Contemplations – Index
I'm incurably curious about many aspects of this journey of ours. Here are a few noteworthy items I've stumbled across that I'm making a note of so I can revisit them from time to time.
Ongoing
- Why I hate artificial intelligence
- My heart is with the people of Ukraine
- Broken heart: Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel
2026
- On superpower suicide and the recovery of justice
- A glimmer of climate action hope
- What a gift this life is
- The Spanish Dancer Galaxy
- Sacred bridge
- Meeting the climate challenge with collective action
- Enduring the climate of tomorrow
- A winter moment of calm
- Swearing an oath to our constitution
2025
- Earthrise
- A storm of new stars
- Defending democracy and decency
- The Lost Galaxy
- A welcome persistence in the U.S. solar industry
- Why intolerance and extremism happen
- Defending free speech, standing up for one another!
- Tim Berners-Lee is such a visionary; we need to listen to him!
- AI: the importance of being vigilant and skeptical
- Standing up for American democracy with courage and clarity
- The Monk Garden
- AI veganism
- Educators take a stand against AI in education
- A starry night of community images
- Millions in US expected to join No Kings protests [and we did!]
- Troops and marines deeply troubled by LA deployment
- Wild galactic dance
- Hypernormalization
- Dishonoring veterans
- Fuck fossil fuel companies
- Fight today for a better tomorrow
- A moment of calm
- The heartbreaking story of Masafer Yatta
- Be skeptical!
- Ah, the infinite mystery of it all
- Usable privacy for all – Murena & /e/os
- Our home is on fire and we are sleeping through the inferno
- Loving our country: Taking a stand for freedom & democracy
- Uyghur rights group calls on hotel chains not to 'sanitise' China abuses in Xinjiang
- Resisting the digital coup
- A better world is possible
- This is what a digital coup looks like
- Flocculent Spiral Galaxy
- Loving our country: In our hearts
- Fighting for working-class and middle-class Americans
- Our shameful dystopia
- The Musk-Trump oligarchy
- Look up and take a deep, calming breath
- Loving our country: Let's build an economy for everyone
- The shocking reality of land use in the U.S.
- YES to democracy, NO to oligarchy, NO to authoritarianism
- Google: Move Fast and Face Plant
- Stand up, speak out, and defend
- From WTF confusion to WTF clarity
- Why Do We Need USAID?
- This is where we live
- A courageous stance
- I just didn't expect them to be such losers
- An evening view of Fuji
- We all just need to be who we are
- The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody
- Bubbles
- Covid: 5-year anniversary
- The mind-boggling vastness
- Leonardo da Vinci
- Why I hate artificial intelligence
- U.S. healthcare – an emergency
- Loving our country: Here's how to be ready
2024
- Keith Jarrett – The Köln Concert
- Rebel optimism
- Universities are a pain for extremist governments
- Hurricane Helene – A Love Letter To Appalachia
- The Aphasia Choir
- Disability rights are technology rights
- Loving our country: Our country is worth fighting for
- Our stunning universe
- The collapse is coming
- Most evil thing: fossil fuel industry's continuing systematic lying
- Commercial surveillance is out of control
- Our broken healthcare system
- Rear Admiral Grace Hopper ("Grandma COBOL")
- Loving our country: Hope, enthusiasm, and even joy
- The Dust Bowl, a film by Ken Burns
- Hubble is back!
- Daydreaming amongst the stars
- Ps: So long, Adobe. And good riddance!
- The Notorious RBG
- A solar filament erupts
- An invitation to analysis and action
- Greedy fucking assholes
- Loving our country: The Sixth
- Warming can be stopped
- Origin
- Starburst after galaxy collision
- Brain waves radiating outward at the speed of light
- In this sense I am religious …
- Enshittification
- Loving our country: The Fourteenth Amendment
- Snow at Nakazato
- Fossil fuel industry knew of climate danger as early as 1954
- An intersection of art and math
- Winter winds in the foothills of the Rockies
- To build a better world
2023
- 'Doctors said I wouldn't walk or talk'
- A dire warning written in wood
- COVID-19 reinfection is problematic
- Grace Lee Boggs
- 20 Days in Mariupol"
- Andromeda
- Transparent wood
- Native American solar farms
- These families are pleading for peace
- The Crab Nebula
- What Big Oil knew about climate change
- Wonder
- Broken heart: Palestine, Gaza, the West Bank, Israel
- Loving our country: General Mark A. Milley
- Breathe easier, sleep more naturally (and maybe die)
- Loving our country: The responsibility is in our hands
- Galactic dance
- Relax already
- (Mis)uses of technology
- Every Body: Go Beyond the Binary
- The Whirlpool Galaxy
- Rings within spirals
- Loving our country: 'You're able to vote now'
- Smart! Solar grazing and "Agrivoltaics"
- Framework: finally, a smart laptop design!
