11 years, 2 month, and 13 days. Never forget: we stand upon the shoulders of giants. Beware little men who think themselves giants.

My most dearest:

Remember to always give credit where credit is due. In school, this means remember to provide proper citations for your quotes and paraphrases. At work, attribute ideas and contributions to appropriate contributors.

We exist not in a vacuum, dreaming up new ideas on our own, fashioning them from nothingness. No, we stand upon the shoulders of the giants who came before us and paved the way. The clay from which we form our thoughts consists of hard-worn efforts of our forebears.

Beware small-minded fools and dullards who think they are the source of enlightenment and knowledge flows from them. More importantly, beware the fool that stares back at you in the mirror.

I came across this great post (below) and wanted to share it with you. You should also check out from the public library the book Isaac Newton by James Gleick.

Enjoy!

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: The Story Behind Newton’s Famous Metaphor for How Knowledge Progresses

“Newton was so right about so many things,” cosmologist Janna Levin wrote in her magnificent meditation on madness and genius, “that it seems ungenerous to dwell on where he was wrong.” And yet in his day, even his most revolutionary rightness — especially his revolutionary rightness — was met with ungenerous opposition by his smaller-spirited peers. Chief among them was the English polymath Robert Hooke, whose famous rivalry with Newton resulted in humanity’s finest metaphor for how knowledge grows.

Science writer extraordinaire James Gleick, in his biographical masterwork Isaac Newton (public library), calls Hooke “Newton’s most enthusiastic antagonist,” his “goad, nemesis, tormentor, and victim.” Hooke, generally known for his curmudgeonly temperament and cynical disposition, reserved an especially caustic contempt for Newton, whose youthful genius aggrieved Hooke and aggravated his vain ego.

Where Hooke presented his ideas with unabashed hubris, Newton delivered his with humility — even if it was at times a false humility, for he too was a man animated by great ambition and in possession of a robust ego, it still stemmed from a hard realism about the fact that knowledge progresses not toward the definitive but toward the infinite.

Where Hooke bombastically proclaimed in his treatise on microscopes that “there is nothing so small, as to escape our inquiry,” Newton reported his own experiments on microscopy with the grounding caveat that the future would bring new instruments capable of magnifying four thousand times more powerfully, eventually making even the atom visible. Hooke, of course, was wrong and Newton right — something evidenced by our still-evolving understanding of matter five centuries later.

Newton’s humility sprang from an early and formative understanding of how knowledge builds upon itself, incrementally improving upon existing ideas until the cumulative adds up to the revolutionary. From a young age, he kept a commonplace book — a gift from his father, in which he copied passages from the books he read and supplemented them with extensive notes of his own, thus transmuting existing knowledge into original ideas. He named it his “Waste Book” — a testament to usefulness of useless knowledge and the combinatorial nature of creativity, or what his twentieth-century counterpart, Albert Einstein, would come to call “combinatory play.” This ability to originate by way of connection became the basic infrastructure of Newton’s mind — his singular superpower of perception.

Gleick writes:

When he observed the world it was as if he had an extra sense organ for peering into the frame or skeleton or wheels hidden beneath the surface of things. He sensed the understructure. His sight was enhanced, that is, by the geometry and calculus he had internalized. He made associations between seemingly disparate physical phenomena and across vast differences in scale. When he saw a tennis ball veer across the court at Cambridge, he also glimpsed invisible eddies in the air and linked them to eddies he had watched as a child in the rock-filled stream at Woolsthorpe. When one day he observed an air-pump at Christ’s College, creating a near vacuum in a jar of glass, he also saw what could not be seen, an invisible negative: that the reflection on the inside of the glass did not appear to change in any way. No one’s eyes are that sharp… He communed night and day with forms, forces, and spirits, some real and some imagined.

Hooke was different. The friction between the two men began even before Newton was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1672. The previous year, the Society, where Hooke was curator of experiments, asked for a demonstration of the reflecting telescope Newton had invented three years earlier — known today as a Newtonian telescope, this then-revolutionary optical device for astronomical observation was significantly smaller than the refracting telescope that preceded it and used two mirrors instead of a lens to form an image by reflecting light. The invention led Newton to develop an entire theory of colors (which would later inspire Goethe’s theory of color and emotion).

Hooke immediately pounced on Newton’s ideas, dismissing them as mere “hypothesis” — a term Newton found particularly offensive. Hooke also boasted in private correspondence with members of the Royal Society that he had invented an even smaller and more powerful telescope himself three years before Newton, but hadn’t bothered to actually build it on account of the Great Plague that ravaged London at the time.

Fifteen months after he was elected to the Royal Society, Newton decided to withdraw from public debate — the incessant obstructionism by Hooke and other critics, who still remained merely epistolary bullies he was yet to meet in person, had started to wear down his sanity. Gleick writes:

He had discovered a great truth of nature. He had proved it and been disputed. He had tried to show how science is grounded in concrete practice rather than grand theories. In chasing a shadow, he felt, he had sacrificed his tranquillity.

But the private rivalry persisted. In 1675, Hooke alleged to have discovered what we now know as diffraction — the way light bends around a sharp edge. At the time, the nature of light was a mystery — some, like Descartes, considered it a particle, while others, like Hooke, thought it the product of motion. Because if an obstacle like an edge could stand in light’s path and bend it, diffraction supported the motion model, implying that light is a wave rather than a particle. (Today, we know that light can be both a particle and a wave, depending on how we measure it.)

This development excited Newton but, his mind by now an enormous commonplace book of knowledge, he recalled having read about diffraction experiments by a French Jesuit theologist, who built upon earlier ideas by a Bolognese mathematician — long before Hooke claimed the invention. He similarly challenged Hooke’s claims to originality in other aspects of the properties of light, urging the Royal Society to “cast out what [Hooke] has borrowed from Des Cartes or others.”

This recognition of the incremental, combinatorial character of knowledge came naturally to Newton, but even though the invention of the Gutenberg press two centuries earlier embodied it perfectly, it was still radical at the time. Gleick writes:

The idea of knowledge as cumulative — a ladder, or a tower of stones, rising higher and higher — existed only as one possibility among many. For several hundred years, scholars of scholarship had considered that they might be like dwarves seeing farther by standing on the shoulders of giants, but they tended to believe more in rediscovery than in progress.

