The Old Lone Ranger

Hands Down

By Rich Marin | April 22, 2026 by Rich Marin

Occupational Therapy and what it actually does has become a topic for me lately. The name is genuinely misleading. Despite “occupational” suggesting job-related work (big shudder from the retirement community…especially Gary), the term uses occupation in its broader sense… any meaningful activity that occupies your time and gives your life structure and purpose. That includes self-care, work, leisure, social participation, and everything in between. The core purpose of occupational therapy (OT) is to help people…

Memoir

Dinner Out

By Rich Marin | April 21, 2026 by Rich Marin

There are certain expressions that always immediately remind me of great movie lines, and one of those is from the Robert Redford and Brad Pitt movie Spy Games. The line is about a little code that that Redford and Pitt establish between themselves that starts with a hip flask gift that Pitt gets for Redford. They are hanging out in Beirut and Pitt gets his CIA support team to order the flask for Redford under…

Memoir

Who Am I Kidding?

By Rich Marin | April 20, 2026 by Rich Marin

Body image is a person’s perception, thoughts, feelings, and attitudes toward their own physical appearance. How you see yourself when you look in the mirror, how you imagine you look to others, and how you feel about your body’s size, shape, and features. Psychologists generally break body image into four dimensions: perceptual (how accurately you see your own body), affective (how you feel about your appearance), cognitive (the thoughts and beliefs you hold about your…

Business Advice Love Retirement

Growing Pains

By Rich Marin | April 19, 2026 by Rich Marin

People grow continuously throughout life. While that is a true statement, the picture is more nuanced than simple linear growth. What clearly continues throughout life are the obvious things like wisdom and judgment, which tend to improve well into old age. In terms of emotional regulation, most people genuinely get better at managing feelings over the decades, that that is not a universal truth by any means. Vocabulary and crystallized knowledge (accumulated facts, expertise) certainly…

Politics

AI Means “Authoritarian Imperative”

By Rich Marin | April 18, 2026 by Rich Marin

At the China Development Forum on March, the Director of the Chinese National Data Administration, disclosed that China’s daily AI token consumption had surpassed 140 trillion tokens in March 2026, up from just 100 billion tokens per day at the beginning of 2024. That is a more than a 1,000-fold increase in two years. China’s weekly large-model usage has now surpassed. that of the United States. China is on an AI juggernaut. The Chinese administration…

Love Memoir Retirement

Stiff Arming Time

By Rich Marin | April 17, 2026 by Rich Marin

We all have activities that define us. They say, “you are what you eat”. That’s a phrase with a surprisingly deep history for something that sounds like a modern wellness slogan. The saying traces back to the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who wrote in his 1825 masterwork Physiologie du Goût (The Physiology of Taste): “Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es” — “Tell me what you eat and I…

Memoir Politics

European Goulash

By Rich Marin | April 16, 2026 by Rich Marin

The big news this week so far is the defeat of Victor Orbán, who has ruled Hungary and been a spiritual leader for the worldwide Christian Nationalism movement that has been so embraced by the American Right Wing and MAGA movements. Orbán was defeated in the Hungarian elections on Sunday April 12, two days ago. Péter Magyar’s Tisza party won a landslide two-thirds majority, securing 138 seats in the 199-seat parliament on 53.6% of the…

Memoir Politics

Being Bad in Islamabad

By Rich Marin | April 15, 2026 by Rich Marin

Back in early 2018 I was trying to drive a start-up in the ammonia synthesis business. It was one of those strange gigs in my later career that is hard to explain in hindsight, but seemed to make sense at the time. The technology we were championing was potentially earthshaking. I do not make that statement lightly. Ammonia is arguably the most consequentially important industrial chemical in human history… the case for that is strong.…

Business Advice Memoir Politics

Token Spoken Here

By Rich Marin | April 14, 2026 by Rich Marin

When I was just clicking into my teens and living in Maine, noted academic and author, J.R.R. Tolkien was about the age I am now. Besides being an Oxford Don (twice over), he had already written The Hobbit in 1937 and The Lord of the Rings in the following 17 years after that. Tolkien’s Rise to popularity developed in waves with his early reception through the war years for The Hobbit thought of as a…

Memoir

Life Just Got Easier

By Rich Marin | April 13, 2026 by Rich Marin

I used to say that my autobiography, if I ever wrote it (which I doubt I ever will since this blog is already enough about me, as they say), would either be called The Hole in My Pocket or Living XXXXLarge. I feel like the first title would still be in contention since I haven’t gotten any more frugal or less generous in my old age, but the second title is now out of contention…

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