Jeff Kaufman's Writing

Julia and I had been giving half since 2014, but in 2025 we drew on our savings to donate 81%. It looks to us like we're in a critical window for keeping

Cars and trucks are getting bigger, and I had a vague sense that fuel economy regulations were partly to blame. Looking into it, it's hard to say how much is regulations vs people wanting to buy vehicles that look rugged, but the regulations really aren't helping.

This chart is the core of it:

If you ask the internet how to prepare pasta you'll hear two things:

You must salt the water.

You must serve it mixed with the sauce.

I disagree on both.

I've been cooking pasta since I was a kid, and I prepare it the way my mother (who grew up in Rome) did:

Cook it

Google Maps thinks it takes half an hour to walk to from DCA to Crystal City, but you can actually do it in fifteen minutes.

I really like leaving airports on foot. There's something about it that feels like it shouldn't be possible: between an airplane and your destination there should be some other kind of vehicle, no? It reminds me of the first time I boarded...

I recently got a Venova and have been enjoying learning how to play it:

It combines a saxophone mouthpiece with recorder fingering and a