The Curious Engineer

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Joshua Spodek

joshuaspodek.com

Sustainable change through personal change

Essays / personalSociety / politics / economyEngineering management / careers

’10’15’20’25
Posts
5,893 from 12 Feb 2008 to 7 Nov 2026
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about daily (376 in the last year)
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personal blog
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Latest

November 2026

  1. Staggeringly beautiful rainbow yesterday
  2. The most macabre garbage I’ve found yet in Washington Square Park
  3. November 5: First Christmas Decorations
  4. Leadership as play: A new model?
  5. Succeeding to plan is planning to succeed
  6. My lightning (3-minute) talk at Columbia Business School
  7. This week’s selected media, October 31, 2026: The Words That Made Us, Brandenburg Concertos

October 2026

  1. When I hear “psychedelics” I think “how about starting with solitude in nature?”
  2. Which do you consider the greater problem: psychopaths and narcissists or necessary resources that can be controlled with no alternative?
  3. They’re not promoting sexism that hurts women. They’re promoting addiction that hurts men.
  4. The deeper meaning of “No taxation without representation”
  5. More Sunday donations revealing how much stuff people throw away, often brand new
  6. Hear me on the Solve For Nature Podcast for its 100th episode with host Eugene Bible
  7. This week’s selected media, October 25, 2026: Unforgiven, the latest What Is Politics, One-hour documentaries on Washington, Hamilton, John Adams, and Mandela
  8. Thoughts on patrolling with an MBA
  9. Do YIMBY people want in their back yards sanitation plants, drug treatment centers, and such, or only profitable things?
  10. What it feels like when people ask if I still don’t fly and if I’m still off the grid
  11. Might the Squamish nation pollute and deplete the most per capita in the world?
  12. Treating pollution as an externality misses the point
  13. Hear me on Christopher Ryan’s podcast
  14. This week’s selected media, October 18, 2026: Corruptible, Rocky
  15. National Security Exercise
  16. Why should America act if other nations don’t?
  17. More casual trashing of an otherwise pleasant residential neighborhood
  18. It’s harder to lead people to change to stop violating their values
  19. 863: Robert Parkinson: Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence
  20. How progressives and environmentalists calling my actions extreme undermines their work
  21. 862: Andrew Levy: A role model for today: Robert Carter III freed more slaves than any other American
  22. This week’s selected media, October 11, 2026: Blitzed, Seymour: An Introduction, Privilege, Propublica on PFAS
  23. The end of a volunteering era for me?
  24. More of what I’m doing when I’m working on my book
  25. How you can tell when you dehumanize your opponents and why I work against polarization and isolation
  26. A response to people with claimed feigned ignorance that their pollution pollutes and depletion depletes
  27. 861: Cara Judea Alhadeff, part 1: Actually acting, the joys we feel, and the friction we face
  28. I counted how many breaths I take while meditating
  29. This week’s selected media, October 4, 2026: Tonight in Jungle Land, Revolution, The Law, Taxi Driver
  30. A description of my book Initiative
  31. How our society treats a building’s garden
  32. On Educating Kids: Who has more resources, you or a five year old?

September 2026

  1. Most of my challenges reveal market failures, not a difficult lifestyle
  2. A few post ideas that don’t make the cut for full posts
  3. The benefits of nearly two weeks of overcast skies: destressing
  4. This week’s selected media, September 27, 2026: Tyrants and Rogues
  5. What your browser could look like with no ads or suggested videos, especially on YouTube
  6. 860: Christopher Ryan, part 1: Civilized to Death
  7. Maps illustrating properties of dominance hierarchy
  8. A new commitment: sharing highlights of my upcoming book here
  9. If you carry your cell phone 24/7 “just in case” or “for emergencies”, why not fentanyl?
  10. Some notes from Climate Week NYC day 1
  11. This week’s selected media, September 20, 2026: Shadowlands, Remains of the Day, Silkwood, “It’s Only a Penis”
  12. Why saying “I’m going to meditate” is like saying “I’m going to play ball.”
  13. If slaves didn’t have a choice in being enslaved, did owners? Then do we to do what we do that harms others?
  14. A reader’s thoughtful comment on artificial intelligence
  15. Rich people eating in garbage
  16. Why do people consider Judeo-Christian religion and culture European?
  17. Visiting the 9/11 Museum
  18. This week’s selected media, September 13, 2026: The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams, Gates of Fire, Together Together, 12 Angry Men
  19. Should we amend the Constitution?
  20. How I have responded to September 11: Service
  21. The top results of knowing your priorities: More free time, saving resources, especially money
  22. Better to do nothing than to work on your third highest priority
  23. If you don’t know your priorities, you’re mostly moving away from what you care about most
  24. 859: Jack El-Hai: The Nazi, the Psychiatrist, Nuremberg, and Why to Find Humanity in Those We Call Monsters
  25. 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
  26. Robert Carter III officially began freeing his slaves 235 years ago today. We can extend even more freedom today if we choose.
  27. What I’m doing when I’m working on my book
  28. Another voice about environmentalism lacking vision
  29. Does environmentalism have a vision?
  30. The Left’s and environmentalists’ folly: “They don’t care”
  31. Fiji Water or Piss?

