8 awesome science resources that you can access for free online There's nothing worse than wanting to expand your knowledge, satisfy your curiosity, or just confirm some weird historical fact, and getting blocked by a paywall or the sad reality that what you need is tucked away inside a book that you have to go to an actual library to find. You know, outside, away from the comfort of your computer. Fortunately, the custodians of content are finally figuring out that if you give people easy access to the things they want (for free if possible, please), everybody wins, and if not, well, someone will probably find a less 'legal' way to get it out there instead. Knowledge is everything, and we want all of it, now, and who can blame us? You might not be ready to ditch your Netflix account so you can just sit there and pore over Einstein's Archives for hours (kudos to you if that's your thing, you're a better person than us), but just knowing where to go to get that particular resource for free right when you need it is everything. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
This Startling Graph Shows Just How Quickly An Opioid Prescription Leads To Long-Term Use | GOOD Health A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sheds light on just how fragile the relationship between patients and opioid addiction is. The past decade has seen a tremendous rise in not just opioids (20,101 deaths in 2015), but in heroin overdoses (12,990 in 2015), an addiction which is often spurred by the inability to afford or procure prescription drugs. The new study confirms what many know to be true; it’s the quick ramp-up to addiction that makes these widely prescribed drugs so popular. Here’s the graph in question, with the lines representing the likelihood of addiction both one year from initial prescription and three years from initial prescription. The study found that 6 percent of users given a one-day supply of opioids were using them—prescribed or otherwise—a year later. When the initial supply of opioid increases from a one-day supply to a six-day supply, the likelihood that a person will be using them a year later jumps from 6 percent to 12 percent.
If You Forget As Fast As You Read, This Is For You – Better Humans A Recommended Reading List For Trump’s America Copies of George Orwell’s 1984 sold out during the first month of Donald Trump’s presidency. Demand for the book has been so overwhelming that the publisher has issued a 75 000-copy reprint. If your copy hasn’t arrived yet, here are nineteen authors on the books you should be reading in the age of Trump. 1. Recommended reading: Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think by Ralph Nader “Remember The Matrix? 2. Recommended reading: I, Claudius by Robert Graves “The second half of the novel has Claudius watching as his uncle, the madman Caligula, assumes power and trashes the shit out of the Roman empire. 3. Recommended reading: Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler “It’s 2024. 4. Recommended reading: Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai “It’s about a young gay boy coming of age in Sri Lanka’s capital as ethnic tensions build before the start of the civil war in 1983. 5. Recommended reading: The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser and Resist Much, Obey Little 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.
Religion for the Nonreligious The mind…can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. ― John Milton The mind is certainly its own cosmos. — Alan Lightman You go to school, study hard, get a degree, and you’re pleased with yourself. But are you wiser? You get a job, achieve things at the job, gain responsibility, get paid more, move to a better company, gain even more responsibility, get paid even more, rent an apartment with a parking spot, stop doing your own laundry, and you buy one of those $9 juices where the stuff settles down to the bottom. But as you do these things day after day and year after year, are you improving as a human in a meaningful way? In the last post, I described the way my own path had led me to be an atheist—but how in my satisfaction with being proudly nonreligious, I never gave serious thought to an active approach to internal improvement—hindering my own evolution in the process. This wasn’t just my own naiveté at work. The Goal Wisdom. How Do We Get to the Goal? By being aware of the truth.
Your Beliefs Do you know what your beliefs are? Your beliefs are what makes you happy right now - or sad. You are what you believe you are – you can accomplish what you believe you can accomplish. You feel how you believe you feel. There are thousands of beliefs that you have been taught over the years that you never even focus on. Everything you were taught over the years was someone else’s beliefs right? Change is the way of the universe. The great saying, “If you think you can or think you can’t – your right.” If I believe I am depressed – then I am depressed. See what I mean? Look at all of the success you have had over the years. Look at all of the vacations to different places, the laughter, the loving moments, the satisfaction, the pleasures… look at all of the good that you have received. Your heart may have a different way of looking at things. Other Related Links For Breaking Habits see: Habits Die Hard Go to postive thinking from Your Beliefs
Total Solar Eclipse 2017: When, Where and How to See It (Safely) On Aug. 21, 2017, American skywatchers will be treated to a rare and spectacular celestial show — the first total solar eclipse visible from the continental United States in nearly four decades. Next year's "Great American Total Solar Eclipse" will darken skies all the way from Oregon to South Carolina, along a stretch of land about 70 miles (113 kilometers) wide. People who descend upon this "path of totality" for the big event are in for an unforgettable experience, said eclipse expert Jay Pasachoff, an astronomer at Williams College in Massachusetts. "It's a tremendous opportunity," Pasachoff told Space.com. A total solar eclipse last darkened soil on the U.S. mainland on Feb. 26, 1979. The fact that total solar eclipses occur at all is a quirk of cosmic geometry. But most solar eclipses are of the partial variety, in which the moon appears to take a bite out of the sun's disk. Pasachoff advises folks to make that drive when the time comes. Pasachoff himself plans to be there.
Megacities, not nations, are the world's dominant, enduring social structures — Quartz Cities are mankind’s most enduring and stable mode of social organization, outlasting all empires and nations over which they have presided. Today cities have become the world’s dominant demographic and economic clusters. As the sociologist Christopher Chase-Dunn has pointed out, it is not population or territorial size that drives world-city status, but economic weight, proximity to zones of growth, political stability, and attractiveness for foreign capital. In other words, connectivity matters more than size. This map from my new book, Connectography, shows the distribution of the entire world’s population, with yellow representing the most dense areas. Within many emerging markets such as Brazil, Turkey, Russia, and Indonesia, the leading commercial hub or financial center accounts for at least one-third or more of national GDP. By 2025, there will be at least 40 such megacities. There are far more functional cities in the world today than there are viable states.
How I made my own VPN server in 15 minutes | TechCrunch People are (rightfully) freaking out about their privacy as the Senate voted to let internet providers share your private data with advertisers. While it’s important to protect your privacy, it doesn’t mean that you should sign up to a VPN service and tunnel all your internet traffic through VPN servers. A VPN doesn’t make you anonymous What the hell is a VPN? But if you want a brief recap, when you connect your computer or phone to a VPN server, you establish an encrypted tunnel between your device and that server. And yet, it doesn’t make you magically anonymous. That’s why I don’t recommend signing up to a VPN service. As a side note, many sites now rely on HTTPS to establish a secure connection between your browser and the website you’re using, even TechCrunch. But VPNs can be useful from time to time. Setting up your own VPN server As Woz commented on my previous VPN article before the Senate debacle, you could be running your own VPN server: Disposable VPNs
How to Be Smarter Than People Smarter Than You – Personal Growth Something like 50% of people don’t read a single book after school. Many of these people were “smart” in school. Here’s the thing about “smart” people. They get used to understanding things. They do well in school. Thank god I’m not very smart. Instead, I cheat. For the most part, I cheat by reading in these 4 areas: It doesn’t really matter whose book you read. Personally I like: You Are a Badass at Making Money by Jen Sincero. Read a book or two, and get a plan. I’ve been broke. Doesn’t matter your career. Here are my favorites: Made to Stick and Switch by Chip and Dan HeathLaunch by Jeff WalkerBlink by Malcolm GladwellThe Rich Employee by James Altucher Okay so admittedly everything could have gone under this heading so I guess it could more accurately be called “read about human nature” Understanding the human condition is huge for both your own survival and your relationships. Try these: In 2014, my gut was deteriorating inside me. Nobody cares about your health. Start with: