The fascinating story of Paris Green, a tint that literally was drop dead gorgeous

I love stories about colours and their origins, but this one on Paris Green is especially good: This Trendy But Toxic Shade of Green Left Thousands Dead in the Victorian Era.

Turns out 19th century patrons loved this tint that was produced using…arsenic. You can imagine how this turns out, but save your imagination and read the story.

Image and story from Town and Country, of all things. Not sure how I came across it, but I am glad I did.

How to Be Thankful For Your Life by Changing Just One Word


This is a good piece: How to Be Thankful For Your Life by Changing Just One Word. I have thought about it often since I read it. You can get to read it too, but in short, write down all the things you “have to” do or “should” do and think differently. Key passage:

You have to wake up early for work. You have to make another sales call for your business. You have to work out today. You have to write an article. You have to make dinner for your family. You have to go to your son’s game.

Now, imagine changing just one word in the sentences above.

You don’t “have” to. You “get” to.

You get to wake up early for work. You get to make another sales call for your business. You get to cook dinner for your family. By simply changing one word, you shift the way you view each event. You transition from seeing these behaviors as burdens and turn them into opportunities.

Get. You get to. Better still, you are lucky to get to. Write down the inner dialog in your head and see if you can edit it this way.

The cliche, you don’t know what you got until it’s gone, holds here. Know what you got. Think about it in a new way.

It’s 2019. Should you start a blog?


This article makes the case: Why You Should Start A Blog In 2019. Austin Kleon backs that up, here.

If you do certain things on a regular basis, you should blog. For example:

  • If you contribute to twitter on a regular basis, then you should consider blogging. All those tweets will be lost: your blog posts won’t.
  • If you discover new ways to do things, blogging is a way for other people to find it
  • If you want to demonstrate your expertise, a blog is one way to do that
  • If you want to keep a historical record of parts of your life, blogging is a good way to do it
  • If you find good things on the web and you want to track and comment on them, write that up in a blog post
  • If you find yourself sharing the same information with others regularly, write a piece on your blog and then point people to it
  • If you want to improve your writing, blogging is one way to do that

Forget about becoming famous or having a million viewers or getting rich. Just start simply and write what matters to you. Get a blog.

Is it the beginning of the end of the beef industry?


It sounds hyperbolic, but this piece makes a very strong case for that fact that it is: This Is the Beginning of the End of the Beef Industry | Outside Online

For pro-beef fans, consider this (emphasis is mine)

Sure, steak is great, but ground beef makes up 60 percent of beef sales, and most of it is more Salisbury than salutary, a greasy vehicle for the yummy stuff: ketchup, mushrooms, pickles, bacon, sriracha mayo. I knew I wouldn’t object if my central puck came from a plant, as long as it chewed right and tasted right. I suspected others might feel the same.

Even if people don’t go entirely vegan or vegetarian, there is going to be a lot less beef sold in the future, in my opinion.

Read the article: it’s great.

On appreciating established restaurants


A thought provoking piece on how we spend too much time on new restaurants and not enough on established ones: Why we should ignore the buzz surrounding new restaurants and give proper due to the ones that have lasted | National Post.

I think this is true. I pay attention to new places and hot places and places closing, but places that are great day in and day out I pay less attention to. I suspect many people are like that.

It would be great if publications that write on restaurants periodically round up places that are consistently great would write about them.

What is hostile architecture?

You can find a description of hostile architecture here, but the best way to describe it is to show it, as Vice does here: Photos of the Most Egregious ‘Anti-Homeless’ Architecture – VICE. Once you see these photos, you will find you see examples of it everywhere in the places you frequent.

Most hostile architecture is aimed at homeless people. Sometimes it is obvious, like spikes installed on flat surfaces. Other times, it’s more subtle, like arm rests in the middle of benches. (Prevents homeless people from lying down on them.)

One of the problems with hostile architecture is that it allows us to pretend homeless doesn’t exist. If we don’t see homeless people, it’s easier to image they aren’t there. A lesser problem is that cities become more unliveable for all, because hostile architecture for anyone is hostile architecture for everyone.

We need more livable cities. And we need more support for homeless people. Hostile architecture is not the solution.

P.S. Not all hostile architecture is aimed at people. Some of it, like spikes on top of outdoor ledges, is aimed at pigeons. I’ll leave that for another post.

The U.S. Supreme Court is not what you think


There was much concern from progressives when Gorsuch and then Kavanaugh joined the U.S. Supreme Court. It was believed by myself and others that the court was going to vote 5-4 in lock step on every option, with the 5 conservative judges routinely beating the four liberal ones.

