Searching for contentment
In the fragrance of freshly worked wood⩘
The soft glow cast by shoji lamps⩘
The inspiration of good reads⩘
My heart is with the people of Ukraine
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.
Larger version of these photos⩘
More recent photos⩘
Reading
Francesca Albanese, When the World Sleeps: Stories, Words, and Wounds of Palestine
Translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti; very well narrated by Lameece Issaq
Francesca Albanese is someone I greatly admire for her clear vision reporting on the situation in Palestine in her role as UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 2022, her commitment to telling the truth, and her unwavering courage, especially in the face of organizations, politicians, and countries who have been trying desperately to silence her.
I am the eighth person, and first woman, to serve as the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967. Though the work is pro bono, the mandate is demanding.
In this role, as one among more than fifty UN independent experts (the crown jewel of the UN, as late UN secretary-general Kofi Annan used to call us), I strive to embody what Said modeled: a truthful witness. Impartiality does not mean indifference; it means investigating rigorously, judging facts against the law, and speaking truth to power – even when it's inconvenient. In Palestine, this entails exposing the deep asymmetry between occupier and occupied, colonizer and colonized, and showing how decades of dispossession have been normalized by an international community that is unwilling to act.
This powerful book she has written shares the stories of ten people who provide clarity about Palestine. She shares the firsthand experience of several Palestinians who have been witnessing and experiencing the genocide and colonial oppression, as well as several over people who provide deep context.
AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS BOOK I said that I had chosen ten people as the focal point for my stories, since from each of them I learned something essential about Palestine. The first is Hind; the second is Abu Hassan; the third is George; the fourth is Alon; the fifth is Ingrid; the sixth is Ghassan; the seventh is Eyal; the eighth is Malak; the ninth is Gabor.
The tenth is Max. My life partner, the person with whom I set foot for the first time in Palestine and the one with whom, three years later, I decided to leave Palestine. But Palestine is like that: You can also choose to leave it, but for those who have been there, have seen it and experienced it, it will not be the one who leaves you. My life is proof of this.
Despite the horrors of genocide and colonial oppression that the people of Palestine are suffering and that Albanese has been bearing witness to, she maintains an optimistic outlook.
I strongly believe in the possibility of coming together as a human family, rediscovering the true and profound meaning of solidarity.
If there is one lesson I carry with me, it is this: standing together with courage, even against entrenched power, makes change not only possible, but inevitable.
I appreciate the insights and wisdom she shares of several Jewish and Jewish Israeli scholars and experts who are colleagues and friends.
I also very much appreciate the chapter, "ALON: How do you recognize anti-semitism?
TODAY MORE THAN EVER, when Palestinians and those who defend them are accused of anti-Semitism, we must understand what is meant by anti-Semitism and what dangers can derive from the misuse of this term.
It is crucial to understand the answer to this question, especially now when many people, politicians, organizations, and governments who support Israel's actions are accusing people who criticize Israel's actions of being anti-Semitic.
And I appreciate the glimpse of what the future might look like that she shares.
What might that future look like? Though any long-term solution will need to be decided upon by Israelis and Palestinians themselves, I can say with confidence that a lasting peace will require sacrifice from everyone, most of all from Israelis—not of their rights as human beings, to live in peace, security, and dignity with their neighbors, but of their privileges as citizens of a settler colony built on the denial of indigenous self-determination. True peace can only be built on equality and freedom for all, grounded in a vision of universal justice that affords equal rights and responsibilities to all, regardless of their race or nationality.
Not to betray [author Edward] Said’s message, I resolutely include the Israelis in this rehumanizing discourse. Like the Palestinians, they are part of an anachronistic settler-colonial endeavor, of course with unequal responsibilities and suffering. Ending Jewish Israeli domination will be a rehumanizing act. No one can oppress and brutalize others without themselves experiencing a loss of humanity in the process.
And meanwhile, one thing is for certain: This future will be made possible only by the work we do today. What matters now is that the current injustice is stopped immediately and further injustice is prevented; it is up to us, international civil society, lawyers, students, and citizens of the world, to take responsibility and use our voices to demand our governments meet their obligations and protect the multilateral international order that is threatened now more than ever.
When the world sleeps, it falls on us, we the people, to wake it up—and now more than ever the world needs an awakening.
Other Press, 2026; via Apple Books⩘ ; audiobook: Blackstone Publishing; Libro.fm⩘ .
More of this reflection⩘
More recent reading⩘
'There's this deep mystery of what, actually, is this thing?'
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
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
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.
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⩘
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Value 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:
Keystones: Respect, compassion, empathy, acceptance. We're all in this together.