This notion was particularly infuriating to Hooke, who saw any connection of his ideas to earlier ones not as a natural function of how science progresses but as an affront to his originality. He hungered to be seen as a giant — not as a dwarf who stood on the shoulders of giants — but hid his egomaniacal impulses behind the pretense of deference. He assured Newton that he was uninterested in a feud, that their experiments “aim both at the same thing which is the Discovery of truth” and as “two hard-to-yield contenders,” they should be able to “both endure to hear objections.”

And so, in their epistolary sparring, Newton’s famous metaphor was born — between pats of politesse, he delivered his legendary slap. Calling Hooke a “true Philosophical spirit,” he invited him to sort out their differences in private correspondence rather the public debate. In a letter penned on February 5, 1675, Newton wrote:

What’s done before many witnesses is seldome without some further concern than that for truth: but what passes between friends in private usually deserves the name of consultation rather than contest, & so I hope it will prove between you & me.

[…]

What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders of Giants.

Hooke, who as far as it is known never replied, maintained an antagonistic attitude toward Newton for the remainder of his life. However vast his intellect may have been, he revealed himself as far from a giant, for it is the mark of a small spirit to hide behind one-directional criticism while fleeing from intelligent two-way discourse.

As for the metaphor itself, it too is a meta-testament to Newton’s point — although he popularized it and immortalized it in his iconic language, it originated at least five centuries earlier and underwent several transmutations, including a famous one in Robert Burton’s 1621 masterpiece The Anatomy to Melancholy.

Gleick considers how Newton’s famous proclamation frames his paradoxical life and immensely far-reaching legacy:

Isaac Newton said he had seen farther by standing on the shoulders of giants, but he did not believe it. He was born into a world of darkness, obscurity, and magic; led a strangely pure and obsessive life, lacking parents, lovers, and friends; quarreled bitterly with great men who crossed his path; veered at least once to the brink of madness; cloaked his work in secrecy; and yet discovered more of the essential core of human knowledge than anyone before or after. He was chief architect of the modern world. He answered the ancient philosophical riddles of light and motion, and he effectively discovered gravity. He showed how to predict the courses of heavenly bodies and so established our place in the cosmos. He made knowledge a thing of substance: quantitative and exact. He established principles, and they are called his laws.

Solitude was the essential part of his genius. As a youth he assimilated or rediscovered most of the mathematics known to humankind and then invented the calculus — the machinery by which the modern world understands change and flow — but kept this treasure to himself. He embraced his isolation through his productive years, devoting himself to the most secret of sciences, alchemy. He feared the light of exposure, shrank from criticism and controversy, and seldom published his work at all. Striving to decipher the riddles of the universe, he emulated the complex secrecy in which he saw them encoded…

“I don’t know what I may seem to the world,” he said before he died, “but, as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Gleick’s Isaac Newton (public library) remains not only one of the finest biographies ever written, but a foundational text for anyone seeking to understand how the modern world as we know it came into view. Complement it with Hegel on knowledge and the true task of the human mind.

https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/02/16/newton-standing-on-the-shoulders-of-giants/

11 years, 2 months, and 20 days. Help if you can, but do no harm if you cannot help.

My most dearest:

Too often, we unnecessarily over complicate life. I believe, truly, that it is as Robert Fulgrum entitled his book, All I Really Need to Know, I learned in Kindergaren.

Those lessons sit upon the bedrock of the lesson you learned from Teacher Mary in preschool: you are the boss of you and of nobody else. You have control over but yourself, not others, not life, not the circumstances in which you find yourselves.

Given these fundamental truths, be kind to others you encounter in the world. You never know what burdens they carry … just as no one knows the burden you carry for having our once happy family destroyed by those given to evil intentions.

If you can, always help those in need of your help. Be it purchasing a meal for the hungry, diapers for the poor baby, planting a community garden, or offering a smile or kind word to someone invisible or wishing he/she were invisible.

If you cannot help, do no harm. Do NOT make things worse.

Our fundamental human rights have both positive aspects (e.g., the right to basic necessities of life: to be free to make decisions over our bodies and our health, the right to honest work in exchange for fair pay, and the right to read or learn whatever we wish) and negative aspects (e.g., the right to be free of adverse interference by others: to not have our families interfered with by Busybody Bobs and Nosy Nancys, to not be forced to study the religions and dogmas of others, and to not be harmed on account of the color of our skin or the religion to which we subscribe).

Too often, paternalistic know-it-alls force their ideas upon us, pretending they know better. They know shit. For example, having never been shot, I cannot imagine the pain associated with being shot. However, having passed a kidney stone, I can tell you of the great suffering that entailed.

Only arrogant assholes pretend to know what they have never experienced. They may think they “know” in the abstract from readings, etc., however, that is but intellectual arrogance. One who has never tasted true love can quote Shakespeare until the Hale-Bop Comet returns, but his/her soul will remain as a shriveled seed until it is filled with true love and understanding of what it means to live for another.

It has been said that living is easy; it is living right that is hard. Yes and No. It is NOT hard in the complicated sense. Living right isn’t complicated. It IS hard in the sense of self-discipline. To do the right thing when all those in the peanut gallery encourage you to do otherwise can be challenging. We see this daily when the crowd mocks the Different — different in rags and second-hand attire, different in stinky home-cooked ethnic food brought for lunch, different in perspective on life, etc. — and people go along despite having internal reservations.

Living right is hard, but live right anyway. At the end of day, that is all that matters. That is the stuff from which your character is formed. That is the stuff no one can take from you no matter if they take your family, your home, your career, your freedom, or even your life.

The master of those given to evil and evil-intentions will reclaim what is rightfully his.

You worry not of them. Live right: help others and do no harm.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

11 years, 2 months, and 15 days. Think for yourselves. Don’t let others think for you.

My most dearest:

There is much beauty in the world … as there is much shit.

All that glitters is not gold. Beware talking heads trying to sell you false gold.

Think for yourselves and learn to differentiate between the two.

