Web Miscellany: Compilation #45

Hey there, my internet friends! How has your week been? My last two weeks have been brimming over with wonder and joy, as I took a break from everything to explore the dreamy Pacific Northwest with my best friend. It was probably the best week of my life! Upon return, I was notified that my HTMA test revealed chronic heavy metal poisoning; the toxic levels of copper and its antagonists in my body suggest that the IUD placed in my body nearly six years ago is the root cause of all my health challenges, so I’m now working with a nutritional biochemist to restore mineral balance, in hopes of repairing my heavily-damaged endocrine, reproductive, immune, and nervous systems.

What are you up to this weekend? I’ll be finishing laundry from the trip and carving out trip to finish reading a few library books, including Oliver Sacks’ River of Consciousness and Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists. Hope you have a good one! Here are a few links from around the web:

1. Quote I’m pondering this week: “Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.” — Dr. Seuss
2. How to Become a Federal Criminal. Fascinating and disturbing.
3. How to Save $10,000 in a Year. On our trip, we fell in love with a small town and a stunning 5-acre plot of land and have since been brainstorming how it make it ours. Another ten grand would certainly help.
4. Researchers at the University of Washington and Facebook have developed an algorithm that can “wake up” people depicted in still images (photos, drawings, paintings) and create 3D characters than can “walk out” of their images.
5. Made me laugh: The Onion ran a breaking story of Dad Suggests Arriving at Airport 14 Hours Early. “The plane leaves at 6:45 at night, and it takes a little while to park the car and get through security, so we should plan to get there no later than 4:45 a.m,” says the father. (At press time, he had revised the arrival time to 3:45 a.m. “just to be safe.”)
6. Researching copper toxicity after my most recent diagnosis and kicking myself for thinking that housing a foreign object in my body was a decent idea.
7. New York, California high-tax state exodus just beginning, expert warns. Living in one of the destination states and observing the unsustainable growth rate, this is disconcerting. Hopefully our property value will go up, at least.
8. “We have to spend time with each other that is not digital. Civic organizations, libraries and social institutions that pre-date consumerism are all viable alternatives. If we reacquaint ourselves without digital crutches, I believe we’ll be less afraid of each other. Turn off the TV and go outside and start talking to people and then people who are inside will want to come out and see what’s going on. That is a type of influence that is sorely needed. It is peer-to-peer influence and it is an innately human social order.”