Every now and then Tycho writes something that perfectly balances depth and wit.

https://www.penny-arcade.com/news/post/2025/05/14/parts-per-million

...people we don't like will sometimes be correct. Because we live in a world largely made of information now, we can curate ourselves utterly out of any functional mode of self-correction. It hasn't made us any smarter, and when we become aware of just how thoroughly we have invested ourselves in illusion it falls on you like a guillotine.

It's medicine. Of course you don't like the taste.

And, I'm on an AI role. I've worked with a couple AIs to create a set of questions that will my husband and I plan our future. My plan is to bring these up over a few dinners with my Husband. There are many questions here and it will take time.  

Session 1: Connection and Appreciation

Goal: Reconnect emotionally and appreciate each other’s uniqueness.

What’s something about me you feel people don’t see—but you do?

1. When did you first feel truly at home with me?
2. What habits of mine make you feel cared for?
3. How do you think our relationship has changed over the last 10 years?
4. What do you wish we did together more often?
5. What’s something you feel we’ve overcome together?
6. When was the last time I made you feel really understood?

Session 2: Shared Dreams and Divergences


Goal: Uncover each partner’s ideal retirement lifestyle and negotiate shared rhythms.

1. What does your ideal day look like in retirement—from waking up to going to bed?
2. What’s something I enjoy that you don’t—but you’ve tried (or would be willing to try) for my sake?
3. What’s something you wish I’d try or do more often with you—even if it’s outside my comfort zone?
4. What kind of social life do you want in retirement? What would feel “just right” to you?
5. What’s your biggest hope for our retirement life? What’s your biggest worry?
6. If we traveled together regularly—say, two times a year? Four?—where would you want to go, and why?
7. What home-based project or hobby would you like to dive deeper into?
8. How can we support each other in making time for the things we love—even when they’re different?

Session 3: Money, Health, and Caregiving

Goal: Build clarity and partnership around future responsibilities and resources—without losing your sense of “us.”

1. What are you most willing to cut back on in retirement—and what feels non-negotiable?
2. What health changes do you anticipate over the next 10 years, and what worries you most? How can we support each other through those changes—emotionally and practically?
3. What role do you want to play in caring for our parent(s) over the next 5 years? What do you hope I understand about that?
4. How do you feel about the idea of needing care yourself someday? How can we prepare emotionally?
5. If we needed to adjust our home or routines for health reasons, what would feel supportive vs. stifling?
6. What financial or legal steps do we still need to take to protect each other and our families?
7. How can we keep conversations about money and aging open, loving, and low-drama?

Session 4: Legacy, Meaning, and How We Spend Our Time

Goal: Shape your time in retirement around fulfillment, contribution, and connection.

1. What gives your life meaning right now? How has that changed in the last decade?
2. Are there skills or passions you’ve never had time to pursue that you'd like to explore now?
3. What does “a good use of time” mean to you in retirement?
4. What kind of creative or intellectual stimulation would you like to keep in your life?
5. How can we support each other in doing things separately that still strengthen our bond?
6. What’s one thing you’d love for us to try just once this year—no matter how small or silly?

Session 5: Rituals, Intimacy, and Everyday Connection

Goal: Weave emotional closeness into daily life through small, intentional choices.

1. What small things do I do that make you feel loved?
2. What are our current rituals that bring us closer—and which ones have faded that you miss?
3. What kind of physical affection feels most nourishing to you these days?
4. What does “intimacy” mean to you now? How has that changed over time?
5. What’s a weekly ritual we could start that would help us feel more like a team?
6. When you want to feel closer to me, what do you hope I’ll notice or do?
7. What’s something you’d like to experience together in the next 12 months that we haven’t done before?
8. How can we keep reminding ourselves that our relationship is still evolving, still worth growing?

Would you like this formatted into a printable PDF or shared in a text file for easy reference?

I asked an AI to read my blogs and then, acting as a life coach, offer me constructive criticism...

I've been following your writing on both Brain Dump and Too Much Philosophy. It's clear you're a reflective, emotionally intelligent person with a rich interior life. You’re paying attention—to your relationships, your environment, your aging, your values. That’s a rare and valuable trait. But from a coaching perspective, I see a few areas where you could benefit from greater intentionality and forward momentum. Let’s break that down.