If you are progressive, it is still a concern. But as these two pieces show, the Supremes vote more independently than you or I might think:

  1. The Supreme Court’s Biggest Decisions in 2019 – The New York Times
  2. The Supreme Court Might Have Three Swing Justices Now | FiveThirtyEight

This is not to say it is entire unpredictable how they will vote on matters before them. The liberal and conservative labels are convenient and often useful, but there’s much more to consider than just that when trying to determine how they will vote. Read the two pieces and see if they change your mind.

(Photo by Claire Anderson via unsplash.com)

6 good links for living well for less in a small space

I am fascinated by living in a small space. Here are some of the better links I’ve found on how to live well in such confines.

  1. Tiny Living Inspiration Small NYC Studio Apartment | Apartment Therapy
  2. Large Picture Frames You Can Make on the Cheap | Apartment Therapy
  3. Smart and Stylish Wall Storage to Organize Your Small Bedroom | Apartment Therapy
  4. Gabby & Adam’s Smart & Functional Small Space | Apartment Therapy
  5. Small Apartment in Bucharest — Shoebox Dwelling | Finding comfort, style and dignity in small spaces
  6. 14 Genius Tips for Living in a Small Space | A Cup of Jo

(Picture from the Cup of Jo piece.)

Eating less meat will have a positive effect on climate change. The collapse of the Soviet Union showed this.

Eating meat is a significant contributor to global warming.  I knew this, but the chart above and the article below really drove this home. As the Soviet Union was collapsing, people in that region started eating less meat. The result was a drop in carbon emissions. Now imagine if that was replicated worldwide for many years.

There’s actions we  can take to attack global warming. Eating less or no meat is one of them. For more on this, see: Soviet Union’s collapse led to massive drop in carbon emissions

The rise and fall of French cuisine?

So says this article: The rise and fall of French cuisine | Food | The Guardian.

I tend to disagree with the pessimistic assessment, but regardless, I recommend the piece because it really does cover what has happened to food and cooking in the last 50 or so years. For people who love food, it’s a worthwhile read.

I think the decline of French food is relative. So many more cuisines have been discovered and appreciated, from Italian to Vietnamese, that French cuisine has competition for people’s attention. That comes across in this piece: Bon appétit! How I rediscovered the joys of French cuisine | Food | The Guardian.  

It’s a good thing we have so many people writing and thinking and preparing food in new ways. French cuisine may no longer be dominant, but it is still great. And if you are going to Paris,  then check out this list of David Lebovitz for what he recommends in his city.  Or this list, somewhat dated, may still have value:
Top 10 budget restaurants and bistros in Paris | Travel | The Guardian

On superurbanization

Urbanization is an increase in cities  through their growth, either in more cities being created or growth within cities. Superurbanization is a new idea. It’s how some cities get the lion share of growth at the expense of other cities.

To see what I mean, look at this chart: A chart showing the growth of tech in US cities

Source: Tech is divergent | TechCrunch

Cities are growing everywhere, as people move from rural areas. But some cities are growing much more than others.

Smaller cities are trying to do something about it, as this article shows. But in the end, we may end up with more and more supercities, and smaller cities may suffer in the same way rural areas are suffering now.

Moodnotes: an app to document your thoughts and moods


If you are using CBT to deal with your mood, consider this app:  Moodnotes: a  Thought Journal, Mood Diary, CBT App.

It helps you quickly capture your mood, but it also help you deal with distorted thinking that contributes to poor moods or worse.

I am cautious about recommending such apps, because I worry what the app developers will do with the data. I have looked at their privacy policy and it is easy to understand and it says they won’t keep specific data. So I am cautiously recommending it.

In praise of the three monitor setup


As someone who is in the maximalist camp (as opposed to the minimalist camp) I love this idea: Why I Use 3 Monitors to Boost Productivity (And You Should, Too) | Inc.com. It’s hard to pull off at home, but I have such a set up at home and it really does work. I have a monitor off to the side for messaging systems and email, I have a second monitor attached to my laptop which I use for what I am focused on, and I have my laptop screen I use for supporting my focus work.

True, if you have a Mac, you can have multiple Desktops and easily swipe from one to the other. I do that in workspaces where I can’t have multiple physical monitors. When I can have them, I like the multiple physical monitor approach. Frankly, I would like to have even more!

Six links for minimalists


There’s a little bit of everything here for those who aspire to a minimalist lifestyle, from fitness to decor to cooking. Enjoy.

  1. The Minimalist’s Strength Workout – Outside – Pocket
  2. Y Home Minimalist Apartment by Office ZHU – Design Milk
  3. Colorful Minimalistic Photography By Collin Pollard – Fubiz Media
  4. Budget-Friendly Amazon Minimalist Home Decor | Apartment Therapy
  5. minimalist barbecue sauce – smitten kitchen
  6. Cacio e Pepe Recipe | Bon Appetit

Extreme Decluttering

I recommend this piece on a family that had to do extreme decluttering because of a move. There’s lots of good advice in the piece, and worth reading if you are feeling the need to declutter. You may not feel you need to do it in an extreme way, but does this sound familiar?