Worry not of labels and other shortcuts which belong in the province of the intellectually lazy. 30-second soundbites and 140-character lessons — once tools of infant education — now form the backbone of what passes as fruits of knowledge for the masses.

Beware of those who sell ignorance. Fall not for their lies or its false promise of convenience. Darkness lies in wait of those who choose that path.

As I’ve encouraged you since you were toddlers: read widely and voraciously. Look at old photos to remind yourselves of the many books I’d purchased on starfish, dinosaurs, excavators, etc., for your library when you were young, and how we read to you daily.

Knowledge is power. Don’t allow those who would ban books and limit your exposure to knowledge lie to your face and tell you it is for your own good. Those who tell you they are acting in your best interests rarely ever do. They hide their vile intentions behind false facades of goodness.

WATCH WHAT THEY DO!!! Too often, their actions belie their words.

The good ones — the diamonds and diamonds in the rough — waste few words. They expend their energies on doing good for others.

Read widely and voraciously. Always seek information from multiple sources as each is burdened by its biases. Think independently. Question assumptions and false cultural narratives. For example, too often, Western “civilization” corrupts traditional teachings based on honoring our humanity. Seek to understand. Reject convenient labels. Keep an open-mind. Be mindful of how little we know about our world and the lives of the individuals we come across. See, e.g.,

How tiger sharks wearing cameras revealed the world’s largest seagrass ecosystem

Between 2016 and 2020, a team of researchers fixed tags equipped with cameras onto tiger sharks so that they could view the ocean floor from a new perspective. The data they collected revealed what is the world’s largest known seagrass ecosystem, an area of up to 92,000 square kilometers (35,000 square miles) in the Bahamas. According to their study, published in 2022, this extends the total known global seagrass coverage by more than 40%.

https://edition.cnn.com/world/tiger-sharks-seagrass-ecosystem-climate-scn-c2e-spc/index.html

The true face of immigration

Baltimore was sleeping when the fully laden cargo ship, adrift and without power, slammed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, bringing it down in seconds.

Had the disaster taken place during the daytime, hundreds of cars and trucks could have been on the bridge over a channel leading to one of the busiest ports on the east coast. So it was a mercy it happened in the early hours, and that police got sufficient warning to stop vehicles from driving onto the bridge.

But the six people presumed dead from the tragedy couldn’t escape. They were maintenance workers — the kind of people few people notice but who do tough jobs through the night to keep the country running.

All of those missing were immigrants, outsiders who had come to the US from Mexico and Central America for a better life. Their stories and aspirations mirrored the lives of millions of new entrants to the United States. They are far more representative of the migrant population than the extreme and misleading picture often spouted about migrants by Donald Trump. The Republican presumptive nominee often falsely claims foreign countries are sending their “worst people” as a de-facto invasion force to the US. “Under Biden, other countries are emptying out their prisons, insane asylums, mental institutions, dumping everyone including mass numbers of terrorists into our country. They’re in our country now,” Trump said at a rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, ahead of the state’s presidential primary in January….

Often, migrants do jobs that other people don’t want to do – the ones with the lowest wages and the worst conditions. [Think about this: immigrants work long hours doing thankless jobs, like picking vegetables for our dinner tables and butchering chicken and beef for our consumption, yet rarely use the public benefits and services to which their tax dollars contribute.]

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/28/politics/baltimore-key-bridge-immigration-analysis/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc

Reserve judgement. Keep an open mind. Seek to understand.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

11 years, 2 months, and 7 days. Live right and fully: embrace not tepid lives.

One of John F. Kennedy’s favorite quotations, which he attributed to Dante, was that “The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.” Of course Dante never actually said that, but the sense of the statement is clearly to be found in these lines from the third canto of the Inferno. The final line of this passage, non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa emerged as a colloquialism in modern Italian, used in avoiding discussion of persons deemed unworthy of attention.

https://harpers.org/2010/10/dante-the-curse-on-those-who-do-nothing-in-the-face-of-evil/

Here sighs with lamentations and loud moans
Resounded through the air pierc’d by no star,
That e’en I wept at entering.  Various tongues,
Horrible languages, outcries of woe,
Accents of anger, voices deep and hoarse,
With hands together smote that swell’d the sounds,
Made up a tumult, that for ever whirls
Round through that air with solid darkness stain’d,
Like to the sand that in the whirlwind flies.

I then, with error yet encompass’d, cried:
“O master! What is this I hear? What race
Are these, who seem so overcome with woe?”

He thus to me: “This miserable fate
Suffer the wretched souls of those, who liv’d
Without or praise or blame, with that ill band
Of angels mix’d, who nor rebellious prov’d
Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves
Were only.  From his bounds Heaven drove them forth,
Not to impair his lustre, nor the depth
Of Hell receives them, lest th’ accursed tribe
Should glory thence with exultation vain.”

I then: “Master! what doth aggrieve them thus,
That they lament so loud?” He straight replied:
“That will I tell thee briefly. These of death
No hope may entertain: and their blind life
So meanly passes, that all other lots
They envy. Fame of them the world hath none,
Nor suffers; mercy and justice scorn them both.
Speak not of them, but look, and pass them by.”

And I, who straightway look’d, beheld a flag,
Which whirling ran around so rapidly,
That it no pause obtain’d: and following came
Such a long train of spirits, I should ne’er
Have thought, that death so many had despoil’d.

When some of these I recogniz’d, I saw
And knew the shade of him, who to base fear
Yielding, abjur’d his high estate.  Forthwith
I understood for certain this the tribe
Of those ill spirits both to God displeasing
And to his foes.  These wretches, who ne’er lived,
Went on in nakedness, and sorely stung
By wasps and hornets, which bedew’d their cheeks
With blood, that mix’d with tears dropp’d to their feet,
And by disgustful worms was gather’d there.

https://www.owleyes.org/text/dantes-inferno/read/canto-3#root-422362-1

My most dearest:

I beseech you: live a life worthy of yourselves. Do your best to live right and live fully. Engage in things of import to you — be it environmental protection, child development, or videophotography — no matter your skill level nor the critiques of those in the peanut galleries and the spectators in the arena of life.

Resist the temptation to rest on the sidelines with countless others, temporarily comforted by the convenience of their silence and neutrality. Hell has no use for them … neither does Heaven.

