A few months back, Elon Musk, the right-wing owner of Twitter and Grok, his pet Generative AI project, posted something I wrote on his Twitter feed, with the caption "This is the quality of humor we want from Grok."

He even had it pinned to his profile for a short while.


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I woke this morning thinking about work emails.

I emailed my lawyer and my therapist this morning.

When I write a work-related email to a client or a vendor or some professional I’m contracting for services, I tend to take a lesson from my experiences when I owned a computer consulting firm back in Tampa. Back then, I strongly, strongly preferred ( Read more... )

So let’s talk about Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeons & Dragons is famous for basically three things: creating an entire cottage industry of weird foaming-at-the-mouth Evangelical cries of satanic doom that will sweep over the land, covering it in darkness forever and ever; giving socially awkward high school students of a certain era something to do ( Read more... )

[This essay is an expansion of a thought I originally wrote as an answer on Quora]

There is a notion, a myth enshrined in a great deal of Western philosophy, that as time goes on, societies move ever further from superstition and ignorance, and ever closer to Truth.

It is, like many social myths, complete nonsense.

In fact, societies swing to and ( Read more... )

Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!
-Carl Jung, Civilization in Transition - Volume 10

Recently, a user on Quora asked a question about why people are so prone to judging others, even those they don't know.

And the truth is, there isn’t one reason. There are lots of them, including Carl Jung’s...and one that I’ve been ( Read more... )

When I arrived in Florida a few weeks ago to help care for my mom, who was in the last stages of terminal cancer, Facebook showed me an ad for a pin. I ordered it on the spot. It arrived yesterday, on what would have been my mom’s birthday.


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[Note: this essay started out as an answer on Quora]

Right now, as I type this, I’m in Florida helping care for my mom. My dad and I have been doing 12-hour shifts with her, because she needs round-the-clock care. Between that and all the thousand things around the house that need tending to that my dad isn’t able to, I haven’t been sleeping much.

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[Note: This entry originally started out as an answer on Quora. If you want to keep up with my writings, I’m most active over there these days.]

Most people want to think of themselves as basically “good people.” Many people want to appear to be good people, particularly to their friends and social group. The cynic in me believes that few people ( Read more... )

[Note: This entry is based on two of my answers on Quora. If you want to keep up with my writing, that’s the best place to do it these days.]

So I’ve been spending some time lately thinking about the psychology of bullying, and why bullies seem unhappy when you live a good life once you’ve escaped their reach.

And I think I’m at least a bit closer ( Read more... )