unable to move. I remembered that I had to wait. So I did, and...

Meet you all the way

November 25, 2024

Two simple predictions about the generative AI economy that is already here, not yet equally distributed. Living in the Moment A few days ago, a music...

Two very fun books about organized crime

November 22, 2024

Pound for pound, the best movies are always about heists: from Heat to Sneakers, from Dog Day Afternoon to The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, from Out of...

Lynndie England

November 20, 2024

It was a minor meme in the days after the election that friendships, relationships, families should not be affected by one party voting for fascism. This is,...

Links (2 minutes)

November 18, 2024

The best media I’ve consumed in the last few months: The Two Popes – An absolute gem of a movie. Not only is it perfectly crafted, it’s the right movie for...

November 14, 2024

I’ve seen some long overdue discussions about how to counter fascism in America. Unfortunately most liberals, technocrats, Democrats, progressives don’t come...

Man does not live by bread alone.

November 8, 2024

Two anecdotes. A few years ago, I was asked to help a small Latino media brand get into premium content. As always happens, they had no money. So I scoured...

I fell in love at work…

November 2, 2024

Sometimes movies describe reality, sometimes they prescribe it. Consider the quirky comedy Her (2013), which tells the story of a software engineer falling...

opportunistic infections

October 22, 2024

The body politic — all of us, together, as one — is a wonderful metaphor because it doesn’t struggle to convey what is obvious: each one of us emerges from...

to praise infamous men

October 14, 2024

It’s possible for a society’s death drive to get the better of it. For enough people to reject this world and choose the fantasy of its inverse. For enough...

October 6, 2024

We like to call folk wisdom corny but that doesn’t make it less true. What happens when you squeeze people together, for centuries, what pours out, what gets...

Suffer the fools.

September 26, 2024

In America, we are now in the final days of the harvest. We are reaping what we have sown. Our fate will be determined by the least informed among us: the...

healing is our greatest achievement

September 8, 2024

The most important things in life are boring. Or so they seem. The clocks all around us tell us to focus on an ever narrowing timeframe. But this is a lie....

2D desires, 3D realities

August 24, 2024

It’s the little things. The ones we don’t notice. That’s what defines our reality. Going on nature walks is transformative precisely because a single leaf...

leaving the postmodern

August 17, 2024

Sometimes I write things that surprise me and, at my ripe old age, I now assume I must be wrong. A younger person, a dumber person, takes shock as evidence...

My father grew up in a military family; his father an orphan, his mother could barely read. As a teenager, he wanted to become an air force pilot but he...

Do you remember the first time you worked with a computer? Or the first time you saw a movie? Can you picture your first beloved toy? I’ve spent the last...

if it’s in a museum, it must be… I learned to code* in the 1980s, when my working class immigrant parents bought me a Commodore 64. (today we all “love”...

too hot to work for this pay

I wrote this 45 second melody. It’s a little jazzy. They’re too good to us. If we were being served by the best and brightest, they’d want local innovation...

We learn by copying. We borrow words. We try on looks. First we imitate our parents, then the kids around us. There is no authenticity that does not begin as...

bandits get away

Go to a movie theater and watch Furiosa. They won’t make them like that soon. Last week, I watched The Thomas Crown Affair, 1968. It’s a bad movie, well...

Our purpose is implicit in our bodies: we evolved into social animals! We have the gift of speech to serve one another. Our communication is thus moral,...

Benefit of doubt

My father is an ex-con. I’ve never called him that. I’ve never even thought of him as that until this morning. Because we don’t reduce the people we know to...

How to Make the Future Cool Again

All eyes on him. Was the future cooler in the 1980s? Yes. Because we were on the edge of an abyss – a leap forward. We had all the parts but they had not...

Ride like the wind

In 1980’s “Ride like the Wind”, soft rock legend David Cross promises, albeit unbelievably, to take us on a lawless tour all the way to the border of Mexico....

For the last year I have been photographing this landmark in our neighborhood. Without knowing what it was, exactly, I have been seduced by its beauty;...

The TSA agent wanted to make sure the boys weren’t being kidnapped so he asked them to say their middle names. Michel! Emile! Who are these French children?,...

Please don't flash the octopus.

We must look like birds to them. At the Museum of Natural History, in the hall of mammals big and small, I saw a glimpse of our future. It looked goofy, and...

Linear, please. (6m25s)

Our boys come home from school with "viruses" like curse words and references to pop culture. The other day I heard them share a snippet of a joke that...

The Kids Are Not Alright, actually (6 minutes)

I’ve spent the last 30 years or so working with people in their 20s: Today’s young people are not better informed than their predecessors were 10, or 20...

But have you seen the 1979 movie Alien?

I spent two thrilling days in the company of scholars this week and was intoxicated by their poetry.* Who doesn’t love poetry? (Fascists, mainly.) But even...

February 18, 2024

Because the body is a vessel that must also be consecrated, repeatedly, tattoos often have explicitly religious motifs. (In my experience, even the most...

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