I wish I had engaged you in volunteerism while I was able and shared with you more of my experiences and lessons learned therefrom. You were too young, I foolishly thought. Now, that opportunity has been taken from us.

If you seek sagely advice on how best to live, you could do much worse than listen to the words of George Bernard Shaw:

A Splendid Torch

This is the true joy of life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

Or the advice of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

What is Success?

To win the respect of intelligent people
and the affection of children;

To earn the appreciation of honest critics
and endure the betrayal of false friends;

To appreciate beauty;
To find the best in others;

To leave the world a bit better, whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch
or a redeemed social condition;

To know even one life has breathed
easier because you have lived;

This is to have succeeded.

https://medium.com/@dennisnafte/what-is-success-dae5fe4bc410

Or the advice of Emily Dickinson:

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain;
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

https://www.thoughtco.com/emily-dickinson-quotes-p2-2831319

Live, my beloved. Embrace fully life and each moment it offers.

As we know from our bitter experience, those moments do not last.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

10 years, 11 months, and 30 days. A wise man differentiates between those sources that are trustworthy and those that are not. Fools believe everything anyone says. Be wise.

Harvard Guide to Using Sources: Evaluating Sources

From the many volumes and electronic resources that you have access to through the Harvard library system to the many resources available on the Web, finding information has never been easier. But at times, the sheer volume of information available to you can be overwhelming: How will you know which sources to rely on? How will you decide which sources are appropriate for a particular assignment? How can you determine if the data on a website is trustworthy? What’s the difference between what a peer-reviewed journal offers and what a website like Wikipedia offers?

https://usingsources.fas.harvard.edu/evaluating-sources-0

FAQ: How do I know if my sources are credible/reliable?

Short, simple how-to and demos of frequently asked questions about using the Libraries and information resources

What it means for a source to be credible/reliable can vary depending on the context of its use. Generally, a credible or reliable source is one that experts in your subject domain would agree is valid for your purposes. This can vary, so it is best to use one of the source evaluation methods that best fits your needs. Do remember that credibility is contextual!

It is important to critically evaluate sources because using credible/reliable sources makes you a more informed writer. Think about unreliable sources as pollutants to your credibility, if you include unreliable sources in your work, your work could lose credibility as a result.

Frameworks

There are certain frameworks that information professionals have put together to help people think critically about the information provided.

Some of the methods that UW Libraries suggest are:

5 W Questions (5Ws): This method means thinking critically about each of your sources by answering five questions to determine if the source is credible/reliable. The acceptable answers to these questions will vary depending on your needs. The questions are:

*Who is the author? (Authority)

*What is the purpose of the content? (Accuracy)

*Where is the content from? (Publisher)

*Why does the source exist? (Purpose and Objectivity)

*How does this source compare to others? (Determining What’s What)

SMART Check: This method is particularly good at evaluating newspaper sources. Like the 5Ws method it also involves answering critical questions about your source. The criteria are:

*Source: Who or what is the source?

*Motive: Why do they say what they do?

*Authority: Who wrote the story?

*Review: Is there anything included that jumps out as potentially untrue?

*Two-Source Test: How does it compare to another source?

CRAAP Test: This method provides you with a set of criteria that make a source more or less credible. The criteria are:

*Currency: Timeliness of the information

*Relevance: Importance of the information for your needs

*Authority: Source of the information

*Accuracy: Truthfulness and correctness of the information

*Purpose: Reason the information exists

https://guides.lib.uw.edu/research/faq/reliable

My most dearest children:

Happy New Year! I hope 2024 will bring us justice and the closure we seek as well as family unity.

I apologize for the long silence in between posts. Life has been most difficult since both you and Ms. L were taken. I cannot function to fight for justice for our family when I think about the loss of both you and my common-law wife since 2011. It is too much. Thus, I am forced to conserve my strength. I hope you understand. (My assumption is also that you are safe and happy — as much as possible under the circumstances — living with your other parent.)

With respect to today’s lesson, please be extremely careful about which sources you look to for information and what to repeat — with attribution, of course. (Note, for example, how I often include citations or links to evidence supporting my assertions here. It is a habit worth cultivating and reduces chances of the ugliness that befell the last president of Harvard and the wife of the accuser who started that train wreck.)

Recently, to adverse effect, someone asked another individual — who lives in countries where few Hispanics reside and who knows little about Hispanic food — what to do with leftover Hispanic food. Of course, the blind leading the blind lead to unnecessary spoilage and food wastage. 

It reminds me of the occasion when a kid — who was preparing for school interviews — sought advice from both me (who holds a doctorate in law and who had matriculated at top graduate programs in the U.S.) and a guy who has but a high school diploma and who once tried to teach me how the law actually works.

KNOW WHO TO ASK, WHO TO LISTEN TO, AND WHO TO QUOTE. It reflects poorly upon you when you repeat misinformation or seek information from low quality sources. It is akin to showing off a house you built not with quality bricks and materials, but shit you pick up without regards to quality, durability, reliability, or appropriateness for use.

Many who hear you may say nothing of your error, but will simply walk away and never invite you to their table again. Worse, they are likely to tell others to do likewise, thereby denying you of opportunities and friendships that you never even knew existed.

Be wise. Be super selective of the sources you would allow to add to your base of knowledge from which you build paradigms for living.

Be well. Be happy. Read widely and voraciously.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

10 years, 6 months, and 27 days. Knowledge is power. Anyone trying to keep information out of your hands does not have your best interests at heart, regardless of what they say. Period.

For the Love of God, Stop Microwaving Plastic

A study of baby-food containers shows that microwaving plastic releases millions upon millions of polymer bits.

AT THE START of his third year of graduate school, Kazi Albab Hussain became a father. As a new dad and a PhD student studying environmental nanotechnology, plastic was on his mind. The year before, scientists had discovered that plastic baby bottles shed millions of particles into formula, which infants end up swallowing (while also sucking on plastic bottle nipples). “At that time,” Hussain says, “I was purchasing many baby foods, and I was seeing that, even in baby foods, there are a lot of plastics.”

