Someone lived off the grid in NYC (in an apartment)
On May 22, 2022, I began an experiment. I unplugged everything in my apartment, with the goal of drawing zero power from the electric grid for one month. I had no idea how I would make it past a few days.
Nevertheless, I opened the main circuit, disconnecting my apartment from the grid and committing myself to solving what problems arose as they came. As I type these words in January, I’m in my eighth month. My Con-Ed bills continue to show zero kilowatt-hours.
I get it and I support the idea of asking, "what more can I do?" But this person is clearly taking it to the extreme. Granted, it probably helps make NYC more financially viable.
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North Koreans struggling to defect since Covid 19 began
If you had asked me to guess how many people defected from North Korea to South Korea each year, I would have guessed maybe a hundred or two hundred. Which, as it turns out, is currently an overestimate - however, would be a gross underestimate for the period of 2001 to 2019 where the country tracked at least 1,000 defectors each year. In 2020, they got 227, 2021 was 62 and 2022 was 67.
I have to assume this ties to them being on close to lockdown for fighting Covid 19, but who knows.
Jodorowsky's Tron
A fun and fascinating look at the philosophy and style of Jodorowsky, through the lens of AI created images from what his version of Tron might have been. Notably, this article is not by someone random, it's by the person who made the documentary "Jodorowsky's Dune."
Though I especially love this excerpt. It speaks to me and my own philosophy of ad melistra:
During the filming of my documentary, Alejandro told me about the Greek-Armenian philosopher and mystic George Gurdjieff. He taught that we are born without a soul and that our task in life is to help our soul to grow and develop: Souls aren’t born; they’re earned. Every single day, Alejandro creates. He writes, he draws, he paints. He works on his soul through art.
We should all strive to work on our soul each and every day.
Italian police utilize lamborghini for delivering transplant organs
Photo from the Reddit thread that brought this to my attention, it had the title: "Italian police delivering a donor kidney travels 490 kilometers in two hours from Rome to Padua in a Lamborghini Huracan. His average speed during the trip was 233km/h (145mph). The trip normally takes 6 hours."
The linked article is pretty lightweight, but it is from December. I had to learn more about this as I have to imagine being a police officer, knowing you can't get in trouble, and having full license to floor it in the Lambo through the Italian countryside must be an absolutely amazing thing to get to do.
Inspiration struck
I have had a premise/framing for a story in my head for several years here but that premise had no story that went along with it. And, in the last... 24-48 hours? The story began to burble around again in my head.
I went out to dinner with Katie to try out a local poke place and on the drive home it was suddenly just there, in my head. So, I told her I needed to write this outline down before I lost it. And in about 30 minutes I outlined probably 90% of the story's beats.
So, I guess I'm about to start writing it.
Edit: Wrote for only 30 minutes tonight, but hammered out 1,288 words. And so it begins.
Mastodon Favs for January, 13th 2023