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Jekyll Now is a GitHub repository/Jekyll theme by Barry Clark that can be cloned to instantly have a blog up and running with GitHub Pages free site hosting. Busy Street in a German Town by Jacques Carabain

Go to your browser settings and make Ecosia your default search engine. Seriously, that’s all it takes. There’s really no reason not to do that.

Cast iron skillets aren’t overhyped. Everyone thinks they are, but they’re wrong. Cast iron skillets are the right amount of hyped.

My smart phone and laptop are now actually dumb.
My devices are setup to give me truly the best of both smart and dumb tech worlds without resorting to using an actual dumb phone. There are a lot of challenges, and videos online that show how to “dumb down” your smart phone or using a “dumb smart phone” temporarily. Unfortunately, most of these really don’t eliminate mindless scrolling entirely. They also don’t often last as lifestyle either. My setup, I believe has eliminated mindless scrolling from my life and is a part of my life to last. The whole philosophy behind my setup is to make the easy to access distractions more inaccessible, that way the activities which take effort, but are more life giving like reading a book become the go to activities.

Toki Pona is a minimalist constructed language.

This means it’s an entirely made up language which didn’t naturally evolved like other languages. This is different than a code which obscures an existing language. A language allows for a completely different way of thinking. A language has its own grammar, morphology, phonology, etc. Toki Pona was created by Sonja Lang all the way back in the 2000s. Since then it’s grown a passionate community of speakers. The idea behind the language is to express the core truths of life simply without over complicating things. Thus the language only has around 150 words.

No seriously. We really do naturally pick up languages. My journey with CI (comprehensible input) began when I was a teenager in the 2010s when I stumbled on a video of Stephen Krashen explaining the input hypothesis. His thoughts and video on language acquisition are something anybody interested in language learning would benefit from.

It is better to wait for the tide to pull your boat to shore than to force yourself to pull it to shore.
The whole problem of life is that there are an infinite amount of possible choices to be made and no user manual. Folks prop up specific books, philosphies, and people as being the answer key to this test. Of course they’re all bullshitting. At best, someone can say “Hey I did this, and I’m happy. Maybe if you do this, you’ll be happy too.” Something like that would be the most honest way to suggest a choice. I’ll try and follow that same honest way of suggesting, nondoing. Inaction or intentional nondoing is an often overlooked option for each step in life’s path. At the very least, it is an approach that can bring a feeling of peace and joy especially to people who feel their actions ultimately amount to just adding more stress to life.

Enjoying the process is much more important than focusing on the end results.
Intrinsic Motivation is the key to achieving goals, forming/breaking habits, and having a happier life. People often begin endeavors with a goal or effect they want to achieve in mind. Unfortunately people don’t usually want to do what it takes to get those results. Otherwise, they would already be doing that activity and wouldn’t need the goal to push them in the first place. Afterall, people do what they see as providing the most value or happiness in the moment, even if that just means choosing the better of two poor choices. A practical example of all of this could be a person who has the goal or desire to be a healthy person, but enjoys doing things that harm their health and doesn’t enjoy the things that promote health. If you really love smoking cigarrettes, hate exercise, love junk food, and hate fruits and veggies, then getting the end result of “being healthy” will require you to actively go against all of your desires. That’s extremely difficult, and even if you can pull it off for awhile, it is not sustainable. Instead of focusing on just the desired end result, focusing on deriving pleasure from a different lifestyle or changing your short term desires, will be an easier, more succesful, and happier journey.

Letting go of unnecessary products one at a time. The human body is home to hundreds of species of micro-organisms. The important part they play in keeping us healthy by inhabiting our gut has already been established by scientists. Recently though scientists are learning these microorganisms play an important role in keeping us healthy by living on our skin as well. These microorganisms can prevent pathogenic (aka bad bacteria/germs) from infecting us, alert our bodies when we are infected, and promote healing of wounds. Using body soap/body washes harm this natural protective layer covering our skins. Using soap on our hands is of course a necessary, life saving practice. Using soap on our bodies on the other hand not only doesn’t serve a purpose but actually harms us.

Within an hour you can collect hundreds of arugula seeds.
Saving seeds is an important part of growing and sharing food. Arugula is a leafy green that can be grown all over the USA and other similar climates. It can be grown year-round in warm places, or it can be grown seasonally during the warm months of colder climates. It is an annual which means it doesn’t continue to grow year after year, but instead produces seeds at the end of its lifecycle. It reliably self seeds, so it acts like a perrenial. This means that ideally you won’t need to plant it again and again each year. It does the work of planting more arugula on its own, saving you time. It can even self seed in colder places that get snow like Chicago. Other plants can self-seed as well. Generally plants become less tasty after they start producing seeds, so you want to eat them before then.