Posted in Other, Science!, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, heroes, inspiration, social science, Thoughts on December 4, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Why do we need heroes? To be better versions of ourselves.
Scientists Discover That People Act Way Better When Batman Is Present
After making a guy dressed as Batman stand around in a subway car, a team of researchers found that the behavior of people around him suddenly improved the moment he showed up.
I call this the “see better, be better” school of human behavior. And I like it!
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, inspiration, persistence on December 3, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I taught an octopus piano (It took 6 months)
This video is refusing to embed for some reason, but if you are impressed by clever and creative displays of persistence (by humans and others!), it’s worth checking out. Start at the 3:00 minute mark if you want to go straight to the training process, or at 15:00 if you want to skip to the piano performance.
Note: this video contains a lot of swearing. Which, as someone who has trained their cat to sit and jump (but definitely not play an instrument), I completely understand!
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, charity, donations, inspiration, kindness on December 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“There is no exercise better for the heart than reaching down and lifting people up.”
― John Holmes
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, hope, inspiration, Thoughts, Writers on December 1, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Now this is exactly what I need on a Monday.
How John Green Fights Despair Every Day | The Interview – YouTube
I mean the problem with hope is that it feels like a very easy word. You know, it feels like very convenient and sort of kumbaya. But I’m interested in the kind of hope that holds up to scrutiny. The kind of hope that does hold up to the worst things that happen to us, that holds up to our worst days. That’s the kind of hope that I’m interested in.
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, creativity, fresh perspectives, Thoughts on November 22, 2025| Leave a Comment »
For whatever reason, today I’m walking around seeing everything as component parts.
For example: instead of seeing the comfy red chair in my office, I’m seeing that chair (so comfy!) with all of the materials that went into it lined up in a row. The tree that provided the wooden legs, the cotton growing in a field before being harvested, carded, spun, dyed and woven, the metal ore that needed to be mined, processed and extruded to make the wire frame, the stuffing made of… you know, I don’t know what it’s made of so let’s insert “amorphous, fluffy cloud of probably polyester fill” here.
It’s weird but also fun, like looking at a room upside down. Suddenly, everything is interesting and new.
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, Thoughts, Writers on November 21, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“It’s the questions we can’t answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he’ll look for his own answers.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, #ThingsILike, Thoughts, weather on November 20, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I have a thing about fog.
Waking to a day where the view is swathed in white, neighbors fading into the background while rooftops peek above a hidden world. Sight is no longer quite as reliable. Sound is dampened, too. A car appears suddenly, and is then gone, the engine’s rumble muted and distant.
Depending on the mood, the lack of visibility can be threatening, but I tend to see it as an embrace. Wisps of moisture flow past tree limbs and flagpoles, porch steps and windshields. On days like today, those wisps extend, discover, then freeze in place. When the fog lifts, trees are covered in a shimmer of white. Magic made real.
As one writer put it, fog is water in its most mystical incarnation.
I call it a delight.
“And the fog. The purple fog, blue fog and white fog. Film noir fog. How I love the sheer romance of it; disorientating, dominating, concealing and revealing.”
― Caroline Eden, Cold Kitchen: A Year of Culinary Travels
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Posted in Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, AI, creativity, knitting on November 19, 2025| Leave a Comment »
As a sometime knitter and pattern designer, I thought this story about a neural network learning to knit (or not!) both funny and telling.
SkyKnit: How an AI Took Over an Adult Knitting Community
Prodded by a knitter on the knitting forum Ravelry, Shane trained a type of neural network on a series of over 500 sets of knitting instructions. Then, she generated new instructions, which members of the Ravelry community have actually attempted to knit.
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Shane nicknamed the whole effort “Project Hilarious Disaster.” The community called it SkyKnit.
It’s been a few years since this project started (the article is from 2018) and I’m sure AI has progressed since then. Still funny!
Full disclosure: I have been known to visit Ravelry. It’s an excellent resource, most of the time!
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, think positive, Thoughts on November 17, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“There are enough negative forces in this world—don’t let the pessimistic voice that lives inside you get away with that stuff, too. That voice is NOT a good roommate.”
― Felicia Day
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Posted in Other, Writing, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2025, Thoughts on November 15, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
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