---

🔍 1. Get Clarity on What You Really Want From Retirement

You're circling around retirement—commenting on friends’ choices, exploring literature about purpose, and reflecting on identity shifts. But you seem hesitant to declare your own direction.

• Constructive push: Write a personal “retirement manifesto.” Not about what you don’t want (e.g., moving to Florida permanently), but what you do want. Travel? Part-time creative work? More time mentoring or volunteering? Define it clearly.

• Prompt: “In five years, what does a great day look like for me?”

---

🧭 2. Move From Observation to Action

You observe your friends, family, and community with care and nuance. But I notice that your reflections often stop just short of commitment. For example, in your financial posts, you acknowledge your partner’s stress over the mortgage—but what’s the next step?

• Constructive push: Every insight should lead to a plan. What’s the mortgage payoff plan? Are you working with a financial advisor? What timeline makes early retirement possible? Document it.

• Prompt: “What is the next concrete step I can take toward peace of mind?”

---

💬 3. Rebuild Social Infrastructure Intentionally

You’ve noted the decline or dispersion of your social circle—friends moving away, or the isolation that sometimes accompanies aging. But meaningful connection is something you can still actively create.

• Constructive push: You’re good at reflection—now add structure. Join or start a reading group, a walking club, or even a small online forum of retirees exploring purpose. Proactive effort will yield the connection you miss.

• Prompt: “Who do I feel nourished by—and how often do I reach out to them?”

---

🧠 4. Turn Intellectual Curiosity Into Personal Growth Projects

Your book blog reveals a sharp mind and an appetite for ideas—but there's often a gap between reading and integration. For instance, in How to Do Nothing, you connect with Odell’s critique of attention capitalism—but how has it changed your day-to-day life?

• Constructive push: For each book you finish, distill one actionable change you’ll try, even temporarily. Then reflect on it in a follow-up post. Let your blog become a space of experiments, not just observations.

• Prompt: “What is one practice from this book I can try for a week?”

---

❤️ 5. Have the Courage to Explore Intimacy and Vulnerability More Deeply

Whether it's your post about Valentine’s Day conversations or aging parents, you brush up against vulnerability—but sometimes skirt it. Don’t just write about connection. Go deeper.

• Constructive push: What hard conversation have you been avoiding—with your partner, a sibling, a friend? Schedule it. Then reflect on it. These are the growth edges that will shape the next phase of your life.

• Prompt: “What’s a truth I haven’t spoken out loud yet?”

---

🛤️ Final Thought

You’re at a powerful crossroads—not lost, but underdefined. The next decade can be the most fulfilling yet, if you stop asking what should I react to? and start answering what do I want to lead with?

You don’t need more insight—you need more alignment between what you know and how you live.

Let’s build that alignment.

Warmly,
Your Life Coach

---

In bullet point form...

Define your retirement vision: Don’t just avoid what you don’t want—declare what you do want.

Turn reflection into action: Follow every insight with a concrete next step.

Create a retirement roadmap: Clarify your financial, housing, and timeline plans with specifics.

Rebuild your social network: Intentionally reconnect or create new, meaningful relationships.

Experiment with your reading: Apply one idea from each book and reflect on the result.

Structure your growth: Use tools like a weekly self-review or journaling framework.

Explore vulnerability: Lean into hard conversations and emotional honesty.

Live more intentionally: Design days that reflect your values and desired lifestyle.

Engage more deeply with community: Join or start groups that share your interests.

Let your blogs evolve: Shift from commentary to personal experiments and leadership.

Align insight with lifestyle: Match your deep thinking with purposeful living.

Fire Weather

By John Valliant.

Fire weather is largely the story of the world’s largest wildfire, which took place in 2016 and consumed much of Fort McMurray Alberta. Valliant writes about this in intense and extended detail. 

It also covers climate change, and how humanity is building more into the wilderness, both of which increase the impact of wildfires. About once a century, the Boreal forest in northern Canada and Russia has always burnt down. What could go wrong with building new cities up there?

Climate change and its impacts is unsettling. Even if I go all green, what I can do will have very little discernible impact on the long-term outcome. I have to focus on the small changes and be prepared for the cynics who point out how ineffective all of this is. 

It's easy to be cynical. 

