Friday again! It's been an exhausting week here so far, and it doesn't look like it'll slow down when the weekend gets here. But that's okay. Life's more interesting when the to do list is jam packed, right? Here are a few of the things that caught my attention this week.
*Here's How America Uses Its Land*
I love stuff like this. I love knowing exactly what is used where, exactly how much is used, the exact outcomes of things. I also love maps, so this is right up my alley. (If you know of anything like this for other countries, let me know in the comments. I find this stuff fascinating- my daughter's daily Geography lesson is super fun for me as well- and would love to see it.)
*A Rallying Cry to End The Overwhelm of Toys*
Another 'kids have too many toys and it harms them article,' something I'm still pondering. I know my daughter has too many. Is she overwhelmed by them? She definitely is when it comes time to picking them up, and it's understandable there. She does play with them all, though, or at least most of them. I even caught her playing with her jungle animal set-up the other day, which is something she hadn't touched in a while, so that surprised me. We're definitely going through her toybox soon, though, because that thing absolutely turns into a dumping ground. I'm already kind of dreading Christmas, though, because we literally have ZERO space for anything else. NONE. I know that the grandparents are going to be asking what to buy, and I'm wondering if I can convince them of some non-toy gifts. A zoo membership or something like that, because even if my daughter doesn't seem overwhelmed with the amount of toys, I definitely am.
*What Happened When I Tried Talking To Twitter Abusers*
Oy.
The substance of this article honestly kind of makes me lose faith in humanity. (There's been a lot of that happening lately. The number of people I saw yesterday justifying and defending policemen using tasers on children- CHILDREN!!!- for shoplifting make me sick to my stomach. Yes, shoplifting is wrong, but using a taser on a child? What are we becoming???) Online abuse is a very real and very scary thing. I've had people come after me online and say horrific things to me. It's unsettling and scary and I had the same experience as the author, in that there was nothing that I said or did that made any difference in the treatment I received. It got to be so bad that I ended up leaving a well-known website because the abuse there was too disgusting. It would be really nice, especially for women, if these online communities had stricter policies against harassment and abuse; otherwise, the regular people like me get fed up and leave and the community is overrun with harassers. It's sad that this is a case that has to be made and that other people will shout it down (very possibly while harassing someone else in another browser tab, because that's about the only reason I can think of to not be in favor of online communities allowing things like rape threats).
*Government Surplus Auctions*
Have you ever bought something from a government auction? I've known about them for years, but I haven't ever checked them out. My husband and I were discussing a purchase last weekend, and I told him that I'd check out our local government surplus auction site, because they might sell that item on occasion. Wouldn't you know, the exact item we'd been discussing had been sold the week before! Just our luck, but I'll keep checking. They have some interesting stuff up in my area; maybe they'll have something you need! :)
*Verify Your Voter Registration Status*
If you're in the US, are you registered to vote? It's your duty as a citizen, so sign up, get registered, and make sure you're on the rolls! It's so important to be able to have a say in our government, both national and local, so register, ask your friends if they're registered, learn about the candidates on the ballot, offer rides to the polls, and vote every chance you get! To give you an idea of how seriously I take voting, I once waited in line so long to vote that I passed out (huge thanks to the poll workers who assisted me and then shuttled me to the head of the line, possibly to get me out of there faster and to make sure I was no longer their responsibility if something worse happened, haha!), and on another occasion, I hauled my exhausted postpartum carcass to the polls with my 10-day old baby after a night of almost zero sleep. Get your vote on, my friends!
*This Woman Cooks Everything In A Coffee Maker*
I find this fascinating.
I've had some lean times in my life, along with some times when my housing situation was...unstable, to say the least. The idea of being able to prepare food using so little deeply appeals to my 'must plan for the worst' nature. (Seriously. My kind-of-joking-but-not-entirely first plan for if I ever win the lottery is to buy an RV of some sort so that I'll always have a place to stay even if I'm homeless. That's the kind of thinking that the terrible combination of a prolonged period of poverty plus an anxiety disorder gets you.) Ages ago, I always wanted to read Cooking Without a Kitchen by Peter Mazonson, but at the time, none of the libraries in my library network had a copy. Now I see that cooking with very little in terms of kitchen space or supplies is very much a thing all over the internet! MY PEOPLE!!! I'm going to have to look more deeply into this in order to appease my survivalist instinct.
Check out Katja Wulff's website, Coffee Machine Cuisine!
And that's what I found interesting this week! What about you? Anything on your mind?
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