Searching for contentment

In the fragrance of freshly worked wood⩘ 

The soft glow cast by shoji lamps⩘ 

The inspiration of good reads⩘ 

The wonder of daily living⩘ 


My heart is with the people of Ukraine

The flag of Ukraine (top half blue, bottom half yellow-gold)

#StandWithUkraine⩘ 

My contemplations about Ukraine⩘ 

Broken heart: Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel⩘ 

Abolish ICE!

Living in the Rockies

After a very dry and overly warm winter and early spring, in May we were overjoyed to experience nicer temperatures and, best of all, several wonderful rainstorms. As a result, the world around us turned green with exuberant life, and my daily walks are much more joyful as my eyes drink in the beauty from the tiniest fresh green plants popping up to entire hillsides of Mountain Mahogany radiating a deep green aura.

Here are two examples basking in the early morning sun: a small salsify flower shining against a deep green Virginia Creeper vine and my favorite old great grandmother cottonwood with her many thousands of fresh green leaves dancing in the gentle morning breeze against a brilliant blue sky. I love this tree, and often pause to lay a gentle hand on her bark to say hello and feel her vibrant energy.

A small, bright lemon yellow flower with petals radiating outward surrounded by thirteen narrow, pointed, green leaves radiating further outward.
A huge old cottonwood tree with many thousands of fresh green leaves growing next to a rock cliff and with a brilliant blue sky beyond.
My hand on and dwarfed by the old, thickly textured, gray bark of the cottonwood.

Larger version of these photos⩘ 
More recent photos⩘ 

Reading

Hettie O'Brien, The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself

The audiobook cover of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself by Hettie O'Brien. Against a dark gray background, the title is displayed in orange type across the top of the cover, and the author's name across the bottom. Inbetween, the subtitle is displayed in raised black capital letters with each word displayed on lines of equal width ("AGAINST ITSELF" is displayed on one line), so the letters are largest for the word "HOW" and smaller for subsequent lines. Out of the center of the "O" in "HOW", a bunch of crumpled $1, $10, and $20 bills are emerging. Below them are floating several crisp new $100 bills.Well narrated by the author

A thoroughly researched and well written book discussing the appalling trend in economics to favor the wealthy at a severe cost to everyone else. In a nutshell: private equity sucks and degrades a humane and functioning society.

It's interesting to note that as I was in the final sections of this book, I had my annual maintenance inspection of our heat pump, performed by a really good, privately owned local company. After the technician finished his inspection, we chatted for a few minutes. He told me that during the past year, the firm's original owner had retired, and two of the longterm employees, one of whom I had previously met, had purchased the company. I told him I was glad to hear this update and mentioned the book I was reading, which made me doubly glad that the company would continue to be privately owned. He shook his head and said that their company has been recently approached by multiple private equity firms wanting to take it over, that the owners were adamantly opposed to such a takeover, and that a lot of the employees would leave the company if that ever happened. I was left contemplating how badly the company's service would be degraded and how huge the price increases would be if that ever happened. What an appalling way to run an economy.

Grand Central Publishing, 2026; Bookshop.org⩘ ; audiobook: Hachette Audio, 2026; Libro.fm⩘ .

See also:

Note: The initial release of the audiobook contains a couple really stupid errors. (Possibly due to the publisher using AI in assembling it? It's hard to imagine a reasonably intelligent human editor making these errors.) First, Chapter Ten is inserted between the Introduction and Chapter One instead of between Chapter Nine and the Closing Credits. Despite this, the audiobook's chapter titles are presented in the correct order, so each chapter has an incorrect title. Second, the title of Chapter Ten contains a blatantly misspelled word: "Beaurocrats". I informed Libro.fm about these errors and they quickly replied saying they informed the publisher. Hopefully, the publisher will release a corrected version quickly.

More recent reading⩘ 

'There's this deep mystery of what, actually, is this thing?'