- Gorgeous spiral galaxy NGC 7331
- One of the strongest parts of our American tradition
- The inner ring of NGC 1097
- Loving our country: One set of laws that apply to everyone
- Yoriko, the Asian sheepshead wrasse with a human BFF
- Interesting perspective on electric vehicles
- Loving our country: Politics … "It's not normal"
- Loving our country: Memorial Day
- To Scale: TIME
- The Water Bear, a most fascinating creature
- AI can quickly crack most passwords
- Spanish Dancer
- AI machines aren't 'hallucinating'. But their makers are
- Confuse, defend, and downplay
- Loving our country: The personal toll of today's America
- Living in a way that protects and enhances life
- White Clouds and Crimson Trees puzzle
- Cosmic majesty
- The miracle that disrupts order
- When we can't know whether we can trust what we see
- Restorative justice
- Ruby Bridges
- Fear is not freedom! Fear is not liberty! Fear is control!
- Guns Don't Kill People, Americans Kill People
- The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic
- Climate protests by older Americans (TH!RD ACT)
- We are fighting for human rights, for women's rights
- Monopolies really suck
- Loving our country: The right to vote
- Loving our country: We care, and we love our fellow humans
- The cynicism of foxes towards their laying hens
- Calligraphy by Kawao Tomoko
- Bing's ChatGPT: Answers are just the beginning
- An increasing sense of both anger and apprehension
- Some good news about renewables
- Teach the Truth!
- Disconnecting … and reconnecting to value
- We've been greenwashed out of our senses
- The Quiet Profundity of Everyday Awe
- Does free will violate the laws of physics?
2022
- An amazing raven
- The gorgeous Messier 88 galaxy
- WTF was Apple thinking?
- "We've Lost the Line!" The Trauma of Jan. 6
- Native American food and land management
- The Incredible Lightness of Quitting Twitter
- To Twitter or not to Twitter
- A kernel of good news
- Shun Amazon! continued
- Our beautiful sun
- Emmit J. McHenry – the creator of .com
- Protostar
- Who speaks for Earth? We must act now!
- Sculptures in the eye of a needle
- One ocean
- Our beautiful home
- Taiwan, the Republic of China
- It was like an apocalyptic movie
- Sheru (Lion)
- A disappointment: Google Android Pixel
- Young Ukrainians rebuilding homes and hope
- Turning glass back into sand
- How green are biofuels?
- A dance of two galaxies
- A whole generation revolts
- Western Forests, Snowpack and Wildfires
- 1.2°F warmer than average
- Splendorous spiral galaxy NGC 7331
- We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union…
- COVID: Brain fog isn't like a hangover or depression
- Inside Ukraine's fight for survival
- The left is learning to love the military
- Live with the truth
- Contrails, chemtrails, and climate change
- A powerful illustration of the climate heating catastrophe
- The Spinning Pulsar of the Crab Nebula
- Pastificio heirloom wheat pasta
- The other Ukrainian army
- I have hope for humankind
- The Starburst Galaxy
- Solastalgia
- I really like crows!
- A bit of hopeful environmental news
- Actually good news about voting for a change
- Thank goodness!
- The land of the free?
- Tulsa Burning
- White Hot Hate
- Coping with the chronic stress of our times
- Meta-Fucking Facebook
- Celebrating Juneteenth
- The precarious future of democracy
- Elon Musk's questionable behavior
- Is LaMDA Sentient?
