People learn when they can experiment with whatever they are working with, be it something physical like carpentry or something mental like philosophy. Teachers can even encourage faster learning by letting students essentially play with what they have and stepping back. Providing too much instruction means students don’t need to
Continue readingTag: Mind Space
Things Are Good: What is Philosophy For?
Anyone who’s interested in thinking ought to read Mary Midgley’s last book, What is Philosophy For? I just finished the book last night and felt the need to share it since it investigates pertinent issues of our time while calling for more people to engage with philosophical thinking. Midgley address
Continue readingThings Are Good: Working Less is What We can do to Repair the Economy
Before the pandemic too many people spent too much of the time working instead of living. Now, the opposite is true with employers in North America firing people left and right because companies didn’t save a rainy day fund. Indeed, some companies aren’t paying rent and getting away with it
Continue readingThings Are Good: Feeling Lonely? Head to the Virus Cafe
Feeling lonely and not getting out due to the pandemic? Head over to the virtual virus cafe where you can connect with other nice people on the internet and chat for a little bit. The creator clearly wants people to connect in an impromptu but meaningful way while we are
Continue readingThings Are Good: Visually Communicating Climate Change
Showing people the impact climate change is having on people usually results in rather depressing images. It doesn’t have to be this way, we can show people the great things people are doing to mediate and react to our changing planet. The mission of Climate Visuals is to help journalists
Continue readingThings Are Good: Understanding the Anti-Reality Narrative in America
Those of us who have been arguing for sustainable growth and a carbon neutral economy for years know that people don’t listen; in fact people argue against the very concept to their own detriment. The response to these climate change deniers and malicious actors was to ty to change their
Continue readingThings Are Good: It’s OK to Just Stay Home
Just stay home, that’s all you need to do to help. There’s no need to give yourself anxiety about what else you could be doing to help. Take this at home time to relax, and forget about the all the bizarre social pressure to be always performing. It’s ok to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Being Weird is Great for Community
It’s OK to be weird, if anything it’s good that you’re weird. The old adage to “just be yourself” rings true and you should embrace it by embracing other people who are being true to themselves (remember that being weird doesn’t mean you get to be a jerk). We know
Continue readingThings Are Good: Mental Health Tips to Help You Get Through Social Distancing
Weeks of practicing social distancing can get tiring since we don’t feel as physically connected to our social groups as normal. That’s ok, we all feel that way. So what do we do about it? We can practice good mental health hygiene too. Over at Discover they have seven tips
Continue readingThings Are Good: Listen to this Song to Reduce Your Anxiety
Marconi Union – Weightless (Official Video) from Optical Vitamins on Vimeo. The song Weightless by the Marconi Union has been proven by neuroscientists to reduce people’s anxiety, and in times like a pandemic we can all get too stressed out. Following in the tradition of ambient music artist the group
Continue readingThings Are Good: Climaginaries: Understanding the Post-Carbon World
Fiction is an effective tool to picture how others live and what other possibilities exist for humanity. Stories like Star Trek inspire people to strive to make the imaginary real through existing science and technology, so why not do that for the transition to a fossil fuel free economy? That’s
Continue readingThings Are Good: Successful People are “Lazy”
It’s ok to be lazy. In fact, incorporating come lazy behaviours into your work might make you more productive. As counter-intuitive as that sounds, it’s true. There are certain tricks that you can easily incorporate into your day to day at work to enhance what you do, even though others
Continue readingThings Are Good: Enjoyment of Life Increases by Deleting Facebook
It’s well known that Facebook is bad for your mental health, and let’s be honest it’s likely bad for humanity at large. The engineers at Facebook purposefully create algorithms to get you hooked on the site and exploit your emotions so you spend more time on the site. Why? So
Continue readingThings Are Good: Gender Inclusive Design for our Built Environment
Architects generally want people to feel comfortable around their buildings or interior spaces; however, architects aren’t perfect and may overlook some simple design solutions that can put people at ease. The World Bank Group has released a handbook for urban planners, architects, and anybody shaping our physical environment to use
Continue readingThings Are Good: Be Happier by Blocking Ads
A debate has been going on for years about the effectiveness about advertising and how the exposure to ads makes us feel. We now have an answer. Advertising is effective and makes us wants things we otherwise wouldn’t and that makes us unhappy. This is good because it provides us
Continue readingThings Are Good: Tips for Remaining Anonymous in the Surveillance Age
Surveillance capitalism benefits companies who have large datasets about what people do and where they are – without the consent of those being monitored. The pervasive modern surveillance which is around us everyday from our phones to private cameras can be connected to large corporations or governments for nefarious purposes.
Continue readingThings Are Good: This Knowledge Tree Cold Help us Avert Climate Catastrophe
The ongoing global climate crisis is still denied by some people (like the Australian Prime Minister) despite all the evidence. The predictions made by climate scientists decades ago are coming true: from crop failures to massive wildfires. Why then are we ignoring their predictions about what’s going to happen next?
Continue readingThings Are Good: The Complex Mental Model of the Suburbs
It’s well established that the suburbs are bad for people’s health, the environment, mobility, and are associated with many other societal ills. However, amongst people who don’t live in the suburbs there is a profound distaste in sub-urban living that suburbanites don’t seem to understand. The revulsion people have to
Continue readingThings Are Good: Imperfection is the Perfect Goal
Many people want to be perfect and they spend a lot of their energy trying to improve themselves so they appear perfect. This is a fool’s game as perfection is an impossible goal; and the earlier this is realized the better it is for your life. Yes, to be “perfect:
Continue readingThings Are Good: Be a Better Tourist just by Thinking
Over tourism of popular sites, and entire cities, has gotten so out of hand that Venice, Amsterdam, and a handful of other cities have concerned adding a daily fee to tourists just to be in the city. Everyone knows this isn’t a good solution as it won’t impact the wealthy
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