Another World is Probable

I don’t work in AI, so I haven’t felt qualified to weigh in on Evan Hubinger’s post on X about the risks of AI. As a refresher, he’s a top safety researcher at Anthropic, and he said AI is advancing so quickly he...

I’m not a true crime or horror kind of gal. I don’t enjoyblood or guts or gore. I don’t derive pleasure from other people’s suffering so it was curious to me why a new friend sent me a podcast about the wreck of the...

It’s been interesting to see the public discourse around Dolly Parton’s death. As much as people are lamenting the loss of a great songwriter – she wrote around 3,000! – they’re mostly speaking about her kindness and...

Sometimes I get in a nihilistic mood and think it doesn’t really matter that I’m alive, that I exist. In the grand scheme of things, I’m a speck, a peon, a flash in the pan of life. Furthermore, I think of myself as...

I have a funny story to share since my last post. I wrote that I have a juicer that’s been languishing on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for months. I did all the right things, included all the right keywords...

If you’re on social media, you may have noticed that “whimsy” is trending. It’s become a thing where people share videos of themselves wearing long, flowing dresses and fairy wings while shopping for groceries. Or...

You can’t throw a rock without hearing someone or something say, “Be present. Stay in the moment.” It’s one of the most frequent pieces of advice. There are books about it. Courses. Practices. I, myself, have written...

I am charmed by an article I read in the Guardian recently about a fascinating discovery. Scientists detected a natural sugar found in raspberries in an enormous cloud of dust and gas that’s near the heart of the Milky...

Members of my spiritual community are at the age where they’re starting to die. It seems like every three months or so, someone passes away. Some people I’m closer to than others, but regardless, each death leaves an...

I keep thinking about the cycle of luck. If you take a snapshot of an event, it might initially seem like bad luck. But if you widen your lens, so to speak, that unlucky event can become lucky.

I’m finally watching The Wolf of Wall Street because I’m doing research for my next book. It’s safe to say the movie is a study of excess. The characters want more, more, more. More money, more power, more prestige...

I’m still entranced by Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and am thinking about how animacy/animism dovetails with a concept from philosopher Martin Buber. He wrote a book called I and Thou, which I haven’t read...

I can’t not talk about how Elon Musk is the world’s first trillionaire. He’s a trillionaire, but in the U.S., 47.9 million people lived in food-insecure households in 2024, the highest since 2014, according to the...

I planted a “fairy meadow” mix in a pot outside my front door and the first flowers to bloom are California bluebells. I am utterly enchanted by these royal blue, purple flowers. Is the fact I’m so enthralled a happy...

The other week, I had a conversation with a friend who told me instead of following conventional wisdom and keeping his part-time job to pay the bills, he devoted himself completely to his own business and went into...