Category Archives: Uncategorised

Here is this week’s list of comic strips and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Eat Your Veggies. I don’t actually like the taste of meat very much. Fish is my exception to this rule, so I completely understand where these characters are coming from. Haha!

Snatching History’s Forgotten Women from the Evil Clutches of the Patriarchy. Wouldn’t it be interesting to uncover all of the people that were purposefully forgotten? I sometimes wonder what kinds of inventions, stories, or medical/technological breakthroughs we’d have now if our species had been more cautious about preserving knowledge.

The Gravekeeper’s Paradox. This kind of stuff makes me grateful that I’m planning to be cremated after I die. It’s cool if other people find meaning in what kind of gravestone they have, but it’s not the sort of thing I’d ever want someone to fuss over in my name.

Is Death from Pain a Natural Death via LynnRWebsterMD. What a sad but also interesting debate.

Why I’m Letting My Hair Go Grey via CTCsite. Readers, how did you (or how are you planning) to react to grey hair? I haven’t decide what I’ll do yet, but I might go grey naturally like this writer.

From To My Daughters on International Women’s Day via LithChronicles:

I know you’re scared; but I need you to know that it’s okay to be scared. I’m going to tell you something that I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time now. I have a secret: Being scared is a good thing.

What have you been reading?

Three of them matter for us: think of them as the Three P’s of the RPD. Players should

1. Be patient: Focus on the long-term benefits of finding a way to cooperate—don’t just focus on the short-run pleasures, whether it’s the pleasure of exploitation or the pleasure of punishment. Axelrod calls this “extending the shadow of the future.”
2. Be pleasant: Start off nice—make sure those bared teeth are part of a smile. And later in the game, take the ABBA approach, and take a chance on cooperating every now and then, even when things have gone south for a while.
3. Be perceptive: Figure out what game you’re playing—know the rules, and know the benefits and costs of cooperation.

I claim that people with higher IQs will be better at all three.

From Economist Says Higher-IQ People are Nicer and More Cooperative.

This is the most thought-provoking articles I’ve read in years, and I read for at least a few hours every day. It is well worth your time to check out the author’s full argument.

No, not every nice person I’ve met has been intelligent, and not every intelligent person has been nice. Every rule has exceptions.

When I think of all of the people I’ve known, though, I can see how these traits could be connected. Getting along well with others requires many skills that can’t be easily taught. You should know how to make small talk, solve a conflict, keep a conversation going, and make sure everyone is included.

You also have to memorize all kinds of small details about what others like, what interests them, and what topics are perfectly okay to bring up with Sonja but should be avoided completely when you’re talking to Pete.

I’ve known people who are far better at these things than I could ever hope to be. There have been other people I’ve known who push everyone’s buttons because they’re either oblivious of the rules or don’t seem to care at all about following them. (It’s never been clear to me which one of these is more true for them. Maybe it’s both).

Anecdotes aren’t date, of course, but I’d like to hear your thoughts on this topic. What patterns have you noticed in your social circles?

Photo credit: Tomascastelazo.

This is the kind of photography that I love.

It reminds me of the walks I used to take on rainy days when I was a kid. Seeing all of the earthworms that wiggled their way onto the sidewalk if the soil grew too waterlogged was always interesting. Sometimes I’d rescue a few of them if I thought they were in danger of getting stepped on.

A few even ended up living in a terrarium in my bedroom for a year or two. When we finally released them back into the wild before moving to another state, the terrarium was full of large, plump earthworms.

I don’t know if nostalgia was one of the emotions that the photographer was originally trying to share with his audience, but it’s the first thing I thought of when I found this picture.

What does this picture make you think of?

I procrastinate.

I pick at the dry skin around my cuticles.

I worry.

When people suddenly start talking about the visceral details of their various medical conditions, I leave the room. There is never any reason for me to know about anyone’s mucous plugs, weeping sores, or bowel movements.

I hate making telephone calls and will avoid them if at all possible.

Olives and brussels sprouts gross me out. I refuse to eat them.

I fidget.

My mind loves to wander, and I don’t always reign it in.

Sometimes I don’t hold the elevator door open for people who are dawdling in the lobby.

I like to re-watch favourite TV episodes over and over again. This is an especially nice thing to do when I’m exercising or otherwise don’t want to give a show my full attention.

If a book doesn’t grab my attention within a few pages, I stop reading it.

Now you know my bad habits. What are a few of yours?

Here is this week’s list of comic strips, essays, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

What It’s Like to Be That Fat Person Sitting Next to You on the Plane via yrfatfriend. What a heartbreaking essay.

The Cult of Memory: When History Does More Harm Than Good. A long read, but also a good one.

There’s Still Good People Out There via ajgus83. I don’t know this blogger or the man who helped her, but I was really touched by this story. Isn’t it amazing to see how far a random act of kindness can spread?

45 Seconds of Sunlight. This is exactly how I feel every March.

From My Mom the Hippie via bjknappwrites:

The doctors asked what had stung him, and my Mom just simply replied “A bee.”  I don’t think she knew the different kinds of wasps and hornets.  Anything that stung was simply a bee.  The doctor wanted to know what kind.

