JMcGready's Miscellany

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October 11, 2017 at 08:01PM By Leo BabautaI’ll share the ultimate hack in just two words: letting go.These two words, if practiced and lived, can be the key to all the self-improvement in your life:Productivity: By letting go of trying to do everything, or be updated about everything, you can focus on just what’s important. This simple focus can make you incredibly effective, and you’ll accomplish more.Simplicity: Our lives get filled with clutter and complexity when we constantly want to add things. By letting go of what we want to have, and some of what we already, we can simplify, declutter, create space, let go of complexity.Finances: Our finances would be much better if we didn’t spend so much. Of course, you could argue that we could just earn more, which is true. But spending less and earning more is actually better than all of that! Anyway. Letting go of things we want to spend on is the key to better finances. More on that below.Happiness: …

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October 9, 2017 at 06:09PM
Earlier this year, our pal Alexis Gabriel Ainouz, aka French Guy Cooking, posted this excellent YouTube series on him learning about dry-aged beef and then trying his hand at making a meat-drying box for his fridge. I have never tried dry-aged beef, but I hear it’s uniquely delicious. The basic idea is to air-cure the meat for weeks. The outside forms an air-dried crust that locks in the rest of the meat’s moisture and the drying process changes the chemical (and taste) profile of the meat.One of the things I love about Alex’s channel is that, a former engineer, he often thinks is terms of devices he can make to assist in his cooking projects and he uses a satisfying degree of observation, testing, analysis, and troubleshooting in his kitchen hacks. In exploring dry-aged beef, he decides to build a Styrofoam drying box for his fridge. He not only wants to try his hand at air-drying (and enjoying the tasty results), he wants to …

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October 10, 2017 at 09:01AM From Singapore to the USA and all around Europe, Edible Innovations profiles food makers that engage in improving the global food system at every stage, from production to distribution to eating and shopping. Join us as we explore the main trends in the industry from a maker perspective. Chiara Cecchini of Future Food Institute — an ecosystem with a strong educational core that promotes food innovation as a key tool to tackle the great challenges of the future — introduces you to the faces, stories, and experiences of food makers around the globe. Check back on Tuesdays and Thursdays for new installments.Evan Weinstein is a junior at the University of Pennsylvania who’s majoring in Mechanical Engineering. His love of engineering began at an early age with the Lego Mindstorms RCX kit, and he now works in an additive manufacturing lab at school. He went to World Maker Faire New York to introduce Cocoa Press, “his baby.” Cocoa Pr…

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October 10, 2017 at 06:13AM Best plastic razor blades for non-scratch scrapingVIDEOThese are plastic razor blades made by Scraperite. They come with a little holder. And what these are good for is any task where you need to delicately scrape something off of a surface that you don’t want to scratch up with conventional razor or pallete knife.Just last week, my wife found this great tin-framed mirror at a yard sale, that had old stickers and gunk on it. I put a few drops of goo-gone on there and used the plastic blade to work off the stickers. It felt like the perfect tool for the job and it spared me from having to pick away at it with my nails. Plus, you can sharpen these with sandpaper if you want a really fine edge. The same can’t be said of your fingertips.-- Donald Bell10/10/17Buy on AmazonHardline Products Scraperite 5 Plastic Razor Blades with Holder ($13)

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September 20, 2017 at 04:18AM The best way to plan a house on a vacant piece of land is to move into a tiny shepherd's hut on a corner of the property. It's not fancy, and it's not comfortable, but you can probably stay there for a week or two.And during that week, you'll understand more about the land than you ever could in an hour of walking around. You'll see how the rain falls and the sun shines and the puddles form.As you've probably guessed, you can do that with the job you're thinking about taking or the project you're thinking about launching. Show up in the market and make some sales. Take a role as an intern and answer the customer service hotline for a day. Get as close as you can to the real thing, live it, taste it, and then decide how to build your career or your organization.If the shepherd's hut feels too uncomfortable, it might not be the land you wanted in the first place.

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September 19, 2017 at 03:36AM Over the last few decades, there's been a consistent campaign to sow confusion around evolution, vaccines and climate change.In all three areas, we all have access to far more data, far more certainty and endless amounts of proof that the original theories have held up. The data is more accurate than it's ever been. Evolution is the best way to explain and predict the origin and change of species. Vaccines are not the cause of autism and save millions of kids' (and parents') lives. And the world is, in fact, getting dangerously warmer.And yet...Poll after poll in many parts of the world show that people are equivocating or outright denying all three. Unlike the increasingly asymptotic consistency in scientific explanations, the deniers have an endless list of reasons for their confusion, many of which contradict each other. Confusion doesn't need to be right to be confusing.Worth noting that thi…