A colorful illustration of bearded man looking upward into a darkness with glowing white dots. The right half of his face is replaced by a black & white drawing that looks like a circuit board. Behind and bit to the right of his head is pale white outline of his head.Image credit: a cropped version of an illustration by Deena So'Oteh, The Guardian

This is an amazing long read article in The Guardian by Robert P Baird with the title 'There's this deep mystery of what, actually, is this thing?': the philosopher inside Google DeepMind AI⩘  and the subtitle "Since 2017, Iason Gabriel has worked at the tech giant, trying to anticipate – and think through – the impact of AI. But as commercial and geopolitical pressures escalate, can ethicists make any difference?"

It is in-depth articles like this that make paying for a subscription to The Guardian worthwhile!

As I was reading Baird's article, I kept coming across paragraphs that captured so well the ethical challenges underlying AI development. I'll share a few here so that I can easily revisit them, but really, just read the full article … it's truly worthwhile.

More generally, Gabriel has been a leading advocate for the idea that the current wave of AI development demands not just new technical vocabularies but also new ways of thinking about our relationship to technology, and even to ourselves. As he put it to me recently, in one of several long conversations we've had over the past few months, "I can take any technological artefact and ask: is it wise? Is it just? Is it caring? And the answer is no. But the depth of the question when it comes to AI – including what kind of ethics is appropriate to it – is hard to overstate. I sometimes feel like it's very hard to look at AI directly. There's this deep mystery there, which is: but what actually is this thing? We have a very literal answer, but the literal answer doesn't seem to necessarily provide a moral answer."
…

Like the DeepMind founders, the AI safety contingent believed that human-grade machine intelligence was not only possible but imminent. The urgent task, as they saw things, was to make sure that AI systems didn't go awry. They took inspiration from a 1960 essay by Norbert Wiener, an American mathematician and computer scientist, who argued that humans and computers are "essentially foreign to each other". Because machines can operate much faster than people, Wiener said, "we had better be quite sure that the purpose put into the machine is the purpose which we really desire and not merely a colourful imitation of it".
…

Gabriel's first major research project at DeepMind was a 2020 paper that straddled the concerns of both camps. The paper took the alignment problem seriously, but it also insisted that alignment had ethical and political implications that went beyond the technical challenges. As difficult as it might be to get a machine to act in accordance with some set of values, Gabriel argued, it was much harder to choose those values in the first place. "Given that we live in a pluralistic world that is full of competing conceptions of value," he asked, "how are we to decide which principles or objectives to encode in AI – and who has the right to make these decisions?"
…

'There's this deep mystery of what, actually, is this thing?': the philosopher inside Google DeepMind AI⩘  by Robert P Baird, The Guardian, Jun 30, 2026.

More of this reflection⩘ 
More recent contemplations⩘ 

Fighting for American democracy

We must use our time and our space
on this little planet that we call Earth
to make a lasting contribution,
to leave it a little better than we found it,
and now that need is greater than ever before.

– John Lewis, 2020

———

"So what do those of us who love American democracy do? Make noise. Take up oxygen…. Defend what is great about this nation: its people, and their willingness to innovate, work, and protect each other. Making America great has never been about hatred or destruction or the aggregation of wealth at the very top; it has always been about building good lives for everyone on the principle of self-determination. While we have never been perfect, our democracy is a far better option than the autocratic oligarchy Trump is imposing on us."…

I write these letters because I love America. I am staunchly committed to the principle of human self-determination for people of all races, genders, abilities, and ethnicities: the idea that we all have the right to work to become whatever we wish. I believe that American democracy has the potential to be the form of government that comes closest to bringing that principle to reality. And I know that achieving that equality depends on a government shaped by fact-based debate rather than by extremist ideology and false narratives.

– Professor Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American⩘ , Sep 15, 2025.

———

Swearing an oath to our constitution

United States Constitution with its preamble "We the People"
Government of the United States of America
Photo⩘  by Joseph Sohm⩘ ; licensed via Shutterstock

I admire the leadership of retired Maj Gen Paul Eaton who is speaking up in defense of our constitution and against the ongoing effort to politicize our armed forces.

Maj Gen Paul Eaton has sounded the alarm, saying in an interview with the Guardian that the effort to bend the higher echelons of the military to the US president's will was unparalleled in recent history and could have long-term dire consequences. He warned that both the reputation and efficiency of the world's most powerful fighting force was in the balance.

