Joshua Spodek
Sustainable change through personal change
Essays / personalSociety / politics / economyEngineering management / careers
- Posts
- 5,885 from 12 Feb 2008 to 30 Oct 2026
- Posting
- about daily (375 in the last year)
- Kind
- personal blog
- Feed
- https://joshuaspodek.com/feed
Latest
October 2026
- Which do you consider the greater problem: psychopaths and narcissists or necessary resources that can be controlled with no alternative?
- They’re not promoting sexism that hurts women. They’re promoting addiction that hurts men.
- The deeper meaning of “No taxation without representation”
- More Sunday donations revealing how much stuff people throw away, often brand new
- Hear me on the Solve For Nature Podcast for its 100th episode with host Eugene Bible
- This week’s selected media, October 25, 2026: Unforgiven, the latest What Is Politics, One-hour documentaries on Washington, Hamilton, John Adams, and Mandela
- Thoughts on patrolling with an MBA
- Do YIMBY people want in their back yards sanitation plants, drug treatment centers, and such, or only profitable things?
- What it feels like when people ask if I still don’t fly and if I’m still off the grid
- Might the Squamish nation pollute and deplete the most per capita in the world?
- Treating pollution as an externality misses the point
- Hear me on Christopher Ryan’s podcast
- This week’s selected media, October 18, 2026: Corruptible, Rocky
- National Security Exercise
- Why should America act if other nations don’t?
- More casual trashing of an otherwise pleasant residential neighborhood
- It’s harder to lead people to change to stop violating their values
- 863: Robert Parkinson: Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence
- How progressives and environmentalists calling my actions extreme undermines their work
- 862: Andrew Levy: A role model for today: Robert Carter III freed more slaves than any other American
- This week’s selected media, October 11, 2026: Blitzed, Seymour: An Introduction, Privilege, Propublica on PFAS
- The end of a volunteering era for me?
- More of what I’m doing when I’m working on my book
- How you can tell when you dehumanize your opponents and why I work against polarization and isolation
- A response to people with claimed feigned ignorance that their pollution pollutes and depletion depletes
- 861: Cara Judea Alhadeff, part 1: Actually acting, the joys we feel, and the friction we face
- I counted how many breaths I take while meditating
- This week’s selected media, October 4, 2026: Tonight in Jungle Land, Revolution, The Law, Taxi Driver
- A description of my book Initiative
- How our society treats a building’s garden
- On Educating Kids: Who has more resources, you or a five year old?
September 2026
- Most of my challenges reveal market failures, not a difficult lifestyle
- A few post ideas that don’t make the cut for full posts
- The benefits of nearly two weeks of overcast skies: destressing
- This week’s selected media, September 27, 2026: Tyrants and Rogues
- What your browser could look like with no ads or suggested videos, especially on YouTube
- 860: Christopher Ryan, part 1: Civilized to Death
- Maps illustrating properties of dominance hierarchy
- A new commitment: sharing highlights of my upcoming book here
- If you carry your cell phone 24/7 “just in case” or “for emergencies”, why not fentanyl?
- Some notes from Climate Week NYC day 1
- This week’s selected media, September 20, 2026: Shadowlands, Remains of the Day, Silkwood, “It’s Only a Penis”
- Why saying “I’m going to meditate” is like saying “I’m going to play ball.”
- If slaves didn’t have a choice in being enslaved, did owners? Then do we to do what we do that harms others?
- A reader’s thoughtful comment on artificial intelligence
- Rich people eating in garbage
- Why do people consider Judeo-Christian religion and culture European?
- Visiting the 9/11 Museum
- This week’s selected media, September 13, 2026: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Gates of Fire, Together Together, 12 Angry Men
- Should we amend the Constitution?
- How I have responded to September 11: Service
- The top results of knowing your priorities: More free time, saving resources, especially money
- Better to do nothing than to work on your third highest priority
- If you don’t know your priorities, you’re mostly moving away from what you care about most
- 859: Jack El-Hai: The Nazi, the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg, and Why to Find Humanity in Those We Call Monsters
- This week’s selected media, September 6, 2026: Play as a Foundation for Hunter-Gatherer Social Existence, Decline in Independent Activity, RIP Gloria Steinem, and some smaller articles
- Robert Carter III officially began freeing his slaves 235 years ago today. We can extend even more freedom today if we choose.
- What I’m doing when I’m working on my book
- Another voice about environmentalism lacking vision
- Does environmentalism have a vision?
- The Left’s and environmentalists’ folly: “They don’t care”
- Fiji Water or Piss?
August 2026
- Did you know about the US Treaty of Tripoli in 1797?
- This week’s selected media, August 30, 2026: Civilized to Death, Vanishing New York
- The benefits of writing first thing in the morning
- Might I Be Wrong About Artificial Intelligence? How Wrong Could I Be?
- Is peace possible when nations deplete?
- Another summer without air conditioning: 5 nights I woke up sweating. Hardly torture.
- Have I found the core of my book?
- Is the only way to reduce litter and garbage anywhere to overhaul American culture, maybe global? I guess we’ll have to do it then.