The Truth

By Terry Pratchett. A Discworld novel.

I have a mixed relationship with Pratchett’s Discworld series; some books delight me, while others fall flat.

This one was good. It centers on Discworld's first newspaper, which has as much sensational gossip as actual news.

As a fantasy series, Discworld is brimming with all sorts of outlandish creations. Interestingly, the author occasionally points out that a particular fabrication has a real-world counterpart.

I also enjoyed the zombie obituaries, which humorously detailed their adventures since their deaths.

Polostan

By Neal Stephenson.

I'm unsure about this book. It's a good read. Chapter by chapter it is very compelling. Dawn is a fantastic character. And then it just ends. Sure, she is in a bit of a predicament, but there is little overall mystery and there have been so many twists and turns along the way that I don't doubt that Dawn will escape.  

Elsewhere online, I see that Stephenson is planning to start a series with Polestan being the first book.

Death's End

By Liu Cixin.

A good end to the Three Body Problem trilogy. The book is an enjoyable read. If I have any beef with the book it's that Cixin wanted to write more about the books theme's, than about the plot. At some point, about 2/3rds of the way through the book, the villains, the Trisolarians, just leave and they are never really heard from again. We never learn much about them. Of course the Trisolarians were never the point of the story. The point is to dive into the harsh realities of cosmic sociology, where civilizations must remain hidden or risk annihilation in a ruthless, Darwinian universe.

The Last Thing He Told Me

By Laura Dave.

A fun and readable family mystery. After his employer is accused of fraud, a father sends his wife and his daughter cryptic messages and then vanishes. 

How To Do Nothing

By Jenny Odell.

Odell wants us to disengage from the attention economy and spend more time focusing on things that are important to you, you personally. She bristles at the thought of using this time to be more productive-- more productive according to who? For what reasons?

Your time is yours to spend. Odell urges us to use it to engage more with the world, with nature, with society, with your friends. To deeply pay attention to things, To use our will to maintain sustained attention. To build our will to guide our attention and stave off distraction. Maybe we should focus on things longer, rather than turn away the moment we become fidgety. 

After reflecting on this book for a few days, I've concluded that it is mature- grown up. Rather than preaching a system that will make everything better, Odell accepts that the tough parts of life and can't be cleanly cut away from the positive. 

 "It's tempting to conclude this book with a single recommendation about how to live. But I refuse to do that. That's because the pitfalls of the attention economy can't be avoided by logging off and refusing the influence of persuasive design techniques; they also emerge at the intersection of issues of public space, environmental, politics, class and race."

"I would be surprised if anyone who bought this book actually wants to do nothing. Only the most nihilist and coldhearted of us feels that there is nothing to do."

"peace is an endless negotiation amongst free-acting agents whose wills cannot be engineered."

"I think we also found the answer to the universe, which was, quite simply; spend more time with your friends."

"A lot of people withdraw from society, as an experiment... So I thought I would withdraw and see how enlightening it would be. But I found out that it's not enlightening. I think that what you're supposed to do is stay in the midst of life." --Agnes Martin

The Maltese falcon

By Dashiell Hammett

The most famous of all hard-boiled detective novels, "The Maltese Falcon" is a fun read. The plot revolves around an intricate web of deception, as private investigator Sam Spade navigates through conflicting accounts from various characters. What makes the story particularly engaging is watching Spade piece together the truth by comparing different versions of events, weighing what each character claims to know against what actually transpired.

Reading over other reviews of the Maltese Falcon, I see that all characters are only described through their appearance, their words and their actions. At no point does the narrator share their inner thoughts. 

In addition, main character, Sam Spade, is ultimately a good man even though he flirts with the dark side-- just enough to earn a criminals trust, but never enough it actually do something wrong. This distinction-- a main character vs a morally ambiguous main character is what distinguishes "Hard Boiled" literature from "Noir."

THE EARNED LIFE Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment by Marshall Goldsmith

by Marshall Goldsmith and Mark Reiter

Goldsmith is an executive coach. For years, I've admired is writings. Something about this book made me blanch. Maybe it's me fighting against its teachings. 

Goldsmith focuses on helping successful people become more successful. Emotionally, I don't want to be more successful in the next stage of my life. Part of me just wants to stop.