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- A lust for political power
- Acting with dignity and conviction
- Shame on US
- A brilliant commencement speech
- The faces from China's Uyghur detention camps
- Embrace inclusivity and diversity
- Heroes and villains in The Big Conn
- Thank you, Mrs. LaVern
- An inspiring commencement speech
- Here's how Americans can fight back to protect abortion rights
- The Power of Big Oil
- Straight talk
- Garry Kasparov: Stand with Ukraine in the fight against evil
- Washi Transformed: New Expressions in Japanese Paper
- Peculiar spiral galaxy Arp 78
- My heart is with the people of Ukraine
- Record solar prominence imaged by Solar Orbiter
- A moment of paradigm shift
- Cosmic Grace
- Ikebana ("living flowers")
- Paramedics Debunk 12 First Aid Myths
- Facebook Has a Superuser-Supremacy Problem
- First a pizza joint, now … a butterfly center?!
- Legitimate political discourse
- Black History, Black Freedom & Black Love
- The original abstract artist
- The psychology of misinformation
- Sfoglini Whole Grain Blend Reginetti
- Live Like the Ancient Cynics
- We live in this neighborhood!
- They chose a different path
- The new Cosmic Crisp apple
2021
- Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time
- The Butterfly Nebula
- The epidemiology of abortion
- Understanding inflation
- Particulate peril
- Our beautiful universe
- Insights on Long COVID
- Thank you, healthcare workers!
- The potential of harnessing local wind energy
- The vaccine breaks the chain of transmission
- One of history's fateful moments
- A COVID Serenity Prayer
- Facebook … a hostile foreign power
- Ivermectin
- Letters from an American
- Saturn night side
- A program of human betterment for all time
- The Southwest's most important river is drying up
- COVID vaccine: what we know about immunity
- Mona Lisa is Missing
- The Phantom Galaxy
- An iconic moment
- Voice Above Water
- Fire season is not fun
- Why I'm still wearing a mask
- Waiting to be arrested
- Mass infection is not an option
- It's up to all of us
- Orion Nebula: The Hubble View
- Generational amnesia
- Cancel Prime
- Three Transgender Kids Share Their Stories
- A galactic powerhouse
- The Fundamental Question of the Pandemic Is Shifting
- What America's racial reckoning can learn from Germany's atonement with the Holocaust
- This virus is more likely to be a product of nature than a product of a laboratory
- Coping with pandemic numbers
- Why Confederate Lies Live On
- 'I'd Never Been Involved in Anything as Secret as This'
- The Blue Marble
- Reflections on the guilty verdict
- A scientist's unwavering belief in mRNA
- Walking by a Mountain Stream
- #BoulderStrong
- Most honey bees are very gentle
- How I Lost My Mom To QAnon
- How were the COVID-19 vaccines developed so quickly?
- Incarceration in Real Numbers
- Create Escape
- The Secret Life of a Coronavirus
- Bats and the Origin of Outbreaks
- Inside a Covid I.C.U., Through a Nurse's Eyes
- A world large enough …
- Raven and the Box of daylight
- A fresh way of looking at our world
- The moments that could have accidentally ended humanity
- The curious observer's guide to quantum mechanics
- Harriet
- Finally, the stock market explained
- 10 golden rules for tree-planting
- May this be the story that inspires us
- The power to protect the guilty
- A moment of grace
- Four Hours of Insurrection
- Nikole Hannah Jones
2020
- Rumble Strip: Surviving COVID, a Fever Dream
- As American as apple pie
- Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine
- The never-ending mission of forming a more perfect union
- Walk through walls!
- COVID-19 vaccines: We still need be smart!
- Global population density graphic
- Black Women Did That
- AlphaGo - The Movie
- How the coronavirus is spread through the air
- We Should All Be Feminists
- Inside the Fall of the CDC
- To Mend a Broken Internet, Create Online Parks
- What Does LGBTQ+ Mean?
Jun 2023 heading update: What Does 2SLGBTQIA+ Mean? - This is my message to the western world
- Mi-chan's Sweets Factory
- Shun Amazon!
- Just wanna make sure everyone understands
- How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- The Colorado Orange Apple
- In the grand scale of things …
- Unconscionable
- For the First Time, America May Have an Anti-Racist Majority
- Anger Can Build a Better World
- We're Doing Elections Wrong
- Bisa Butler, Storyteller
- It is what it is
- He didn't come to my inauguration
- What should exist
- John Lewis
- The hope of the world is the individual that cares
- 10 Ways To Reduce Our Reliance On Policing And Make Our Communities Safer For Everyone
- Black Print
- Thank you, moms!