From Am I Ugly?

And yet I judge myself to be not unattractive.1 Is that valid? Many researchers have examined the specifics of what we find alluring in another human face. So I decided to use these findings to critically analyze my own mug.

What have you been reading?

I’d like to introduce a new rule for the Internet: don’t disappear.

It’s more than fine to take a break. I’ve done so myself in certain situations.

It’s totally okay to cut back on how often you show up, what you share, or who you share it with.

But don’t disappear.

Not completely, anyway.

Keep someone updated on where you’re going if you go away.

We worry about you otherwise. 🙂

This entire video was fascinating. Having more friends is correlated with all kinds of good, healthy things.

I don’t normally rant on this blog, but I’ve been having issues with pop-ups lately. Pop-up advertisements are one of the fastest and most efficient ways to drive me away from a site. It doesn’t matter how much I loved the article I was reading, what the pop-up is saying, or how long I’ve been a fan of that blogger or website.

If the administrators interrupt my concentration with an unwanted pop-up, they’re going to lose a reader for good. If their pop-up includes a video that starts playing automatically, I’ll be so annoyed that I will tell friends and family members to avoid that site as well.

No, I’m not opposed to the use of advertisements on websites in general. They’re a necessary part of making money on the Internet, and I completely understand that. Banner ads are fine, as are advertisements that are inserted halfway through whatever essay or article I’m reading as long as they don’t make noise or cover up the text.

I don’t care what kinds of racy pictures an ad might include or if they use clickbait titles to grab the reader’s attention. Those are some of the things I’ve come to expect from the web. Non-intrusive online ads are like billboards: sometimes they’re silly; often they’re cheesy; rarely they might even be helpful or interesting.

When a website decides to interrupt me when I’m reading one of their articles by launching a pop-up that I never wanted, though, they’re sending a very clear message about how little they value my time and attention.

It would be like a server interrupting you in the middle of a meal to take your half-finished plate away and ask if you wanted to order another entree. I can count the number of times that is acceptable on one hand, and every single one of them would begin with you asking for help due to something like undercooked meat, a fly in your soup, or food allergy issues.

You don’t just randomly start taking things away from people if you want them to keep coming back.

So, please. For the love of pete, stop using pop-up ads.

Here is this week’s list of comic strips, poems, essays, short stories, and other tidbits from my favourite corners of the web.

Consider the Lilies. I’ve wondered the same thing many times.

To Human Barbie, From Barbie via femininecollect. I absolutely love this.

Every Night We Do the Speaking. This made me shudder. It really should be a full-length novel.

Mental Illness Is a Result of Misery, Yet We Still Stigmatize It. What an interesting essay.

A Special Kind of Radio via nazmaniatweet. It’s amazing to see how much technology can change over the course of a few decades.

From Vacuum Wars via StuartRWest:

Little did I know how my life would change when I took the vacuum cleaner in to be fixed. A tale of woe and caution…

What have you been reading?

Five years ago I published a post about blogs I thought everyone should follow. I thought it was high time to revisit this idea, especially since many of the sites I recommended back then have either gone inactive or no longer exist.

You should know in advance that I have eclectic tastes and I don’t necessarily agree with everything I read. If I recommend something, it’s because I’m a fan of the author’s ideas or writing style. I’m also purposefully not including the blogs that I link to in the Link Love section of this site. They’re all awesome, but I wanted to branch out and pick other links for this post.

With that being said, let’s get onto the list. They’re in no particular order.

Raptitude. This one of the few personal development blogs that I actually like. David, the guy who runs it, has such a personable writing style. It’s like he’s having a conversation with you as equals instead of preaching a (secular) sermon. I really like that about his writing style.

Geekologie. A collection of wonderfully bizarre things from every corner of the globe. I’m  not sure how else to describe it. Every post is different from the last one, often wildly so.

Nerd Fitness. I was always one of those awkward kids in gym class who hated being there and wasn’t good at any of the sports we played. This is a fitness site geared specifically for those of us who aren’t naturally athletic or coordinated. I love the fact that stuff like this exists now. Exercise is actually something I enjoy these days, and that isn’t something I ever thought I’d say.

Full House Reviewed. This blog reviewed all of the original Full House episodes a few years ago, and it will soon be reviewing Fuller House as well. It has a snarky tone that contrasts the sentimentality of these characters nicely.

I Work at a Public Library. The funniest site I currently follow.

That Deaf Guy. The second funniest site that I follow.

Letters of Note. I don’t have the penmanship or the patience to send hand written letters to anyone.  Maybe that’s why I find this site so fascinating?

Poor as Folk. This is a blog about the cycle of poverty, living on a shoestring budget, and how to remain hopeful when you feel hopeless. I love it.

Talking Ethics. It’s rare to find discussions about ethics and morality that come from a strictly secular perspective. What I like about it the most is that there are so many intelligent people involved in it as commenters and bloggers. I listen far more than I participate, but I’ve learned a lot from this site.

IFL Science. I’ve learned so much about medicine, technology, biology, physics, and chemistry from the writers on this website. If any of these topics interest you in the slightest, I highly recommend checking it out.