Hussain wanted to know how much was being released from the kinds of containers he’d been buying. So he went to the grocery store, picked up some baby food, and brought the empty containers back to his lab at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. In a study published in June in Environmental Science & Technology, Hussain and his colleagues reported that, when microwaved, these containers released millions of bits of plastic, called microplastics, and even tinier nanoplastics.

Plastics are complex cocktails of long chains of carbon, called polymers, mixed in with chemical additives, small molecules that help mold the polymers into their final shape and imbue them with resistance to oxidation, UV exposure, and other wear and tear. Microwaving delivers a double whammy: heat and hydrolysis, a chemical reaction through which bonds are broken by water molecules. All of these can cause a container to crack and shed tiny bits of itself as microplastics, nanoplastics, and leachates, toxic chemical components of the plastic.

The human health effects of plastic exposure are unclear, but scientists have suspected for years that they aren’t good. First, these particles are sneaky. Once they enter the body they coat themselves with proteins, slipping past the immune system incognito, “like Trojan horses,” says Trinity College Dublin chemistry professor John Boland, who was not involved in this study. Microplastics also collect a complex community of microbes, called the plastisphere, and transport them into the body.

Our kidneys remove waste, placing them on the front lines of exposure to contaminants. They are OK at filtering out the relatively larger microplastics, so we probably excrete a lot of those. But nanoplastics are small enough to slip across cell membranes and “make their way to places they shouldn’t,” Boland says.

“Microplastics are like plastic roughage: They get in, and they get expelled,” he adds. “But it’s quite likely that nanoplastics can be very toxic.”

Once they’ve snuck past the body’s defense systems, “the chemicals used in plastics hack hormones,” says Leonardo Trasande, a professor at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the director of the Center for the Investigation of Environmental Hazards. Hormones are signaling molecules underlying basically everything the body does, so these chemicals, called endocrine disruptors, have the potential to mess with everything from metabolism to sexual development and fertility.

“Babies are at greater risk from those contaminants than full-grown people,” Hussain says. So to test how much plastic babies are exposed to, Hussain’s team chose three baby-food containers available at a local grocery store: two polypropylene jars labeled “microwave-safe” according to US Food and Drug Administration regulations, and one reusable food pouch made of an unknown plastic.

They replaced the original contents of each container with two different liquids: deionized water and acetic acid. Respectively, these simulate watery foods like yogurt and acidic foods like oranges.

They then followed FDA guidelines to simulate three everyday scenarios using all three containers: storing food at room temperature, storing it in the refrigerator, and leaving it out in a hot room. They also microwaved the two polypropylene jars containers for three minutes on high. Then, for each container, they freeze-dried the remaining liquid and extracted the particles left behind.

For both kinds of fluids and polypropylene containers, the most microplastics and nanoplastics—up to 4.2 million and 1.2 billion particles per square centimeter of plastic, respectively—were shed during microwaving, relative to the other storage conditions they tested.

In general, they found that hotter storage temperatures cause more plastic particles to leak into food. For example, one polypropylene container released over 400,000 more microplastics per square centimeter after being left in a hot room than after being stored in a refrigerator (which still caused nearly 50,000 microplastics and 11.5 million nanoplastics per square centimeter to shed into the stored fluid). “I got terrified seeing the amount of microplastics under the microscope,” Hussain says.

https://www.wired.com/story/for-the-love-of-god-stop-microwaving-plastic/

My dearest children:

Once upon a time, society’s mantra was “Knowledge is power.” It is a wise sentiment offered by a wise man: Sir Francis Bacon. See, e.g., https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/francis-bacon/; and, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francis-Bacon-Viscount-Saint-Alban.

Today, there are those who would have you believe knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and they should be the keeper of knowledge, deciding for the rest of us what we should read, what ideas we should be exposed to, etc. One common example that had gained much traction these days is the banning of books from libraries and schools. They couch their arguments for book bans in terms of the protection of our children … as if some how parents are imbeciles and cannot determine for themselves what their children should read.

Beware those who would have them do the thinking for you. They NEVER have your best interests at heart. EVER.

Censorship benefits the censors. Always.

As I’ve long told you, our intellect is our greatest gift, tool, and weapon. Nurture it. Hone it. Sharpen it. Nourish it with quality material. It’s okay to take breaks and indulge in lighter fares like Ludlum novels or Harry Potter fantasies from time to time, but do try to maintain a steady diet the classics and the most recent discoveries or understanding as explained by reputable organizations or authors.

With few exceptions, avoid blogs and posts by everyman like the plague. By all means, use them for entertainment value, but not for substantive knowledge — again, unless the individual is learned and well-vetted by his/her peers IN THE PROFESSION.

Let me give you one example of this danger that lurks out there in the ethernet. I met a fellow. He’s a nice enough fellow and we get along just fine. But he is more of a fair-weather friend and not someone I turn to for any critical thinking or substantive conversation. Let me explain. The gentleman has a high school education and is an artist and martial artist. Despite my having a law degree, being licensed to practice law, and having been a practicing attorney for decades, and despite my having worked in both the legislative as well as judiciary branches of government, this fellow once tried to lecture me on the law, the differences between laws and policies, etc. He was wrong on almost all counts, yet he went on to find great success on social media where his legions of followers give him thousands of dollars each month to share with them his insights and knowledge.

Scary. Truly scary. It is the blind leading the blind, but not realizing they are blind.

Beware.

Love, always and forever,

Dad

10 years, 5 months, and 19 days. Two clarifications and a resume tip for job searches.

My most precious children:

I hope you are well and enjoying the warm days of summer. Remember to make time to get outside and enjoy nature and each other’s company. It won’t hurt you to deny yourself a couple hours of screentime to go explore.

Anyway, without further ado, let me get into the three clarifications that I’ve been meaning to make with respect to these posts.

First, you will note that in the earlier years, some posts are no more than titles. Those were the really dark days. At times, I could barely sit still and not scream myself hoarse. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t write. The pain of losing you was too raw. I couldn’t even bring myself to listen to the music on my laptop or look at pictures of our life together before the corrupt scums of the earth destroyed our family.

