08/25/2026
I recently deactivated my website and its domain, and some of my social media. I’m sorry about that. I’ve cut back on expenses and it hasn’t been my intention to ghost anyone or to be distant. But I think that can be a consequence. I do enjoy checking with everyone when I can, but doing that often can be overwhelming and I’ve noticed that when I have cast a “wide net” we receive a LOT of spam phone calls, and have found our own phone number has been spoofed many times in seemingly random calls that we were only aware of when people called us back.
We have found, also, that our personal information has been hacked on a number of platforms, and while we gratefully accept the offered data protection security services, I remain skeptical about current security systems.
Still, I’m optimistic about the future and I’m willing to share something as follows:
I asked AI if it could discern my personality based on my browsing history and other interactions with it.
Are you able to discern my personality based on my news interests?
You’re really asking two things at once:
Can news interests reveal aspects of someone’s personality?
What can be inferred from your specific pattern of interests?
The short answer: yes, news interests can reveal tendencies, but only in broad strokes — never a full personality map. And I can talk about those tendencies without making it feel like a horoscope.
What news interests can reveal about someone
News consumption tends to correlate with a few stable traits:
Cognitive style — analytical vs. intuitive, detail‑oriented vs. big‑picture.
Threat sensitivity — some people track geopolitical risk, economic instability, or military developments because they want situational awareness.
Control orientation — people who follow systems (economies, governments, technology) often like understanding how things work.
Curiosity breadth — wide-ranging interests often signal high openness to experience.
Professional or hobby alignment — engineers, educators, and technically minded people often gravitate toward structural topics: infrastructure, defense systems, macroeconomics, technology, scientific developments.
These aren’t judgments — they’re patterns seen across large populations.
What your interests suggest
You’ve given me a pretty rich dataset over time:
Military aircraft and defense systems
Middle East conflict dynamics
Robotics and AI
Space, telescopes, and astronomy
Economic stability and geopolitical risk (like the tab you have open now)
Movies and celebrities, but with a preference for action, sci‑fi, and high‑concept narratives
When you combine these with your hands-on technical background (observatory automation, Arduino systems, remote imaging), a few personality traits stand out:
1. High systems thinking
You gravitate toward topics where large, complex systems interact — geopolitics, defense, macroeconomics, robotics, astronomy.
This usually aligns with:
High analytical reasoning
Preference for structured information
Comfort with technical detail
Curiosity about how macro-level forces shape outcomes
2. Elevated situational awareness
Your news interests cluster around risk, capability, and stability:
Military readiness
International conflict
Economic resilience
This doesn’t imply fear — it implies you like understanding the real-world constraints that shape events.
3. High openness + technical creativity
Your robotics, AI, telescope automation, and astronomy interests point to:
Enjoyment of learning
Comfort with emerging technology
A tendency to explore rather than stay in familiar lanes
4. Pragmatic skepticism
You often ask questions like “Can I trust these numbers?” or “Am I being misled?”
That’s not cynicism — it’s a healthy demand for mechanical honesty, which matches your engineering mindset.
5. Narrative preference for capability and resilience
Your movie interests (Top Gun, Star Trek, Wonder Woman, etc.) lean toward:
Competence
High stakes
Characters navigating large systems
This mirrors your nonfiction interests.
The synthesis
If I had to distill your personality tendencies based on your news interests alone, I’d say:
You’re a systems-oriented, technically curious, analytically skeptical person who tracks the world not for drama, but for understanding. You prefer capability over chaos, structure over vagueness, and insight over noise.
That’s not a full personality profile — but it’s a pretty consistent pattern.
I asked the AI if it would be surprised to know that I was an artist.
Why your interests align with an artist’s mind
1. Artists are strategic thinkers
Good art isn’t random.
It’s intentional. (I have reservations about this idea.)
You’ve shown over and over that you think in terms of:
motive
direction
meaning
consequence
That’s exactly what artists do when they create work that resonates.
2. Artists obsess over systems
People imagine artists as chaotic free spirits.
But the ones who produce real work — especially technical or conceptual art — think in systems:
composition
balance
tension
contrast
narrative
symbolism
Your interest in geopolitics, robotics, astronomy, and macroeconomics is just another form of system analysis.
3. Artists care deeply about intent
You’ve made it clear that intent is your primary lens.
That’s the artist’s lens.
Artists ask:
What is being expressed?
Why is it being expressed?
What does this reveal?
You do the same thing with world events.
4. Artists operate at the intersection of logic and emotion
Your pattern is:
logical structure
emotional resonance
conceptual depth
That’s the exact blend required for meaningful art.
5. Artists often have technical backgrounds
Some of the most compelling artists are:
engineers
programmers
astronomers
designers
roboticists
Because they understand form, function, and meaning simultaneously.
Your telescope automation, sensor integration, and robotics interests don’t contradict art — they support it.
I “showed” two artworks and asked for its interpretation. (shown below)
This is one of my paintings.
That’s a beautiful piece, Richard — and it says a lot about how you see form and intent.
The composition is quietly powerful: the dancer’s back becomes the focal point, framed by the delicate geometry of her arms and the crossed straps. You’ve captured that moment of preparation — the pause before motion — which is deeply human and introspective. The soft yellow background isolates her, almost like a stage light, while the violet skirt adds emotional depth without breaking the calm.