"There is an active effort to politicise the armed forces," Eaton said. "Once you infect the body, the cure may be very difficult and painful for presidents downstream."

I'm hoping that many people, both military and civilians, listen to his message.

Trump push to politicize US military 'reminiscent of Stalin', top general warns⩘  by Ed Pilkington, The Guardian, Jan 5, 2025.

More recent contemplations⩘ 

Woodworking

A note about the image at the top of this page

Outline image of the Windtraveler lamp

The Windtraveler—a shoji lamp I created in the shape of a deltoidal hexecontahedron—is made of 60 deltoid-shaped faces (like kites) framed in maple. Each five deltoids meeting at the more pointed bottom tips form a pentagon, creating a total of 12 pentagons, which is a dodecahedron. Each three deltoids meeting at the broader top tips form a triangle, creating a total of 20 triangles, which is an icosahedron. Within each deltoid frame are thinner 1/4 inch inner frames made of mahogany, with additional strips that run from the top tip to the bottom tip of each deltoid forming 120 right angle triangles, which reveal a hexakis icosahedron. The inner mahogany frames are backed by washi, a traditional Japanese paper, which creates a gentle shade for the light cast by the light bulbs within to pass through.

More about this project⩘ 
More woodworking⩘ 

My journey

Trail winding up Cow Creek valley across a meadow and through pine trees towards the hills beyond; photo by Toshen

Love nature. As a kid, I just wanted to be out playing in the woods that surrounded our small town home. When younger, I lived a few places around the world and visited several others … then found a place in the foothills of the Rockies and my heart was home. When I'm out walking, I snap photos and post the better ones on this site to preserve the opportunity to revisit some of these exquisite experiences. Photos⩘ 

Love reading. Growing up, I carried armloads of books home each week from the library. Now tend to carry around a virtual stack of audiobooks. I deeply appreciate authors, narrators, and translators. Since 1999, I've been posting reviews on this site, in the more recent years focused on just those books I appreciate the most. I listen to or read a lot of genres, fiction and nonfiction, and particularly appreciate well done speculative fiction. Reading⩘ 

Love woodworking. A passionate amateur, I revere wood. My main focus has been shoji lamps in the shape of polyhedra. I love the light that glows through washi and deeply appreciate the folks who make these papers. I'm entranced by the dance of polyhedra patterns, and keep notes on my website about the experience of making some of the lamps. I've also made a fair bit of our furniture, and have done some woodworking to fix up our old home. Woodworking⩘ 

Love our beautiful, fragile planet. I'm deeply concerned about our climate and all the life we are carelessly and rapidly degrading and destroying.

Blue Marble, 2012: a photo of Earth showing continents and ocean, lightly covered by some clouds, floating in the infinite blackness of space
Photo credit: NASA/NOAA/GSFC/Suomi NPP/VIIRS/Norman Kuring

Awed by space and astronomy. Photos of spiral galaxies melt my heart and also inspire me to wonder whether I'm originally from another planet in another galaxy far far away. See also: Our home in this wondrous universe⩘ 

The large, gracious, spiral Andromeda galaxy floating in the depths of the universe
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

EFF membership badge with EFF Member surrounded by rings of multiple colorsValue privacy. I think online privacy should be the default state. Because it's not, I try to protect at least some of my privacy online, especially against greedy corporations. I deeply appreciate the work that folks like Cory Doctorow⩘  and organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)⩘  are doing on our behalf.

See also:
Why I dislike artificial intelligence⩘ 
Privacy Is Power by Carissa Véliz⩘ 
McLuhan lecture on enshittification by Cory Doctorow⩘ 

A helpful online privacy tool:

Electronic Frontier Foundation Privacy Badger logo, an illustration of the white furred head of a badger with black fur running from the nose, around the eye, to the ear; click to learn more.
EFF Privacy Badger⩘ 

Keystones: Respect, compassion, empathy, acceptance. We're all in this together.

Double rainbow at sunset; photo by Toshen. The rainbows rise above a hill that is sunlit at the rocky top catching the last rays of the seeting sun, but falls into shadow below. There are dark outlines of the tops of a few pine trees in the foreground.