Decluttering was an item on my to-do list for years. One I kept putting off.

Yep. Never a fun thing to do. But in their case, they had added pressure:

… we decided to sell our house and downsize to an apartment less than half the size. Then, getting rid of stuff became priority number one. It was an essential step in selling our home fast and for top dollar and critical for surviving a long distance move on a shoestring budget.

When I brought in professional movers to estimate our long distance move, I was shocked by estimates that we’d have 90+ boxes of stuff to move, which did not include existing storage totes. My first thought was How could four people possibly need that much stuff? The short answer is we didn’t, and I made it my mission to get that box number down.

In fact, not only did we want less stuff but we also wanted to move it ourselves on just one rental moving truck.

Needless to say, once you have such goals, extreme decluttering becomes mandatory.

We started extreme decluttering. We ended up moving across the country with one 26 ft. moving truck that was only about three-quarters of the way full. And no, we didn’t get rid of everything. We kept enough to furnish our new apartment fully.

With half of our stuff gone, we were able to downsize from a 4500 sq ft home to a 1768 sq ft townhouse-style apartment. Now we are living comfortably in 61% less space.

A good piece. Recommended, regardless of whether or not you are downsizing.

(Bold emphasis added by me. Image from here.)

The Restaurant That Has Helped New Yorkers Feel Famous Since 1984 and other links to NYC


For fans of NY back when, or people just curious about a very different New York then the current one, here’s a bunch of links worth reading:

For fans of The Godfather, with a few minor thoughts

Here’s a short but good interview with Francis Ford Coppola on The Godfather book’s 50th anniversary | EW.com.

“The Godfather” is one of those films I can always sit down and watch, and is on the list of my top favourite films. It is such an odd film from the 70s, in that it doesn’t seem from that era, but if you grew up in that era, then you see the 70s reflected in a film set in the 40s.

It’s a masterpiece of a film, and I can watch it with the sound off, for it is beautiful to see. The acting is superb as well. The only thing about it that never fails to bother me when I watch it is knowing I am sympathetic to a family of criminals. Coppola wisely sets up the Corleone family’s antagonists in a way you have a hard time feeling sympathy for them when they are attacked, which makes the viewer complicit in what is going on, corrupting him or her. It’s a corrupt world, the film says, and the only way to deal with that is to accept it. I never way to accept that, and I always am aware of that when watching the film.

I often think of it in comparison to the great film by Clint Eastwood, “Unforgiven”. Eastwood’s character succumbs to the forces of evil, but he never takes it for granted, and he moves away from it again. As well, Eastwood takes the entire film of “Unforgiven” to strip away all the myths and glory and glamour of Westerns. In some ways, it is the opposite of “The Godfather”.  Later film makers would do to gangster films what Eastwood did to the Western.

 

 

The Raspberry Pi 4 is out


I love Raspberry Pis. They are great for playing around and learning about technology.  But until recently I would not recommend them as an every day computer, if anything because they are just too slow. Or they were before the Raspberry Pi 4. With the capabilities of the new Pi 4, they may be ready to become your main or at least backup computer.

If you are interested, you can Google them and get alot more information on them. Here’s two sources more:  Raspberry Pi 4 Computer | Uncrate and Engadget.

How Parental Love Impacts Flourishing Later in Life

A very good piece for parents to read. How Parental Love Impacts Flourishing Later in Life | Psychology Today

Parenting is a long term play, though it might not seem some days. And some days the effort you put in doesn’t seem to make a difference. But it does. Read that for those days when you wonder if you are doing anything right as a parent.

How to set up a static website for about $1 a month

Finally got around to doing this, so I have update this page. Here’s your options. Option 3 worked for me.

Note, you will need some technical knowledge, an Amazon account, and one of these guides:

  1.   Simple site hosting with Amazon S3 and HTTPS. This is good if you plan to host your DNS at AWS. I didn’t, so I ran into trouble.
  2. . This piece is similar and helped too but the SSL certificate was hosted elsewhere, so it only helped so much.
  3. This page finally helped me because I host with namecheap.com. I followed it and it worked great! It has more detail than some of the others.

You don’t have to use AWS. Other cloud providers offers something similar:

So, lots of options.

