Every few years, somebody brings up President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning about the military-industrial complex. Almost immediately, the conversation goes off the rails. One side starts talking about secret meetings, hidden agendas, and elaborate conspiracies. The other side dismisses the entire discussion because they hear the word “conspiracy” and assume nothing worthwhile can come from…
Read MoreI saw something in downtown Amherst that should at least make people stop and ask some questions: red shirts, hammer-and-sickle imagery, Karl Marx on a banner, and people asking passersby, “Are you a communist?” This isn’t somebody doing an edgy college bit. The Revolutionary Communists of America openly describes itself as a revolutionary communist organization…
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I have spent enough time around computers to know that when somebody says there are bugs, they usually mean something inside the software has gone wrong. This time, the bugs were real. I had been asked to help tear down an old shed. The structure was infested, which was one of the reasons it needed…
Read MoreSometimes you buy a movie because you’ve always meant to watch it. Other times, you buy one because the price is right, and you know it’ll eventually come around in your collection. That’s exactly what happened with Paul. As I continue working backward through my iTunes library of more than 400 movies, Paul was the…
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Every once in a while, I make the mistake of stepping into a political discussion on social media. Most of the time, it reminds me why I don’t do it very often. The latest conversation started with a list of “warning signs” that people often associate with authoritarianism. Someone asked which political party those warning…
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Can I tighten up these articles? Absolutely. I can make them shorter. I can strip them down, clean them up, and measure every paragraph down to the millimeter of available text space. I can make each article deliver one clean point, remove every detour, and get the reader in and out as quickly as possible.…
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One of my longest-standing professional values can be summed up with a simple phrase: Never go fishing off the company pier. That principle can apply to customers, coworkers, professional contacts, gambling, relationships, and just about any other situation where personal decisions can become tangled up with how you earn your living. Recently, I picked up…
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One of the funniest things about working multiple gigs is how quickly people assume that every skill you have comes bundled together. Nope. That’s a different billable code. I drive rideshare. That means my job is to get you from Point A to Point B safely and efficiently. If we have a great conversation along…
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One of the great things about working rideshare and living the gig life is that you never run out of stories. Every day brings a new conversation, a new situation, or a new lesson about dealing with people. One situation that comes up from time to time is when passengers ask for recommendations. “Where should…
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Like a lot of people, I had already seen countless clips from The Menu on YouTube Shorts. One scene here, another scene there, and before long it felt like I had seen half the movie without ever actually sitting down and watching it from beginning to end. When Apple put it on sale for $4.99,…
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