Author: Digital Citizen

Donating some Shopping Savings as “Random” Acts of Kindness

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In some places, you can find people asking for money outside of stores, including grocery stores. Halifax is one of them. I’m not a fan of giving them money, to be honest, because I am not sure where that money ends up being spent. Yes, that’s judgmental because I worry about not being approving of it if I knew. But I’ll firmly defend that with it’s my money and I’ll do with I want with it. I might note, though, that I am just as judgmental towards giving money to bigger charities that do things like hosts lavish celebration parties they reached their goals, or pay their CEOs exorbitant salaries in the eyes of most.

All that judgment doesn’t mean I don’t give to others. I just take a different approach than most, one that requires more work, to know or plan on how to spend that money in ways I approve of. I work hard for it and save it, and I’m not about to give it away so people can become reckless with it, possibly even harming themselves rather than helping that thwarts my good intentions in the first place. If good intentions were bricks on the road to Hell, then I’ll make sure I lay them, not have others lay them on my behalf, thank you very much!

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What to Add to LBGTQ2+ for Digisexuals? An Emoji?

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There’s a new sexual orientation out there, and it’s called “digisexuality”. This Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio interview, New York Times article, and Sexual and Relationship Therapy journal article by Neil MacArthur can give you a bit more depth into the subject.

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Some Ways to Make Ingesting Amla Easier

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Please take these ideas only as ideas, NOT medical advice or other advice. Thank you.

I recently heard about the Indian superfood called amla, also known as Indian Gooseberry. Here are a couple of articles I quickly found on why amla is so good for you, mostly due to the antioxidants it contains [Organic Facts, Mastering Diabetes, NCBI academic journal]. You can research more if you want to know more. The benefits of amla are just a background to this post, not the purpose of this post.

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5 Ways to Use a Heavy (Gravity, Weighted) Blanket

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Please consider the following as ideas and NOT medical advice, or advice in any form. If you wish to try these suggestions, please consider any reasons why you might not want to and do so at your own risk, and please don’t try these on children who may not be able to move a heavy blanket as easily. Thank you.

I recently got a heavy blanket, also known as a weighted blanket or gravity blanket, after hearing about their potential benefits to help one sleep better. Click here to see just one of many articles that can tell you more about these blankets. The basic idea is it makes you feel like you’re in a cocoon or hug, and that comforting feeling, for those to whom it is comforting, helps you sleep better, possibly even faster from getting into bed. The recommended weight is about 10% of body weight, though I’m not sure why 10% and not, say 15% or 5%, but just keep that in mind in reading this.

The recommended weight didn’t matter the least to me, as you’ll see, in my experimentation for ways I can layout the blanket to be used. I LOVE this blanket almost any way I lay it out for use! These configurations completely throw off the weight distribution, which is part of what I was looking for, to get more weight in some areas and less in others. Below are the five configurations I came up with, and what I liked and didn’t like about each. You may find one or more of these configurations to your liking, if you haven’t thought about using the blanket in some other way than just slipping under it. Not all of these configurations might work for you depending on your relative size to your blanket. I’m pretty small so all of these can work for me with a 4′ x 6′ heavy blanket.

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A Few Simple Nudges to Help Reduce Social Media Use

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Social media use has been likened to addiction scientifically. My level of “addiction” isn’t very much, to be honest, but I’m still choosing to work on cutting down on the distractions that keep me from getting into “flow state” (see video at end) for some activities, rather than time poorly used. If you want to use narcotics terminology, I’m choosing prolonged highs over micro dosages of dopamine.

To help myself reduce social media use, I have compiled a short list of relatively easy and painless ways which I access it so I don’t get on social media much in the first place. They can be annoying when you’re not used to it, but hey, nobody ever said weaning oneself off anything was easy! See if some of these may work for you, and maybe pick some combination what can work for you. Any amount helps if you value your time enough!

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