- We're all just normal people who think what's happening is wrong
- Representative John Lewis
- The woman who swims with sharks
- Freedom House Ambulance Service
- This town of 170,000 replaced some cops with medics and mental health workers. It's worked for over 30 years
- Black Lives Matter: one of the finest examples of patriotism in modern America
- These are true patriots
- Catastrophic failure of leadership
- My Body Is a Confederate Monument
- White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
- What is owed
- Our monuments are representations of myth, not fact
- Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man
- Juneteenth and the Meaning of Freedom
- Dark Waters
- The Camden Policing Model
- The city that disbanded its police force
- These are the ordinary things they were doing when they were killed by police
- Isn't that public safety?
- Engage in the long, faithful work
- The Liberation of RNA
- America, Racism & Patterns of Change
- The ultimate measure
- How can we win
- Nina, a stunningly beautiful podcast
- The American Nightmare
- I will always stand on the side of the egg
- We all committed our lives to the idea that is America
- Listening to more black voices: One time i got pulled over
- Equal Justice Under Law
- Who will we become?
- We cannot remain silent
- Listening to Black Voices
- A day in the ER battling COVID-19
- Planet of the Humans
- Letters from an American (continued)
- What Do Machine Learning and Hunter-Gatherer Children Have in Common?
- The case for cities that aren't dystopian surveillance states
- The Story of Us, continued
- Hubble's first gift of 2020
- The Big One podcast
- Tell Them, I Am podcast
2019
- The Bear Man by Rumble Strip
- Letters from an American
- The Buddha of Oakland
- Until the End of the World
- Saturn, June 2019
- The 1619 Project
- The Story of Us
- Jupiter, June 2019
- Complete Milky Way perspective
- Design Principles compiled by Jeremy Keith
- A Very Brief History of Mathematics
- Tokyo subway's humble duct-tape typographer
- 44 African Americans Who Shook Up the World
- Warming Stripes for Colorado from 1895-2018
- How language shapes the way we think
- Photographing fungi
- One Breath Around The World
- Is The Great Wave off Kanagawa a realistic depiction?
- Why forgetting may make your mind more efficient
- The HU: Mongolian New Hunnu Rock
2018
- Incredible sculptures by Penny Hardy
- Finally, an internet Bill of Rights proposal
- Ten Years After the Crash, We've Learned Nothing
- Why the President Must Be Impeached
- One of Those Teachers
- Bundyville (podcast)
- Who Milks America's Cows?
- A better rice farming method
- They paved paradise? Screw them!
- Is America on the Verge of a Constitutional Crisis?
- A Better Way to Look at Most Every Political Issue
- Hywind Scotland: world's first floating wind farm
- Principles of Adult Behavior
- Don't Panic!
- Only the Brave
- Using technology versus being used by it
- Monumental trees
- The Galaxy Next Door – Andromeda
2017
- Stay Tuned with Preet
- A Tribute to An Improbable Tea Party Friend
- Fixing Data Breaches
- Katie Paterson Future Library
- Seven Deadly Sins of AI Predictions
- As an airman and a human being
- Making life multiplanetary
- Introverts unite!
- A Short Trip
- The man who built a Chinese utopia
- Perspective
- How can a conflicted observer find clarity?
- Well this explains a lot!
- Lichens
- Discovering something new: wine-barrel-aged coffee!
- Are our clothes polluting the ocean?
- Jupiter
- What the brain's wiring looks like
- Are you forgetful?
- The Photo Ark by Joel Sartore
- We are better together than we are apart
- Patriots Day film
- Cassini's Grand Finale
- To save money, coal museum turns to solar panels
- NASA Image and Video Library
- Riding Up Front
- GPS navigation turns off part of the brain
- Innovative house building technique
- Statue of girl stares down Wall Street bull
- What is wrong with this picture?
- Our Neighbor
- A patriotic American speaks out
- Behind the scenes defending KrebsOnSecurity
2016
- My new favorite animal!
- How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul
- Who is Dayani Cristal?
- The neuroscience behind bad decisions
- Are we ready to wake up yet?
