hey, don't cry. one cup heavy whipping cream, two tablespoons granulated sugar, three tablespoons cocoa powder and whisk until stiff peaks form for three ingredient chocolate mousse, okay?
old gods are waking
A short list of things I think everyone should try or do at least once in their life that will make you feel more alive. Not all of these are applicable to every person, but it’s a summary:
Take a dance class of any style with a semi-serious instructor for at least 4 classes worth
Write a work of fiction, of *any* length and *any* quality
Learn a least a bit of a language that isn’t your native one. You don’t need to become anywhere near fluent, but try and get a bit beyond yes, no, and where’s the bathroom. If you’re from a country where most people are bilingual already, that doesn’t count! Get bits of a language with which you are truly unfamiliar.
In the same vein, make peace with subtitles and start consuming music, TV and movies from cultures that aren’t your own. If your country imports large amounts of media from a specific other culture or cultures (American movies in foreign markets, for example) that also doesn’t count! Get some feelers out to begin to take in content from a culture that you don’t already have a lot of knowledge of.
Try at least one less common/less “exercisey” and more fun type of physical exercise such as roller blading or roller or ice skating, gymnastics, trampoline, rock climbing, aerial silks, pole dancing, surfing, etc
Learn a hobby or craft that produces a physical finished product and produce a single, complete object - regardless of quality - that you can hold in your hands and say that you made.
Look up a how it’s made video or YouTube video on how an item that’s interesting or relevant to you is made
Give one type of thing - media, hobby, sport, whatever - that you’ve never been interested in or never tried because of some preconceived perception an honest shot and see if your perception was correct. Sometimes it won’t be, sometimes it will be, but it’s valuable to know.
Rearrange the furniture in a room in your home
It’s about NOVELTY, babey! Get some enrichment into your enclosure!
by Dmitriy Shustikov
color ref
You mentioned years ago that you once worked on a project restoring former coal mine land, trying to get plants to grow and break up the compacted soil and so on. Do you know how the site is doing now? I hope you don’t mind me asking, but it sounds like a very cool project and I would love to know if it worked!
Oh, extremely well! The trees are about a third of the height they should be for their age, but there's a little woodland there now. This year my uni is taking over the lease for the site, so investigations continue. We got a lot of papers out of it. Plus, we proved that if you get the trees to grow in, you increase other biodiversity, like birds and earthworms and small mammals and lizards (the place is alive with lizards every summer, actually. Sometimes they sit on your bag.)
The main project site is here, if you want a gander.
“the arts and sciences are completely separate fields that should be pitted against each other” the overlap of the arts and sciences make up our entire perceivable reality they r fucking on the couch