Web Miscellany: Compilation #50

Howdy! How has the week been to you? Phoenix received the first mini-monsoon of the season, bringing with it more humidity than actual precipitation. I learned that the Sonoran Desert, in which Phoenix resides, is the greenest and most lust desert on Earth and technically only qualifies as a desert during our driest years. I wrapped up my fourth week on the AIP/paleo diet and neither my budget nor my bowels are very happy, so I’m curious to see how the coming weeks unfold. Additionally, I learned that D&D is expanding its reach beyond “skinny white nerds from the 80s,” including my little sister. My boyfriend is sandwiched somewhere between thrilled and appalled.

What are you up to this weekend? Our planned camping trip was cancelled due to forest fires, so I’ll be taking it easy around the house and hopefully carving out some time to write. Hope you have a good one! Here are a few links from around the web:

• “Time is what we want most, but what we use worst.” — William Penn
• I found a $40 butterfly puddler I’ve been eyeing for years at the thrift store for $2. I feel like I won the lottery!
• Phoenix leads nation in multifamily rent growth. I grew up in a small town and have been disgusted by the multi-fold growth I’ve seen in my lifetime. Phoenix is great, but housing 5 million people in a location entirely dependent on a single water source is risky business. Judging by the massive apartment complexes popping up everywhere, I suspect the problem with cost and sustainability will only worsen.
• While I’m not particularly keen on having children, my mother was a teacher so I’ve always been fascinated by how people parent. I enjoy this read on killing or fostering creativity in children.
• Everybody asks how you got together. Nobody asks how you stayed together. How To Make Your Relationship Amazing: 6 Secrets From The Top Marriage Researcher.
• Your Kindness Will Lead You to Success. “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
• “The solution to the problem we have with FOMO, notifications, and busyness might simply be to think of the human (you) first. To be purposeful in your choices, to determine what you need, to focus on how best to answer those choices and needs.” What do you care about?
• From Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Fragmented REM sleep may decrease the amygdala’s ability to process emotional memories overnight which may lead to more bad emotions and insomnia the next day, creating a cycle of bad feelings and insomnia.
• Long thought to be a glitch of memory, researchers are coming to realize that the ability to forget is crucial to how the brain works.