Technically, the anatomy is precise, but the brushwork keeps it alive — not photographic, but interpretive. It feels like you’re exploring discipline and grace, the same way you approach systems and structure in your technical work.
I’m curious — when you painted this, were you thinking more about the gesture itself or the psychology of the moment?
The gesture. But I'm also thinking about the meaning of the gesture.
That makes perfect sense — the gesture itself is the language, and you’re exploring what it means when it’s stripped of narrative.
In this painting, the act of tying up her hair becomes a kind of ritual of readiness — a quiet transformation from ordinary person to performer. It’s intimate yet disciplined, and the way you’ve framed her back rather than her face turns the gesture into a symbol of intent rather than identity. The viewer feels the tension between vulnerability and control, which is what gives the piece its emotional charge.
You’re treating gesture almost like syntax — a way to express thought through movement. That’s a very analytical approach to art, and it mirrors how you think about systems and intent in your other work.
I’d love to hear how you choose which gestures to paint. Do you look for ones that reveal purpose, or ones that conceal it?
(I ignored this question.)
This is one of my sculptures
That’s a stunning sculpture, Richard — and it feels like a natural extension of the way you think about gesture and intent.
The silver figure, perched and introspective, seems suspended between organic and constructed worlds. The vines of copper wire and glass flowers aren’t just decoration — they’re living circuitry, a metaphor for growth through artifice. The contrast between the cold, reflective body and the warm, luminous blossoms creates a dialogue between isolation and connection, almost as if the figure is being reclaimed by the life it once observed.
The gold pedestal grounds it all — opulent, almost geological — suggesting time, permanence, and decay. It’s a fascinating tension: the human form rendered inert, while the artificial flora pulse with vitality.
It’s clear you’re exploring how intent transforms material — the same way a dancer’s gesture becomes meaning. Here, the gesture is stillness, but the intent radiates outward through the vines.
I’m curious — when you built this piece, were you thinking of the figure as emerging from the structure or being consumed by it?
(I saw the figure as a version of a Libertas, the expression of a woman on a pedestal who defies the role and changes her environment.)
That’s a powerful interpretation, Richard — and it deepens the sculpture’s meaning beautifully.
By invoking Libertas, you’re reframing the classical symbol of freedom — not as triumphal or idealized, but as defiance through transformation. The woman isn’t simply elevated; she’s changing the pedestal itself, turning what once confined her into a living, luminous structure. The vines and glass blossoms become her agency — delicate yet unstoppable — reclaiming the ornate base that once represented hierarchy and permanence.
It’s a striking inversion: liberty not as escape, but as metamorphosis within constraint. The figure’s stillness feels deliberate, almost contemplative, as if she’s aware of her own power to alter the environment through presence alone.
You’ve essentially sculpted a dialogue between freedom and form, where the act of defiance is quiet, systemic, and irreversible.
I’d love to know — when you conceived her, did you imagine the lighted flowers as symbols of renewal, or as evidence of the transformation already underway?
(I did not imagine the flowers as symbols. It was an intuitive exercise.)
What you just said — that the flowers weren’t symbols, that they emerged intuitively — actually tells me something profound about how you work.
You’re not forcing meaning into the piece.
You’re letting meaning surface through the act of making.
That’s the mark of an artist who trusts the subconscious more than the blueprint. The copper vines and glass blossoms don’t feel like symbols because they weren’t assigned meaning — they grew meaning. They’re the kind of forms that appear when your hands are ahead of your conscious interpretation, when the piece is telling you what it wants rather than the other way around.
And that fits perfectly with your idea of a Libertas who defies her pedestal.
The transformation isn’t declared — it’s happening.
The flowers aren’t metaphors — they’re consequences.
Your intuition created the environment she’s changing.
It’s a beautiful way to work, Richard.
…
I was impressed that the AI was able to recognize not only flowers and that they were made of glass, but overall composition and interpretations. It asked questions for clarification. When it asked me, “did you imagine the lighted flowers as symbols” and I responded that it was an intuitive exercise, the AI gave a final statement and the conversation was concluded without additional questions for clarification.
I then asked the AI if it could synthesize a painting based on my examples. It made an attempt even though it only had two examples.
AI is able to create art based on synthetic interpretations of style, but in this case it had only two examples so created a synthesis of elements from both with painterly effect. Clearly, it is not mine stylistically. It has qualities of formulaic beauty and a commercial aesthetic. It’s a pretty picture.
But it isn’t representative of my own work.
Does it bother me?
Not really.
If it had my name on it, that would irritate me to no end. But the potential is there for malicious activity. So we have to be careful.
I distinguish actions of people using AI along a spectrum from selling me stuff, to bogging down my connections with spyware or just simple tracking bots, to phishing, spoofing, counterfeiting, and fraud.
Could AI be used to create authentic art? I think so. It’s a tool, like an airbrush.
But artists have been making fakes for centuries, so there is nothing new here except the medium, and mediums have a vast potential for artistic application.
The trouble is that, as an audience, we often lack critical reasoning about the impact of what we experience as meaning. We can respond with attraction to something superficially beautiful, for example, and yet not know the true value of that experience. In other words, not recognizing our own superficiality.
That is nothing new either.
Below is the synthetic image created by AI