- From tree to shining tree
- There's no such thing as free will
- Lichen is even more magical than we thought
- "Our city, our country is better than that!"
- Brexit: The failure of the western establishment
- Love (re: the tragedy in Orlando)
- Rumble Strip Vermont hosted by Erica Heilman
- How technology hijacks people's minds
- The insect portraits of Levon Biss
- Funny thing about this reality we think we live in
- How the free internet is eating itself
- Your brain sees things that you don't
- What is life? Is death real?
- Martin Molin's crazy wonderful music machine
- Can you read my lips?
- Snow Art by Simon Beck
- The open-office trap
2015
- Home of the Brave by Scott Carrier
- 3D printed digital sundial
- WTF? On the origins of corporate evil—and idiocy
- The sky is falling … or not
- Thermonuclear Art – The Sun in Ultra-HD Video
- Our solar system to scale
- Boundaries?
- Two friends and the longest selfie stick around
- How the Hubble Space Telescope's stunning colour images are created
- Everything Is Yours, Everything Is Not Yours
- Kosticks puzzle
- What is Code? by Paul Ford
- The media as puppets of the government
- Web, the film
- The illusion of control
- Gravity Glue - Stone Balance by Michael Grab
- Keep Your Hat On! Stampede strings by Davie Leather and Braid
- "That's not passion to me. It's obsession."
- Chocolate chip cricket cookies?
- The emotional truth of the situation – interpreted by Adam Curtis
- What are those floaty things in your eye? by Michael Mauser
- Under the Dome by Chai Jing
- Procida, Italy
- Seeing reality as it is?
- There's no morality in exercise
- A Self-Help Book by Chris Thomas
- Smog Journeys: a short film by Jia Zhangke
- Be My Eyes
- Invisibilia: Can a blind person see?
- The Internet's Own Boy
- New power is fast—but it is also fickle
2014
- The threat of coral disappearing can seem so abstract …
- Brad Sloan, photographer, Oregon
- Winged Migration
- "If another nation was doing this to our kids, we'd be at war"
- Visiting the South Pole with Werner Herzog
- Hiking with a camera
- Making a great camera even better
- A camera packed full … but not with rain, dust, or ice
- Levitated Mass by Michael Heizer
- Sauna on an island in Canada
- Top 100 Hubble images
- Psychedelic plants: The inner beauty of common species
- Laniakea: Our home supercluster
- Even when you're scared to death
- Particle Fever
- Farewell Maya Angelou
- The internet with a human face
- Deep sea diving in a wheelchair
- Fifty shades of gay
- A color swatch book from 1692
- Stanford study finds walking improves creativity
- The way we think about charity is dead wrong
- Who is dependent on welfare?
2013
- Does money make you mean?
- Libraries are the most important public buildings
- 500 Days Alaska to Argentina - The Modern Motorcycle Diaries
- Is Chris Hadfield the most awesome astronaut ever?
- Saving Valentina
- A Boy and His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie
- Is Google Maps changing our behavior?
- Frozen lighthouse on Lake Michigan
- Cage free and free range sound good, but …
- Evolution door
- The Birth Of A Tool: Damascus steel knife making
- We have lost our republic
- We need schools, not factories
- Neil Harbisson is a cyborg
- NASA: Fiery Looping Rain on the Sun
- Sublime artisans of the geometric
- Amazing pano of London from the BT Tower
- Lana Wachowski's HRC Visibility award acceptance speech
- Texting is fingered speech
2012
- NASA: 2012 Venus transit of the Sun
- Taking the sting out of shots
- Plastic bulb development promises better quality light
- Isaac Newton vs. Rube Goldberg
- Linotype: The film
- A very cool hat
- Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds
- What the octopus can teach us about national security
- Jiro Dreams of Sushi
- The myth of the 8-hour sleep
- NASA: Blue Marble - Eastern Hemisphere
- NASA: Blue Marble - Western Hemisphere
- The Hobbit House
- Realistic paintings of fruit by Dennis Wojtkiewicz
- NASA: A lunar eclipse
- The Tree Mother of Africa
- A real person, a lot like you
- Say something nice
- Incredible shade illusion
- Unintended consequences
- The most awkward 404 Not Found page on the internet
- Hubble Ultra-Deep Field