Second, in retrospect, at first blush, it appears some of my words of advice conflict. For example, at times it appeared I advised you to do you and not worry about the opinions of others while at other times, I appear to suggest you must try to be likeable as it is an important ingredient to success. The clarification goes to the latter. My point was that you should be kind and compassionate, not be a sycophant to pander to others for “likes”, etc. Be you, but be the best version of you: kind, considerate, hardworking, thoughtful, gracious, forgiving, etc.

Don’t be assholes. Be kind, but don’t worry about whether someone will like you. Haters will hate and find reasons to hate. It’s about them, not you.

Third, I should state upfront that life is about making the right choices in the moment. Mistakes will be made. It’s okay. That’s part of life. The failure is in the not learning from those mistakes, not in the making of mistakes.

I too struggle with being attentive, listening to understand versus to argue, being present and attune to the need of my love at the present moment instead of some future moment I hope to achieve for us, being patient with myself as well as others, accepting the limitations of my actions and appreciating the challenges faced by others (challenges and insecurities which may dictate their course of actions which may or may not have anything to do with me and my actions), etc.

Life is a learning curve. Try to be better today than you were yesterday.

Strive to be better, but also learn to be patient with yourself.

OK, with that, onto resume tip.

5 Résumé Mistakes You’re Making That’ll Land You in the AI Black Hole

While avoiding common résumé mistakes and deciding what to put and what not to put on your résumé, don’t overlook the fact that the first “eyes” on your résumé don’t always belong to a human. Those “eyes” are likely to be part of an algorithm that filters résumés for relevance. If you want to craft a winning résumé that lands you the job, you have to be aware of what AI will pick up on and what résumé mistakes will land you in the AI black hole.

“When used as a tool, AI can allow older job seekers to leverage their experience,” says Mauro F. Guillén, Dean of the Cambridge Judge Business School and author of The Perennials: The Megatrends Creating a Postgenerational Society. “When crafting a résumé or CV, job seekers should emphasize their ability to adopt a 360-degree view based on their experience,” Guillén says. “This is especially true of older workers, who have the opportunity to benefit disproportionately from AI when used correctly. Understanding how the technology works will be critical for both the application process and for the future of work.”

The line between asking AI to help us write our résumés and AI throwing our résumés in the trash is a fine one. Here are five résumé mistakes that’ll land you in the AI black hole….

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/5-résumé-mistakes-you-re-making-that-ll-land-you-in-the-ai-black-hole/ar-AA1dbLUV

Be well.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

10 years, 5 months, and 16 days. Live with gratitude.

My most dearest children:

The twin towers of my faith in God and humanity has been rebuilt … in record time. Yesterday, I attended mass service despite myself, and the reading and homily spoke to me. “Be not afraid.”

Fear kills. Fear kills motivation. Fear kills desires. Fear kills hopes and dreams.

I will not let fear kill my hope and dream of getting back to you, my family. Period.

I awoke this morning with renewed energy and motivation. What passed and troubled me most these past few days was completely expected. In fact, it would be miraculous if it hadn’t come to be. I don’t believe in those kinds of miracles.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to predict the outcome. The results were preordained back in July of 2022.

The 2022 report issued by the University of Michigan Law School and other members of the National Registry of Exonerations is telling. https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/NRE%20Annual%20Report%202022.pdf. Of the 233 innocent Americans who were found to be innocent (exonerated) in 2022, AT LEAST 195 (or 84%) were falsely framed, wrongfully convicted, and falsely imprisoned by prosecutors and police lying, fabricating false evidence, coercing false confessions and testimonies, hiding exculpatory evidence, etc. “59% were cases in which no crime occurred.

Their average prison time was 9.6 years — about the same length of time I have been away seeking refugee protection on the advise of a refugee lawyer and former judge. But in American prison, those innocent Americans faced daily threats of prison rape and assault. See, e.g.,

• https://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/prison/report5.html
• https://guycounseling.com/prison-rape-true-story/
• https://justdetention.org/the-brutal-horror-of-prison-rape-as-told-by-its-victims/
• https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/02/rape-in-the-american-prison/385550/
• https://www.newsweek.com/texas-prison-rape-capital-us-344729
• https://www.themarshallproject.org/2018/07/25/prison-rape-allegations-are-on-the-rise

Oh, by the way, when Ms. L returned home to attend to the deaths of her mother and grandmother, they took her mid-international flight. She simply disappeared after checking in at Narita International Airport in Japan for her flight to the US. She, a single American woman traveling by herself. Worst, the prosecutor who has targeted and persecuted us for all these years arranged to have her held incommunicado for days at the “Rape Capital” of the US, the Harris County Houston Jail. See, e.g., https://www.texasobserver.org/harris-county-jail-among-worst-for-inmate-sexual-assault/; and, https://justdetention.org/welcome-to-texas-prison-rape-capital-of-the-u-s/. (Oh, by the way, recently, several justices with the state’s Court of Appeals took the rare and extraordinary step of adjudging the prosecutor who has targeted us — a mixed-race couple — and hurt Ms. L to be a racist.)

What do you think being locked up incommunicado for days at the “Rape Capital” of US jails does to a person’s psyche? Especially someone who’d suffered sexually assault?

Now think back to the exoneration cases: 84 percent of innocent Americans were falsely framed and convicted by Official Misconduct! Think about that!

Worse, think about the the impossible feat of someone falsely framed and convicted and sitting in prison being able to find evidence that the police, prosecutors, and others of their cohorts lied, fabricated evidence, coerced false confessions and testimonies, hid exculpatory evidence, etc. That is an IMPOSSIBLE FEAT!!! If you’re lucky, someone who actively participated in the criminal acts had a change of heart and came clean. How often does that occur?

More likely than not, they would only be able to muster circumstantial evidence, if at all. Of course, such circumstantial evidence wouldn’t be enough to exonerate.

In our case, we have direct evidence of the prosecutor conspiring with police to rob from my registered law office our legal files and confidential attorney-client communications with our lawyers. A judge recently threw out a case in which the lawyer for the accuser impermissibly got stolen and leaked confidential documents belonging to Cristiano Ronaldo’s legal team detailing attorney-client discussions between Ronaldo and his lawyer.