Talk it up! One of the best things you can for yourself is simple (and you can do it while brushing your teeth)

And what is it: Say nice things – to yourself

It sounds ridiculous, and you may feel ridiculous if you try it. If so, consider this:

  • you likely say terrible things to yourself all the time. “I can’t believe I did that…that was stupid…I am an idiot…etc”. You get the picture. If saying nice things about yourself is dumb, that is dumber. So get over yourself.
  • athletes, from amateurs to the elite, talk positively to themselves ALL THE TIME. Indeed, when I played sports in school, we were admonished to “Talk it up!” all of the time. It made the team better: it made us better.  Great athletes are great partially because they are always talking positively to themselves
  • I mean, you are already standing there in the mirror brushing your teeth. Put that big brain of yours to work. Do better with it. Talk it up! 🙂

On being mediocre


People who have high standards fear being mediocre. I thought of that when I read this: Opinion | I’ll Never Be Rachmaninoff – The New York Times.

People without high standards never worry about that. They do stuff, and the result is what it is. It comes with no judgment, for the most part.

Being fearful of being mediocre is twice cursed. First, if you fear that, you likely will not attempt things that could bring you joy and happiness due to your fearfulness. Second, you are already mediocre at some many things already, and yet you turn a blind eye to them, convinced that the few things you excel at removes the label of Mediocre from you. I have rarely met people who are great at one thing not be mediocre at many other things. There’s only so much time, and greatness comes with tradeoffs.

Don’t fear being mediocre. You already are! Go out and enjoy what you can. You may find the things you start off being mediocre in at first are things you end up being good at later. Not that you need to get good!

Here’s some things you can get better at: being stronger, writing a book, become an artist. Or get a partner and learn tai-chi.

how to become artist in 6 steps, with 33 rules to follow


From this superb piece, Jerry Saltz: How to Be an Artist, come this:

Step One: You Are a Total Amateur
Lesson 1: Don’t Be Embarrassed
Lesson 2: “Tell your own story and you will be interesting.” — Louise Bourgeois
Lesson 3: Feel Free to Imitate
Lesson 4: Art Is Not About Understanding. Or Mastery. (It is about doing and experience)
Lesson 5: Work, Work, Work

Step Two: How to Actually Begin
Lesson 6: Start With a Pencil
Lesson 7: Develop Forms of Practice
Lesson 8: Now, Redefine Skill
Lesson 9: “Embed thought in material.” — Roberta Smith
Lesson 10: Find Your Own Voice (then exaggerate it)
Lesson 11: Listen to the Crazy Voices in Your Head
Lesson 12: Know What You Hate
Lesson 13: Scavenge

Step Three: Learn How to Think Like an Artist
Lesson 14: Compare Cats and Dogs
Lesson 15: Understand That Art Is Not Just for Looking At
Lesson 16: Learn the Difference Between Subject Matter and Content
Lesson 17: See As Much As You Can
Lesson 18: All Art Is Identity Art!
Lesson 19: All Art Was Once Contemporary Art

Step Four: Enter the Art World
Lesson 20: Accept That You Will Likely Be Poor
Lesson 21: Define Success
Lesson 22: It Takes Only a Few People to Make a Career
Lesson 23: Learn to Write

Step Five: Survive the Art World
Lesson 24: Artists Must Be Vampires
Lesson 25: Learn to Deal With Rejection
Lesson 26: Make an Enemy of Envy
Lesson 27: Having a Family Is Fine

Step Six: Attain Galactic Brain
Lesson 28: What You Don’t Like Is As Important As What You Do Like
Lesson 29: Art Is a Form of Knowing Yourself
Lesson 30: “Artists do not own the meaning of their work.” — Roberta Smith
Lesson 31: All Art Is Subjective
Lesson 32: You Must Prize Vulnerability
Lesson 33: Be Delusional

But read the piece: the comments he provides are what gets to the heart of it.

The math behind why you should take care of yourself

wΔz=cov(wi,zi)+E(wiΔzi)

That equation can be found in this odd article here: Evolution: biologist George Price’s life and death – Vox.

It tells the story of George Price and how his extreme altruism led to his death. Well worth reading, especially if you think self care is bunk.

In short, take care of yourself to some degree, or you end up not benefitting anyone. And if you are not benefiting anyone, you are not being altruistic after all.

On dreams and goals


How you read this piece depends on who you are: Is It Ever Too Late to Pursue a Dream? You may recall it: it’s a long article about Dan Stoddard, a 39 year old, 6 foot 8 inch, 300+ pound guy playing basketball for a small college in Ontario who want to play pro.

When I read it, I first thought: no way. The guy’s too old, too big, too…you name it, he isn’t going to be a professional basketball player. That’s one  way to read it. A very grounded way to read it.

Another way  to read it  is to consider how dreams and goals shape us and change us and change others around us. I have a friend who sets very high goals and sometimes lands short of them. But even landing short, she accomplishes something beyond most people and beyond herself. The accomplishments matter, because they matter to her. The accomplishments matter, because they get others to seek out goals too. Others, like her, setting aim and leaving the ground.  Leaving the ground, the way Dan Stoddard does.

How you consider these quotes depends on who you are.