As someone who cares for elderly people sometimes, please please fill out an advanced directive (not just a living will). It’s a sort of “if this, then that” for health scenarios. It’s immensely helpful when when caring for someone not well, and can be much more stressful without one. I have had dying, incapacitated patients wait weeks for guardianship or POA-HC to be processed before care can be changed to comfort measures, because they did not have one on file.

Get one from the hospital you would likely go to, fill it out, give them a copy, keep a copy, and give a copy to who you list as a decision-maker. You do not want to add the stress of logistics to an emotionally difficult time.

I think as a society we should embrace death more. Pretending it doesn’t happen just makes things worse when that reality of mortality unwaveringly stares you in the face.

Try Lemma if you’re on iOS. It’s very smooth and has the right balance of features and simplicity imo.

Picture of tents camping. The text shows: “You can’t run through a campground. You can only ran, because it’s past tents.

Side note, is this because the image isn’t loading or for visual impairment?

Oh man, I have many many written down. I quickly found out that there are many schools of thought for approaching woodworking, so it’s helpful to think about what you want to make and what you like or dislike as you try different things. I decided I wanted to go the sharpening route, as opposed to continually buying electro-hardened blades, and I wanted to use as simple as tools as I can learn how. This ends up being axes, chisels, saws, and I did get a hand-crank grinder from 1910 for those heavy grinding situations.

I almost always have the Mortise and Tenon podcast on as I’m doing things. Joshua and Mike’s discussions really resonate with me and the philosophical elements really prompt some introspection. Joshua has two books that I’ll probably get soon. Otherwise, I bought Sharpen This and the Anarchists’ Toolkit; anything from Lost Art Press is probably worth the money.

As far as channels, Matt Estlea has many great videos for the essentials of sharpening and good form for chiseling and sawing. He also has other videos that I would consider “optional” but I did end up making his sharpening block stop, because it makes sharpening quicker. I may try to do free hand honing though, since the heavy cambre is difficult with a honing guide.

Paul Sellers has so many great videos. I especially loved him making a bench without having a bench. So many people show you how to make things already having many other tools and setups.

James Wright (Wood by Wright) has some really good videos and offers honest opinions. Beavercraft has some nice simple ones for getting started with carving. I haven’t explored one for tool restoration yet; if you have any that you suggest, I’d be happy to hear them. I eventually want to just make my own wooden planes.

That sounds like a unique experience. When I had a running coach for a short while, he said I should curl my toe down as I pull my leg back. The lack of exercising that bottom foot muscle often contributes to flat-footedness. This wasn’t probably an issue when people walked barefoot because we naturally dug into the earth for traction.

Do your feet ever get sore?

Thank you. I wholeheartedly agree, learning to work with nature such as wood, instead of imposing our will on it definitely gives me perspective on considering our connection with nature. In the modern era, much of how we connect with nature is removed or sterilized.

I’m really glad to hear you sing. There are so many ways music and rhythm weave through our lives. I expect a follow up post if you Snow White like 20 birds onto your arms!

I didn’t learn this until about a year ago, but fine china is a type of ceramic, similar to porcelain or bone china. They differ in what mixtures they are made of and what temperature they are dried at.

https://www.21oak.com/inspiration/bone-china-vs-porcelain/

I think you have the most accurate answer. The “othering” behavior can be seen in essentially any group of people.

Plus, if you read any of the texts of these religions, I have never come across instructions to shun others. I think people have a surface level of belief and then sophomorically apply it to be “more righteous.” They’re really missing the forest for the trees if they elevate themselves above others.

Not the Middle East, but I remember Hinduism having a caste system that does actually rank people, but from information I got, people were generally on the same page about it.

Can you define what you mean by religious toxicity?

Say what you will, but they’ve always had a stable economy

It’s not integrated into any of the apps I use, so I use a mobile browser. There’s a shield icon that appears next to the notification bell icon. It’s essentially another inbox that shows the reporter, reportee, post, community, and reason for reporting. I still have to manually click the post and decide what to do (ie, remove, ban, nothing), and then go back to the mod inbox and click a Resolved (like a “read”) button.

I guess I didn’t explicitly say it, but that was actually the moment that I went from could exist to must exist. I know it sounds pretty crazy to commit to such an irrational thing. I have a better understanding now of why it’s called practicing a faith, because you don’t just immediately do it and you’re done. It constantly gets tested. So, there wasn’t one moment that just flipped all the way from not believing anything to believing everything, it’s a spectrum.

For me it was ironically a theoretical physics video that made a religious belief really make sense. It was a video explaining how we can conceptualize 11 dimensions that would be possible on the information we collectively know now as humans. The way it made me really think about how truly expansive space and time are really made me think that “that’s not impossible to think that there is a 11th dimension being that has some agenda that we cannot understand.”

I imagine it’s like a child trying to understand something beyond their comprehension but it doesn’t change how true it is, like “brush your teeth because it lowers your risk of gums bleeding and leaking bacteria into your bloodstream and eventually causing vegetative infective endocarditis.” They’re just not going to understand that yet, but still reap the benefits later if they brush their teeth. I think it’s much easier and safer for the kid to say, “I’m just not going to brush my teeth.”

Bottom line is, I think that’s why it’s called faith, because it’s just not definitively provable or disprovable. I have personally had many tangible positive benefits in my life from having a faith but don’t think that should be forced upon anyone.

And I know many people in western cultures equate religion to Christianity, but just a quick reminder that there are many many faith systems that exist in the world.

Homework actually 😅. After a couple of hours, they all start to sound like the cantina song on Star Wars

They probably love the shear speed of it