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I have been using PerplexityAI for the past month instead of Google for many of my searches. In general, I prefer it to Google. First, it doesn’t fill my screen with sponsored links and ads. Second, it doesn’t track my views and sell them to others for spam marketing. Also, since it seems inevitable that…

In a few weeks I’ll be 57 years old. In my head, I’ve been thinking of myself as nearly 60 for the past year. Hitting 57 is just another meaningless birthday as far as I’m concerned. I’m in the best place I’ve been since my wife died in 2018. I like being old. I’ve been…

I was curious to hear what people from countries outside of the US are thinking about Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine while siding with Russia, withdrawal of NATO support, increased tariffs and starting trade wars with former allies so for the past week I’ve been listening to the daily BBC World news podcast. I also listed…

A few years ago my friend used to quote a line from the Hagakure to me that went something like, “I wake every morning preparing to be dead today”. For him, it was a noble sounding principle that he repeated when he was in the throes of deep depression and severe anxiety. But when he…

For at least the past decade, I’ve believed that all drugs should be decriminalized. I have had direct experience working with alcoholics and addicts to help them recover. I myself recovered from alcoholism with the help of AA more than 20 years ago. I’ve had friends and family members struggle with alcoholism/addiction and have seen…

Back in the 1980’s there was a political scandal around US arms trafficking to Iran known as the Iran-Contra affair. There were a number of congressional hearings about this including repeated testimony from President Reagan replying “I can’t recall…” many times when questioned about the scandal. Years later when I was in high school, my…

One of the main reasons my wife waited 10 years before marrying me was because, in her words, “I don’t want you to look back someday in the future and be stuck with an old woman”. She first told me this when I asked her to marry me when I was 21 and she was…

One of the concepts discussed in “Not Born Yesterday” was passive resistance. When an authoritarian regime that threatens violence, imprisonment and other harsh punishments for noncompliance, Mercier says oppressed people will superficially comply while passively resisting. Examples he provided included: I can think of many other examples like: I’m quite familiar with passive resistance since…

NPR and PBS are in Trump’s crosshairs to lose public funding from the federal government due to Trump’s whims, opinions and “retribution” for saying things he doesn’t like. Apparently, this isn’t a new threat. Conservatives have been lobbying to defund public TV and radio since the days when Reagan was president. This time, given Trump’s…

I recently finished reading “Not Born Yesterday“, by Hugo Mercier. In this book, he makes the argument that people are not fooled, misled or deceived by propaganda, authority figures or cult leaders. Nor do any of these have a significant ability to change peoples’ minds. Through numerous examples ranging from Hitler’s propaganda during WWII to…