As many of my readers know, I am obsessed with words, and the other day I was thinking about the word “sweat”, something that I could add to the list of words that are both nouns and verbs.  And, figuring that the noun—the water that oozes out of our skin pores—must have come before the verb, I thought to myself, “I wonder when the first sweat happened?  (A less morbid thought than wondering when was the first suicide.)  So, here is what I came up with:

So, many of you will be aware of the recent hype about Emergent Misalignment, where LLM AI’s seem to go off the rails when insecure code is introduced. Here is a little short story that I just wrote on this topic. (My story is no masterpiece, but the ChatGPT’s comments I append to it are hilarious!)

I just can’t seem to stop drabbling on!

Okay. Here’s a little “poem”. (And, yes, I used a dictionary when writing it. I also checked with ChatGPT which made a few suggestions, including the last two lines.)

I’d rather be accurate than inaccurate 

I’d rather be considerate than inconsiderate 

I’d rather be decent than indecent 

I’d rather be direct than indirect 

I’d rather be discreet than indiscreet

I’d rather be effective than ineffective

I’d rather be elegant than inelegant 

I’d rather be exact than inexact

I’d rather be experienced than inexperienced 

I’d rather be firm than infirm

I’d rather be humane than inhuman

I’d rather be sane than insane

I’d rather be sensible than insensible

I’d rather be secure than insecure 

I’d rather be tolerant than intolerant 

AND . . .  I’d rather cite than incite

BUT . . .

I want to be both credible and incredible

And I want to both form and inform

AND . . . 

I’d rather be incomparable than comparable

I’d rather be independent than dependent 

I’d rather be indescribable than describable

I’d rather be indestructible than destructible 

I’d rather be indispensable than dispensable 

I’d rather be infallible than fallible 

I’d rather be intense than tense

And I’d rather be insightful than inciteful.

So if I’m “in” anything — let it be integrity.

Here is an essay I just wrote after spending two weeks in Padua, Italy.

As I write here, I think that I may have addressed this topic before. But, if so, here it is again.

Here is a piece I wrote last year and just updated.

Inspired by some musings that one of my brothers shared with me, stories about his life and our family that he wants to share with his grandkids, this little idiosyncratic piece popped up in my head.  It started out optimistic when I began, but at the end turned out to be utterly pessimistic.

As is my custom, I have written up my reflections after my recent trip to the US. As I note at the end, this essay reflects more on how I have changed in the seven years since we fled the US after Trump was first elected than it does on how the United States has changed.

Here is an essay I’ve been working on lately. It is probably of interest only to my expat friends and others well versed in Spanish culture. It is long, but it does have lots of pictures.

I have now uploaded a revised version of this essay, with some new 19th century paintings. Anyone who has already slogged through this essay may only want to glance at the new pictures on pp. 16-20.