August 2026

  1. Did you know about the US Treaty of Tripoli in 1797?
  2. This week’s selected media, August 30, 2026: Civilized to Death, Vanishing New York
  3. The benefits of writing first thing in the morning
  4. Might I Be Wrong About Artificial Intelligence? How Wrong Could I Be?
  5. Is peace possible when nations deplete?
  6. Another summer without air conditioning: 5 nights I woke up sweating. Hardly torture.
  7. Have I found the core of my book?
  8. 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.
  9. 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
  10. More of my park visit besides where they mugged me
  11. Another spot where a bike was stolen from me when I was a kid
  12. One of the spots where I was mugged for a bike when I was a kid
  13. The Joy in Worthy Struggle
  14. Extreme Thoughts on Artificial Intelligence
  15. Externalities versus violations of the Constitution
  16. This week’s selected media, August 16, 2023: The Gates of Fire, Nuremberg, the Eternal Jew
  17. 858: Beth Bailey, the great-grandmother influencer leading the cleaning of Mérida, Mexico
  18. Environmentalists promote education, especially of children, distracting from effectiveness, part 2
  19. Environmentalists promote education, especially of children, but it mostly delays action
  20. Some writing challenges
  21. Volunteer Discipline
  22. Heartbreaking: A seventh grade teacher on parents supporting students cheating with artificial intelligence
  23. This week’s selected resources, August 9, 2026: Superabundance (again), The Nazi And The Psychiatrist, Locke and property papers, Quaker history
  24. Do we want diverse groups dominating and oppressing other diverse groups or to stop domination and oppression?
  25. How I read books I disagree with
  26. A surprisingly effective trick to use my phone less
  27. If we want an energy transition we don’t need more so-called “renewable”. We need less fossil fuels, which we aren’t doing.
  28. 857: Kim Stanley Robinson: Science fiction writing and leadership
  29. Syringes on a Sunday afternoon, following doof on a Sunday morning
  30. This week’s selected media, August 2, 2026: Ultimate Resource 2, Melania
  31. Submedia coverage from a quarter century ago

July 2026

  1. They say “Writing is rewriting.” I sure am writing a lot.
  2. My favorite phone app that saves the battery and connects me with people and community
  3. 856: David Jenkins, President of Conservatives for Responsible Stewardship
  4. Sunday’s donations reveal how much stuff people throw away, often brand new
  5. “There is no place that I’d rather be,” I thought, until the ATV and used diaper
  6. This week’s selected media, July 26, 2026: Goliath’s Curse
  7. People call cities noisy and dirty, but suburbanites create the noise and mess
  8. Why environmentalists lose and how they can win
  9. America’s largest release of radioactive waste wasn’t Three Mile Island. It was Church Rock, mainly affecting the Navajo Nation
  10. Elon Musk says “Those without children lack a stake in the future” but lives the opposite.
  11. Slippery double standards about harming people
  12. How we view the suffering we cause others today versus 200 years ago
  13. This week’s selected media, July 19, 2026: Washington: A Life, The Real Dawn of Everything videos, The Odyssey
  14. Doof: when you bought it you consumed it
  15. Women-Founded Garbage
  16. Environmentalists: Are you proud that to get back at BP, you don’t stop buying their products?
  17. More conservatives promoting socialism
  18. Secret video of Beth picking up litter goes viral in Mexico
  19. I found a paper I coauthored on Wikipedia
  20. This week’s selected media, July 12, 2026: New York 2140, George Washington documentaries
  21. Documentaries about George Washington: I am embarrassed as an American to have learned so little so far about him, but am rectifying the gaffe.
  22. Can the Constitution Save the Planet?: A professor of environmental law’s view, part 1
  23. 855: Peter DeCarlo PhD: Shocking Cancer Alley research from the scientist who did it
  24. Last week’s heat wave, air conditioning, and fragile, entitled people
  25. The replication crisis in science and religion
  26. Recent peer-reviewed research that when people live as I do, they prefer it and don’t want to go back
  27. This week’s selected media, July 5, 2026: Four Horsemen, Daredevil: Born Again, Young Washington, Jackass: Best and Last
  28. Some notes on 1776
  29. 854: John Perkins, part 2: New Book Preview: The Art of the Steal (and restoring American ideals)
  30. Why I avoid polluting and depleting
  31. Beyond no electric bill: Money returned from allegedly fraudulent overbilling
  32. Environmentalists fund pollution and depletion

June 2026

  1. Lifting: not always progress
  2. This week’s selected media, June 28, 2026: Plastic Inc., Free to Be You and Me, Psychedelics, Friedemann
  3. Do you still believe in an “energy transition”? Learn Alice Friedemann’s research
  4. Letter to the World, version 2
  5. A curse of mastering personal leadership
  6. Do you believe Exxon and peers were wrong to sell and burn fossil fuels when they knew the results?
  7. A tragic comment the dean said about artificial intelligence at my 20 year business school reunion
  8. Reflections on my business school 20 year reunion
  9. This week’s selected media, June 14, 2026: The Machinery of Freedom, Twilo
  10. First we pave more land nearby and it’s no big deal…
  11. When did you last prepare a meal from scratch?
  12. Finally, a critic of Limits to Growth who may have actually read the book
  13. What do we do about past choices that ended up violating our values? Do we just give up? Wouldn’t you rather win?
  14. Letter to the World, version 1
  15. How to Win: OG Anunoby, Game 4 Knicks
  16. This week’s selected media, June 14, 2026: Progress, History of the World (semester 1)
  17. The 5 greatest flaws I see in environmentalism

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