• 1 Post
  • 16 Comments
Joined 10 months ago
cake
Cake day: November 30th, 2023

help-circle






  • For most people, big breaks in habits fall apart fast, while more gradual changes stick.

    For example, many make resolutions to get fit, and start a bunch of related things. But since none of it is habitual, it requires mental effort to do consistently. Soon, something else important requires that mental attention, and the plan falls apart.

    The successful ones aren’t special, but they created one, little, achievable metric to hit:

    1. “Subscribe to 2 science-based fitness influencers and watch their content regularly”.

    Because it was easy, it became habit. Then, they chose another simple thing to build on:

    1. “Change evening commute to pass by gym”
    2. “On Tuesdays, go into gym”
    3. “Learn proper form for one excercise”
    4. “Bring a protein shake”
    5. etc.

    Each of these is so small they don’t really feel significant at all. And they’re not. The important thing to understand is we’re all lazy. The real challenge isn’t getting yourself onto a diet or into the gym, it’s designing your habits so that the diet isn’t “a diet”, it’s just what you eat. It’s designing your life so that going to the gym requires less mental effort than not going.

    I could write a lot more about this but it’s already getting long. Atomic Habits is a good book on how to design your habits and habit chains, if you have the time.






  • You can translate those QR codes into the base seeds that were used to generate them. Then you can just save a text file with all those seeds. I’ve done it using a phone camera to open to a web browser and extracting the seed from the translated URL, but IDK if it can still be tricked into opening the code that way.

    I hope this unasked for advice helps.






  • I think that being informed can help dilute the worry. Here’s what I’ve learned:

    Most microplastics found inside humans come from synthetic clothing followed by car tires. Theres a great Veritasium video on this. Plastic cookware is also a consideration.

    Food & Cookware

    Don’t buy dishwasher pods, they’re worse for the environment (plastic waste) and worse for your wallet than just a regular fluid container. Both fluid container and pod container are plastic so theres not much improvement to be had there.

    My friend with a Chemical Engineering degree tells me that the plastics are stable chemically, and insufficient evidence exists to deem them harmful when left alone in cool temperatures. HOWEVER, unreacted precursor chemicals and thermosets are highly reactive, and new plastics come still coated with this. New car smell? Thats unreacted precursor, and it’s very harmful. Additionally, plastic cookware also gets hot, breaking it down slowly, and potentially making it harmful.

    Avoid plastics and “non-stick” coatings in cookware.

    Clothing

    First thought is to avoid synthetic clothing, but theres a catch… Synthetic clothing is significantly better at blocking harmful UV light from the sun. For example, polyester & Nylon UPF is about 30-50+, whereas cotton is around 5. UPF = SPF generally. For this, I prefer wool (UPF ~40) or denim (UPF 1000+ off the chart). However, thats hot, so using some tight knit polyester shirts is a must in warm climates. Many shirts from retailers like REI have this stuff. So far, the ones I own have never shed noticeably, though that may change.

    Why am I talking about sun protection? Remember, the goal is your health, not fearful avoidance of one harm that subjects you to another.

    For all fabrics that aren’t expected to protect from the sun, natural fibers are preferred. Included is bedding, towels, bathrobe, pajamas, casual clothing, socks, etc.

    Other thoughts

    For all of this, my friend says that I probably don’t need to worry, and I have never seen convincing evidence that microplastics are harmful inside the body. Yet, I operate as if it were proven, because I don’t want to risk reading that I’ve been poisoning myself ten years from now.