Stephen Castro-Starkey

People talk about the constitutional republic of the United States as an experiment. And at the same time they talk about preserving it. You don’t preserve experiments. You learn from them and adapt. When do we get to adapt? We really need to. It’s not working.

Saw a billboard while driving through rural Ohio — “Who decides?” Next to an image of the Christian Bible. My first answer was, “We do.” I can see why many folks would rather have an old musty book to look at for answers.

My friend Mike said, “There is something wrong when the scariest thing about Halloween is the November election.”

Today has sucked so much. Power has gone out 3 times in the last 24 hours. Though I am grateful the outages haven't lasted very long.

But it has lit a fire under me to get whole house battery backup going!

Not having power has an impact -- I can't sleep without my CPAP. And we can't have the house get too hot, especially if the car isn't here to use the air conditioning.

Do NOT trust Twitter. Here is a good note about why: https://journa.host/@lolgop/112909214344514852

My feelings on the upcoming election (not just presidential). We should vote for whoever will:

• Maximize our chances of restoring bodily autonomy for women.
• Maximize our capacity to celebrate and treat as equals every person. This is regardless of color, gender identity, sexual orientation, neurodivergence, or other way of being different in ways that don’t harm others.
• Maximize our chances of avoiding the impending climate apocalypse.
• Maximize the chances that every person within our borders has all their basic needs met without conditions.
• Maximize our capacity to welcome, include, and integrate any person who has something to contribute to our culture.
• Maximize our ability to move from punishment as a capitalistic system towards restorative justice writ large.
• Maximize our safety.
• Minimize our contribution to global human suffering.

Our economy is supremely powerful. It is time we harness some of the greed that got us here to do the bare minimum for our fellow humans who have been marginalized due to no fault of their own. In the long run we will become even more powerful. If we can’t get to this new stage of development, very likely our planet will become uninhabitable for us. Just a bit more cooperation and harmonization with our environment can go a long way towards alleviating the suffering of all our fellow sentient beings.

No big deal. Right? 😃

The latest Supreme Court of the US decision about unlimited presidential power fills me with dread. I’m sure I’m not alone! Before the decision came down I decided to host a conversation about the current political climate.

We may feel powerless alone. But we are more resilient together. Will you join me?

Starts Tue, Jul 9, 2024, 1:15 PM PDT

Starting to engage again with a solar installer. Thinking hard about doing it not just to save money but also for the planet!

Very sad I haven’t been able to get a solar system yet. I don’t actually know the difference in ROI between getting that and paying off our mortgage sooner and investing in the S&P. Feeling like it has to be less about cash but why? Our economic system needs to solve for big things not me!

Or no? Am I interested in solar because I want to save the planet? Or because I don’t want to have a power outage? Or save money?

You should be able to take a penalty free withdrawal from your 401(k)/IRA to buy solar panels. Just sayin'.

This guy took the risk of the penalty and it paid off, but it doesn't always...

Wherein I write down some of my experiences thus far in attempting to acquire solar panels and batteries. It's been rough!

Seems like all this investment in AI is going to do much more harm than good. Hope I’m wrong. Hope we don’t kick off an extinction level event. Tho maybe it’s for the best. Our species seems to be a threat to the rest of the planet.

Would love to be proved wrong!