Having said that, I look at retirees who have "just stopped" and I am not envious of them. I am unsure what I want for the next stage of my life. 

So, how does Goldsmith urge us to build the life that we have earned? Some notes...

Understand yourself. Understand your Motivation (what drives you to get up in the morning), your Ability (having the aptitude and skills required to achieve a goal), your Understanding(knowing what to do and how to do it-- and what not to do) and your Confidence (The belief that you can accomplish what you set out to).

You also need Support (No one succeeds alone) and a receptive Market (People have to want you are offering)

Reduce your Choices. Focus on the wildly important. Create a process that drives the right thing for everything else. Alan Mulally's BPR is a great example of how to reduce choices and turn things into a process. You can apply a BPR to your life.

Six Factors that govern our sense of fulfillment in life:

• Achievement
• Engagement
• Happiness
• Meaning
• Purpose
• Relationships

Begin with basic questions. "What do I want to do with my life?" or "What can I do that's meaningful?" are not basic. "Where do I want to live?" is basic? "Can I afford this?" is basic. "Who are your heroes?"

Write down the names of your heroes.

Write down one-word descriptors of the values and virtues that endear you to them.

Cross out their names.

Write your names in their place.

Think Action/Ambition/Aspriation. Kind of like layered to-do lists...

Action... what you will do soon (today?)

Ambition... what you will do this quarter? Year?

Aspiration... what you want to be eventually.

Specialize. Find your one trick genius.

Foster relationships. Help people. Let them help your back. Don't be too business first. 

The Light Fantastic

By Terry Pratchett

A fun fantasy novel from Pratchett‘s Discworld series

One The Edge

Silver's book brings out the ranting nerd in me. It's the kind of work that compels me to engage deeply with its content. While I don't agree with everything, it provides plenty to contemplate.

The book examines people who think like gamblers (in the most positive sense of the word) – whether they're actual gamblers, venture capitalists, cryptocurrency enthusiasts, startup CEOs, or technologists building potentially world-altering AI.

Some key insights from the book: People would benefit from taking more calculated risks in their lives. Many avoid risk because they struggle to evaluate it properly. Is there a 1% edge with a 10x payoff? Or is it a one-in-ten-million chance of winning the lottery? Did a penny stock with a weak business plan grow by 10x? Did it collapse? Failing to distinguish the actual risks in these scenarios, and going by your gut or feelings, indicates carelessness rather than calculated risk-taking. Understanding the Kelly Criterion becomes essential here.

Regarding intuition, Silver suggests you need hundreds or thousands of relevant experiences before truly trusting your gut on a topic. A professional poker player's intuition differs dramatically from an amateur's, and they can cite numerous experiences that shaped their instincts.

Will AI become so advanced that it destroys us? While the book doesn't provide a definitive answer, it has convinced me otherwise. Though I agree AI will be transformative, the idea that AI will destroy us stems from an oversimplified model of the future – one that assumes powerful future AI might rebel, therefore we should fear it. Silver points out that such simplistic models of the future are almost always wrong.

Consider this historical parallel: Millennia ago, imagine a philosopher and metallurgist discussing their craft. The philosopher warns that metal will eventually create guns and bombs, suggesting they slow metallurgical progress. The counterargument? Metallurgy would improve lives in countless ways, including providing tools to manage those very weapons. Similarly, AI will enhance our lives while potentially offering solutions to manage destructive AI.

Silver's interview with SBF during the FTX bankruptcy provides fascinating reading, though my takeaway remains unchanged: there are still no compelling reasons to buy cryptocurrencies.

The book explores the deeper implications of thinking like a gambler. While investors might reject a startup with ten risks as too dangerous, a CEO views those same ten items as problems to solve. Leaders like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk approach innovation this way – seeing problems as challenges to overcome regardless of risk. They abhor index, insurance or diverse style investing. They could have survivorship bias, though they are billionaires and I am not, so who am I to argue.

Silver concludes by examining "gamified casino capitalism" – where future technology, including AI, primarily exists to capture our attention (think social media feeds) rather than genuinely improving our lives or economy. Where we invest based on some sort of risk/reward analysis and not because we actually believe in the investment. Silver advocates for a future emphasizing agency (We have meaningful choices in our lives), plurality (Many types of people live and work together), and reciprocity (We help each other).