Shameless
If we don’t want to be trapped in war, abroad and at home, we must recover our shame. I come from a different time. I believe that there are certain things...
We must be open.
We learn by imitating others. Steve Jobs was very smart, very successful and very productive. In 2002, Steve Jobs learned that he had pancreatic cancer....
Now
Today I’ve seen three videos of US citizens being detained by whoever ICE is these days – masked men, flashing assault weapons. The US citizens were detained...
What flag do you need to see?
As many as 10,000 Los Angelenos marched this past Sunday under flags of all colors; rainbow, Stars and Stripes included. Apparently those flags made them...
bonus: billion dollar idea
An app that scrapes the transcripts of YouTube videos, so that I can read them in 20 seconds instead of watching for 10 minutes. The app also summarizes the...
Examples
We learn by example. The Bible is full of examples. So are Harvard MBA courses. For example, in the 1930s, the self-made Jewish immigrants who ran Hollywood...
Unity and love and respect.
This man has absolutely no idea what the Declaration of Independence means because he’s never read it. And he doesn’t think he needs to. Because he knows...
You can't buy taste.
It’s an enduring mystery to me. Because you really can buy almost anything. You can buy freedom, you can buy murder.1 You can buy a new body, new friends....
We must become a high touch society.
The year is 2010 or so. I’m inside the “executive suites” at Telemundo in Hialeah, which are walled off from the hoi polloi with glass. I’m talking to the...
Easy does it
It’s really hard to make things simple. 2 + 2 = 4 is simple. But without that simple truth, there would be no engineering; no machines, no computers. Without...
Movies, Music and (2m28s)
What is fake and what is real has been our preoccupation since we began to repeat sounds as words. Destroying false idols (but not really) Always ambivalent...
LinkedIn
This guy thinks he’s real slick. There’s other guys who think they’re slick in the comments. (You can read my response to assess my relative coefficient of...
A Nation of Marks
I became an American my freshman year of high school. One day I woke up a Spanish citizen and went to sleep a US citizen. It has never been an easy sleep. A...
Become Unlearnable
I recommend every one of you watches this video explaining how musicians can fight against the theft of their work. It is instructive for every other...
Training Data
We must repeat, in order to remember, that just as fear is contagious so is courage. Easier done if said; repeatedly, daily. We humans are quite literally...
Vibes
“Hey, look at us.” The animal wonders if it can feed itself by leaping across the chasm. It does not know if it can make it, because it has never encountered...
Conspiracies
Today is a holiday: the new ContraPoints video is up. It’s titled Conspiracy and it could not be more timely. As I’ve written here before, Natalie Wynn, aka...
The Republic
We live in a world of words. That is a cold, hard fact. The who, the what, the when, the where. The why. Words define reality. Words create power. It takes...
Put on a happy face.
Put on a happy face – as sung by Dick Van Dyke and Janet Leigh. Yesterday I played a 90’s classic for the kids, Eutow by Autechre, as loud as the car stereo...
a room of one's own
This edition is not about politics. My thoughts on the last week are in today’s post by Paul Krugman and on my public Instagram. Instead, I want to briefly...