Author: Steve Ainslie

I’ve been talking to people on the phone less often over the past year. This includes my closest friends, and my mother, all of whom live hours away in my old city. Nobody has done anything wrong to create this distancing. Some of it is due to the ebbs and flows of friendships. Much of…

When a political cartoonist from a major US newspaper was asked what she would do to address one of the latest problems being caused by Trump, she responded: “It’s not my job to fix the country’s problems”.  She went on to explain that she was not qualified to answer the question and that her goal…

I hate that we, as Americans, have accepted school shootings. Yesterday a lunatic shot into a church that was filled with grade school kids on their first day of school. Two kids were killed, 15 children and 2 senior citizens were shot. This is America. The kids have been trained (like most school kids today)…

More money doesn’t solve all problems*. I’ve been thinking about this in the aftermath of Trump’s DOGE firings, budget cuts, department reorganizations, and funding cancellations. Almost every day, the news includes interviews with someone whose job, department, or program has been impacted. I think of these as “the sob stories”. These reports use hyperbole and…

It’s not trauma – it’s just your past. Sometimes life is hard.

Almost very author, researcher, pundit, analyst and podcaster I listen to who makes are argument about some social ill blames at least part of it on Covid. Enough – it’s time to move on. The Covid pandemic and the world’s response was traumatic and severe. Regardless of whether millions died “from Covid” vs. “with Covid”,…

On a financial podcast today, Josh Brown, a financial analyst was asked by the host how normal investors could buy into privately held companies so they could take advantage of “hot companies” before they IPO’d or were maximally funded by private equity funders so that they had a chance to make a killing like wealthy…

After 400 years of service, Denmark’s state-run postal service, PostNord, is cancelling all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since 2000. In Denmark, bank statements, bills, and correspondence from local authorities are all sent electronically. Public services send communications via a Digital Post app or other platforms….

Lately, the news has been focusing on the “devastating consequences” that will come from Trump’s cuts to research programs at universities funded by the US government. It seems like every day there’s another news story highlighting how many lives will be lost, suffering increased, jobs lost and programs hamstrung by these cuts. Today, it occurred…

I don’t enjoy memes. I find them to be: Try as I might, I have yet to stumble across one that makes me think, laugh or appreciate the satire. For me, they are like slapstick comedy from old silent movies and TV – over the top, yet banal and exasperating. So I do my best…