Meta’s stock collapse revealed what I already knew — I quit Facebook, Instagram and every other property owned by what is now called Meta nearly two years ago. It was at the time a rash decision and at first many of my friends and family wondered where I had “gone.” Soon, though, the people who mattered “found” me. It…

My search for an acre of escape — It was the rock that caught my eye. Dappled with lichen and lighted by the afternoon sun, it appeared to be the perfect place for contemplation. …

This is the year to de-center your smartphone — For the sake of yourself and your country, it is time to get off your phone. Yes, I know you needed to see the latest inquiries into January 6th, the most recent QAnon theories, the debunking of those theories and then the debunking of the debunking. Then perhaps you’ll want…

The continuation of an occasional speculation — It was odd that the man who would restore George Washington to contemporary political American life had never before set foot in Mt. Vernon. Two things struck Robert Townsend Tonnelly as he paced the corridor outside the temporary ICU that had been set up in the parlor room. First the…

Part one of an occasional speculation — A few days before his first death, George Washington allowed himself one last mistake. A whiskey still had broken at the far end of one of his properties, compelling him to set forth before dawn in snow and sleet to oversee its repair. The storm grew stronger the farther he…

When death calls, keep the carbon cycle going — My father died recently. And then flowers came. “No flowers, please,” said the death announcement. A donation to a charity, instead, please. Still the flowers came. They were nice. They scented the room. They cheered me slightly. They made me think of the friends and family thoughtful enough to send…

If Google’s AI is sentient what is it doing next Friday? — Recently, a Google software engineer named Blake Lemoine posted an interview on Medium with an artificial intelligence called LaMDA. The dialogue struck many as uncannily human hinting perhaps at the emergence, for the first time, of a sentient AI. Others were doubtful, suggesting that Lemoine’s line of questioning was subjective…

What my dad taught me about writing, compassion, and a winning poker hand — My father, Harvey Roy Greenberg, who died on June 11th, 2022, was the kind of iconic Upper West Side New York psychiatrist and public intellectual that defined an era. He was so iconic that at one point he was turned into an actual icon — animated as a cartoon psychiatrist…

Every Father’s Day I ask myself this question — Forty-odd years ago, while aboard a fishing boat with my father on Long Island Sound, I felt a pull on my line like none I’d ever felt before. And then another. And another still. The wild world had hit my line with all its abundance. I reeled hard and with…