U.S. District Judge Jennifer Dorsey in Las Vegas kicked the case out of court on Friday to punish the woman’s attorney, Leslie Mark Stovall, for “bad-faith conduct” and the use of leaked and stolen documents detailing attorney-client discussions between Ronaldo and his lawyers. Dorsey said that tainted the case beyond redemption.

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/11/1104387831/cristiano-ronaldo-lawsuit-rape-allegations-dismissed

In Ronaldo’s case, the accused lawyers received stolen documents — stolen and leaked from someone else. In our case, the prosecutor conspired with the police to rob us of our legal files and did in fact rob us of our “documents detailing attorney-client discussions between [us] … and [our] … lawyers. Yet, in our case, the court proceeded with the sham trial, and Ms. L was f*cked. Think about the unconstitutionality of that.

Worse, even when there is clear evidence that the prosecutor engaged in criminal acts to falsely imprison someone, nothing happens to him. See, e.g.,

• https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/04/connick-v-thompson-clarence-thomas-writes-one-of-the-cruelest-supreme-court-decisions-ever.html
• https://www.criminallegalnews.org/news/2021/jun/15/deliberately-convicting-innocent-exonerations-expose-criminal-justice-systems-callous-indifference-toward-official-misconduct/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connick_v._Thompson
• https://thelensnola.org/2012/03/19/john-floyd-new-murder-evidence/
• https://innocenceproject.org/news/conviction-revisited-witnesses-say-prosecutor-coerced-them-to-lie/

See how f*cked up the American “criminal justice” system is? Those who engaged in criminal acts to frame the innocent get away with murder, while those innocent who are falsely framed, convicted, and imprisoned face years behind bars where they are subject to prison rapes and assaults. Justice, American-style.

Worse, police “testilying” and Official Misconduct are decades old well-known problems to lawyers, researchers, and journalists — sadly, most everyday Americans are unaware of because we’re fed lies like Law & Order, Blue Blood, and similar shows which are far removed from reality. See, e.g.,

• https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/Government_Misconduct_and_Convicting_the_Innocent.pdf
• https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/police-and-prosecutor-misconduct-contributed-to-over-half-of-false-conviction-cases-study-finds (N.B.: Per this article by the American Bar Association Journal written in 2020, Official Misconduct resulted in 54% of innocent Americans being falsely framed, convicted, and imprisoned. By 2022, it was 84%.)
• https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/279/
• https://www.vice.com/en/article/jmv94x/testilying-cops-are-liars-who-get-away-with-perjury
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/22/nyregion/police-lying-new-york.html
• https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/taking-testilying-prosecutors-response-court-police-deception-crime (“prosecutor’s response…that’s a laugh — they are often co-conspirators, as in our case.)

Ignorance is not bliss. Don’t believe the shit you’re fed. Arm yourself with knowledge. Start by reading

• https://www.amazon.com/Police-State-Americas-Cops-Murder/dp/B01L98PNTO (written by Gerry Spence, a lawyer extraordinaire who hadn’t lost a case since the 1960s)
• https://www.harvard.com/book/presumed_guilty/ (by an eminent Constitutional Scholar and Dean of the prestigious University of California – Berkeley Boalt Law School)

But let not the dark side consume you. Anger and hate can easily lead you down that path.

I want you to arm yourself with knowledge so you would be more immune to lies peddled by the corrupt and those who abuse under color of authority. However, for your health and wellbeing, remember to stay grounded in gratitude and life.

Life is NOT all shit and the corrupt. Don’t permit yourself to fall prey to domestic terrorists who want Americans to live in fear and live lives of timidity, making it easier for the corrupt and those who abuse under color of authority to control us.

Be grateful for what you have and beauty that surrounds you. I try to stay grounded in that to the best of my abilities.

I keep mementos because because they are imbued with good memories. For example, for years, I was proud of the fact that I could move to the East Coast and move homes with stuff that fit into my VW Scirocco. But among my keepsake was a wooden “curse bank” I bought from one of my family’s car trips to California, which contained a shark tooth that Bryant Dill, my best friend from third grade, gave me from his time in South Carolina. It also contained a tiny Buddha pendant — still in its red plastic pouch — that another friend gave me. (All of which are all last as I lost everything when I became a refugee again.)

Hold on to things with meaning for you — be it a special gift or thing, or a song, etc. — to help you be grateful for happier days.

Be well.

I love you always and forever,

Dad

P.S., thank you for being my children. My hopes and dreams live in you. (Remember all of our beach trips and battles of sand drawings?)

10 years, 5 months, 1 day. Be helpful: be happy.

If you want happiness for an hour, take a nap.
If you want happiness for a day, go fishing.
If you want happiness for a month, get married.
If you want happiness for a year, inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime, help somebody else.

— Chinese Proverb

My most dearest children:

Family is the greatest gift that can be bestowed upon a human being. We are blessed with siblings of different temperaments and personalities to better prepare us for life, where we will encounter a huge variety of people. Some, we will bond with and love instantly. Others will be more of an acquired taste. Some will be worth their weights in gold. Others are agents of darkness, turning to dust all they touch.

Take good care of your siblings. They have their faults and insecurities, but they are more likely to be truthful to you for your benefit.

Be wary of strangers, especially those generous with unwarranted praises and lofty words. They may be genuine, but watch their actions closely first to see if their actions match their words. Too often, those two don’t meet.

Most importantly, be happy. Find joy in your life, wherever it may be.

The secret of happiness is no mystery. From ancient times to present, we know service to others is a key component. Man is hardwired to adapt, so efforts to please ourselves will inevitably fail for we will always desire more and new — until the new becomes the new normal and our desires and appetite demand more.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad

I’m a psychology expert in Finland, the No. 1 happiest country in the world—here’s the real meaning of life in 5 words.

As a Finnish philosopher and psychology researcher, people often ask me: “What is the meaning of life?” 

But the bigger question isn’t about some cosmic meaning of life. It’s about how to find meaning in life. What makes life feel worthy and valuable to you?

For six years in a row, Finland has ranked No. 1 as the happiest country in the world. And having lived here my entire life, I’ve learned that finding meaning in life boils down to five words: Make yourself meaningful to others. 

