NGL, in a pinch get a good nature sound app and pop in the earbuds and just crash out on the sofa and listen.

I have been using one called Naturespace for a decade and it's glorious. Best track is called The Imaginarium. Whoa.

Birdwatching: get and support the Merlin app. Its a great way to find out what birds live or pass through your area.

It's definitely good for people who struggle with a wide array of mental health issues, and is good prophylaxis against the same.

Slowmaxxing my travel ironically makes the journey feel shorter

We need friction between us and the things we want to do, otherwise the things we want to do will feel meaningless and hollow

How does one spend 15 minutes making coffee?

NO TIME!

What is the 48 cookies doing in here lol.

My stand mixer would cry trying to make 48 cookies in a go. I'll stick with 24 and eating them all up then making more!

Tldr

Vibes af

I think part of the problem is we've really perfected computers to where they're overly-effective entertainment machines. You can play games that suck you in for hours on end, you can watch videos and movies on any topic. Hour long video essays on isoteric and ultimately unimportant topics. 2-10 second videos each delivering laughs, cultural experiences and information, all queued up to watch one after another so you've watched 10 unrelated videos in a minute. And if that's not enough stimulation now it's becoming common practice put an unrelated video on part of all of the screen so you don't have to get worried about being bored for a few seconds. Pepper the video with split second clips from popular shows or movies for an added laugh and remembering the reference fondly and you've got a recipe to never be bored for a single second.

We've defeated boredom and it shows. Now we as a society have to learn why being bored is good again, why our brains need some boredom so that everything else can have meaning.

People need to relearn how to go make stuff. Read books, read magazines, play instruments, ride bikes and skateboards and run and jump and have fun away from screens. I think this is a growing trend as people realize how bad for us these dopamine drips that are fed to us on our phones, computers, game consoles, etc. the rise of products and services to add friction to accessing our computing devices, the resurrection of feature phones, phones with intentionally boring screens to discourage use, etc.

maxxing

This is how they taught you to spell?

I wonder if I'll make it through Don Quixote and Count of Monte Cristo in 2026. I'm starting light with brave new world, catcher in the rye, and then Kafka.

Fuck yeah this sounds like my ideal weekend.

You need to goon at least 4 hours!

Hell yea

Made butter today for the first time. Wasn’t difficult but it took some time, not a lot.

Half gallon (64 oz/1892ml) carton of 40% heavy cream from Costco makes 1 quart (32 fl oz) of buttermilk and about 2 pounds of butter by eye (didn’t scale to confirm). It all fits in a 5 quart KitchenAid mixer for the churning.

I can confirm that we should all be making chocolate chip cookies. I can't confirm any of the other stuff.

You don’t need to do anything. Be your own person.

Next on my reading list:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/588857/toms-crossing-by-mark-z-danielewski/

1,232 pages.