- This week’s selected media, August 23, 2026: The Once and Future World, The Case for a Debt Jubilee, Parents Keep Out, Thread of Liberty, American Leviathan
- More of my park visit besides where they mugged me
- Another spot where a bike was stolen from me when I was a kid
- One of the spots where I was mugged for a bike when I was a kid
- The Joy in Worthy Struggle
- Extreme Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence
- Externalities versus violations of the Constitution
- This week’s selected media, August 16, 2023: The Gates of Fire, Nuremberg, the Eternal Jew
- 858: Beth Bailey, the great-grandmother influencer leading the cleaning of Mérida, Mexico
- Environmentalists promote education, especially of children, distracting from effectiveness, part 2
- Environmentalists promote education, especially of children, but it mostly delays action
- Some writing challenges
- Volunteer Discipline
- Heartbreaking: A seventh grade teacher on parents supporting students cheating with artificial intelligence
- This week’s selected resources, August 9, 2026: Superabundance (again), The Nazi And The Psychiatrist, Locke and property papers, Quaker history
- Do we want diverse groups dominating and oppressing other diverse groups or to stop domination and oppression?
- How I read books I disagree with
- A surprisingly effective trick to use my phone less
- If we want an energy transition we don’t need more so-called “renewable”. We need less fossil fuels, which we aren’t doing.
- 857: Kim Stanley Robinson: Science fiction writing and leadership
- Syringes on a Sunday afternoon, following doof on a Sunday morning
- This week’s selected media, August 2, 2026: Ultimate Resource 2, Melania
- Submedia coverage from a quarter century ago
July 2026
- They say “Writing is rewriting.” I sure am writing a lot.
- My favorite phone app that saves the battery and connects me with people and community
- 856: David Jenkins, President of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship
- Sunday’s donations reveal how much stuff people throw away, often brand new
- “There is no place that I’d rather be,” I thought, until the ATV and used diaper
- This week’s selected media, July 26, 2026: Goliath’s Curse
- People call cities noisy and dirty, but suburbanites create the noise and mess
- Why environmentalists lose and how they can win
- America’s largest release of radioactive waste wasn’t Three Mile Island. It was Church Rock, mainly affecting the Navajo Nation
- Elon Musk says “Those without children lack a stake in the future” but lives the opposite.
- Slippery double standards about harming people
- How we view the suffering we cause others today versus 200 years ago
- This week’s selected media, July 19, 2026: Washington: A Life, The Real Dawn of Everything videos, The Odyssey
- Doof: when you bought it you consumed it
- Women-Founded Garbage
- Environmentalists: Are you proud that to get back at BP, you don’t stop buying their products?
- More conservatives promoting socialism
- Secret video of Beth picking up litter goes viral in Mexico
- I found a paper I coauthored on Wikipedia
- This week’s selected media, July 12, 2026: New York 2140, George Washington documentaries
- Documentaries about George Washington: I am embarrassed as an American to have learned so little so far about him, but am rectifying the gaffe.
- Can the Constitution Save the Planet?: A professor of environmental law’s view, part 1
- 855: Peter DeCarlo PhD: Shocking Cancer Alley research from the scientist who did it
- Last week’s heat wave, air conditioning, and fragile, entitled people
- The replication crisis in science and religion
- Recent peer-reviewed research that when people live as I do, they prefer it and don’t want to go back
- This week’s selected media, July 5, 2026: Four Horsemen, Daredevil: Born Again, Young Washington, Jackass: Best and Last
- Some notes on 1776
- 854: John Perkins, part 2: New Book Preview: The Art of the Steal (and restoring American ideals)
- Why I avoid polluting and depleting
- Beyond no electric bill: Money returned from allegedly fraudulent overbilling
- Environmentalists fund pollution and depletion
June 2026
- Lifting: not always progress
- This week’s selected media, June 28, 2026: Plastic Inc., Free to Be You and Me, Psychedelics, Friedemann
- Do you still believe in an “energy transition”? Learn Alice Friedemann’s research
- Letter to the World, version 2
- A curse of mastering personal leadership
- Do you believe Exxon and peers were wrong to sell and burn fossil fuels when they knew the results?
- A tragic comment the dean said about artificial intelligence at my 20 year business school reunion
- Reflections on my business school 20 year reunion
- This week’s selected media, June 14, 2026: The Machinery of Freedom, Twilo
- First we pave more land nearby and it’s no big deal…
- When did you last prepare a meal from scratch?
- Finally, a critic of Limits to Growth who may have actually read the book
- What do we do about past choices that ended up violating our values? Do we just give up? Wouldn’t you rather win?
- Letter to the World, version 1
- How to Win: OG Anunoby, Game 4 Knicks
- This week’s selected media, June 14, 2026: Progress, History of the World (semester 1)
- The 5 greatest flaws I see in environmentalism
- A silly post I couldn’t help posting
- 853: Kate Williams: CEO, 1% for the Planet
- “Are we running out of land for landfills?”: A Richard Feynman view from the 1986 Space Shuttle disaster
- Some of my favorite solo podcast episodes
- “Could Switzerland Become the First Country to Cap Its Population?” asks the New Yorker, and I comment.
- This week’s selected media, June 7, 2026: The Greatest Sentence Ever Written, Slavery–Summary on a Map,
- NYU’s president breaks NYU’s rules, to pollute and deplete of course
- More roots: an ancestor who worked with George Washington and on the Continental Congress
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