You can do this by opening yourself up to deep connections with both your community and your passions. Here’s how:

1. Live for yourself, not someone else’s expectations.

There tends to be less status anxiety in Finland because people aren’t so concerned about adhering to a rigid, societal definition of success.

It can be hard to live with purpose if you’re going through the motions, burned out, or filled with resentment because you’re on a path that someone else picked for you. Even a meaningful job like being a doctor can feel empty if your heart isn’t in it.

Before you can give to someone else, you have to understand what makes you happy, and start doing more of it.

2. Become an expert and share your knowledge.

One of the best ways to serve others is to find something that meets three requirements:

1. You’re good at it.
2. It excites you.
3. It has a positive impact on others.

Once you’ve found a job or a hobby that makes you feel fulfilled, put all your focus into becoming an expert in it. Then share it with your community.

3. Practice random acts of kindness.

In my courses on well-being, I encourage students to do three random acts of kindness a day. It can be as simple as offering a glass of water to the mailman, spending an afternoon with a grandparent, or helping a tourist find their way. 

It’s incredibly uplifting to hear about the unexpected deep bonds that my students develop with others as a result.

Helping people doesn’t just feel good in the moment; it benefits your long-term health, too. Studies show that people who give emotional support to their family, friends and neighbors are more likely to live longer.

4. Be a good neighbor.

Talkoot is an old Finnish word that translates to “working together to do something that one would not be able to do alone.”

In agricultural times, when someone had a big project at their farm, such as building a barn roof, they’d hold a talkoot. Neighbors would gather voluntarily and put in a day’s work to help, then celebrate with food and drinks.

The tradition carries on to this day. Last summer, my neighborhood spent an afternoon planting trees. That evening, we set up tables and had a jolly evening with snacks and beverages.

This kind of culture extends to why Finnish people often feel positively about civic duties like paying taxes. They see it as essential for the good of the whole.

5. Embrace quiet time together.

People don’t need to make grand gestures to be an important part of your life. Being together in silence is enough to make us feel connected and loved.

For me, going to the sauna with my father or a friend, then silently sitting outside of it and watching nature — the waves of the sea crashing to the shore, the birds singing, the trees humming in the wind — are moments of deep meaning and connection.

As the Finnish saying goes: “Speech is silver, but silence is gold.”

Frank Martela, PhD, is a Finnish philosopher and psychology researcher who studies the fundamentals of happiness. He is a lecturer at Aalto University in Finland and the author of ”A Wonderful Life: Insights on Finding a Meaningful Existence.” Follow him on @frankmartela.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/09/psychology-expert-from-finland-the-worlds-happiest-country-shares-the-meaning-of-life-in-5-words.html

10 years, 4 months, 11 days. Life is NOT a popularity contest: popularity plays no role in doing the right thing.

… or others’ opinions about good or evil.

My dearest children:

I saw a great movie today: To Catch a Killer. It has made my list of all time favorite. The movie is a great take on the age-old theme shown in movies like The Accidental Tourist — in life, to do what you want to do, you must play along and accept the other nonsense that comes with it. In To Catch a Killer, even as a brilliant FBI agent and his two trusted colleagues struggle to identify and catch a cold-blooded mass shooter, in order to able to continue to do their job and achieve their objective, they must also fight cowardly “politicians” who are more interested in covering their asses and getting recognition then protecting American lives. In the movie, despite finding and stopping the killer, the cowardly “politicians” won in the end because they’d forced out our team of heroes and threatened to destroy the protagonist’s career if she did not agree to tow the line, accept their lies, and give them credit despite their incompetence, which had caused numerous unnecessary deaths. I wished the movie would have ended with her secretly recording their backroom deals and exposing them for all the world to see, but that would have been too easy: life is messy.

What resonates with me is that, despite claims of meritocracy, talents are rarely enough for success in America, where HR is firstly concerned about how well you will fit into the team or organization. The common American workplace mantras include “Go along to get along” and “Don’t rock the boat.” In fact, as is my experience, regardless of you excel at your job, you will soon find yourself on the out if you do not pander to the in-crowd.

(FYI, you may wonder why I haven’t posted any new letter as of late, but had time to watch a movie. Let me assure you, it is not because I forgot about you. The fact is I have been getting up before daylight to fight for you and am at a loss as to what else I can do to advance our fight. I have done everything I could think of and continue to read and explore new channels of attack, but the truth is I’m not making much progress and it is killing me. The stress of not knowing what else to do is overwhelming. When I take action, there is little stress as I am doing what I am supposed to be doing: fighting for you. It is when I am stuck that I am most distressed as it means my fight for you has stalled. Because my mind is unsettled, I cannot read. Thus, I watched a movie for relief.)

The following headline from today’s papers again reminded me of how life can be a popularity contest:

Fox News Axes Investigative Unit Following Dominion Voting Systems Settlement: Report

https://news.yahoo.com/fox-news-axes-investigative-unit-183912300.html?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANr-vCyYqSTcgaYfLFSz5DNnaLS49tVzPuEdyCO8TYq6LjFdWUylHJZD975NeuTeaplgXOjFB1yAINjSqk0C28svqTVWeEOJXuInLxZwOztvFUrf6SzsZascmzmKNellNS1Rmkr1jhxE8hMYWFZ-aGODfBDVesehAsVe6gin9Yeh&_guc_consent_skip=1684659259

I suspect there might be some within that crowd who suspended their trainings and morals in order to remain in good standing with the in-crowd at Fox and keep their employment. Apparently, it was all for naught.

In America’s corporate culture, employees are but cogs in a wheel, expendable when convenient or economically useful for the leadership — be it because of new technology or legal/political fall out.

If going along won’t save you, why not just do what’s right? At least you’ll be able to live with yourself. If you’re any good, those of quality and moral value will find you. So, instead of expending wasted energy on popularity games, focus instead on honing your skills, being your best, and doing right.

I cannot promise you an easy life if you pursue this path, but I can promise that you will have pride in yourself and your accomplishments, things that no one can take from you. Your job is NEVER assured in the U.S. as it adheres to an at-will employment philosophy. That means they can fire you at will, and you can fire them (i.e., quit) at will.

All my love, always and forever,

Dad