Our Phoebe is gone

...think, even possible for four years. She went to the hospital a couple of times, and bounced back like a champ, even though we were sure each time that it had to be the end. We suspected she’d been given three times nine lives, or perhaps she’d stolen a bunch of extra lives from kitty heaven. Her quality of life was very good until the the last couple of weeks, despite the severity of her condition. For most of her life, to look at her you’d have...

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Weekend Linkages: Time for a Change in LA

...In leaked audio, LA City Councilmembers Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo, and Kevin de León discuss redistricting, are extremely racist Make a metric clock William Shatner: My Trip to Space Filled Me With ‘Overwhelming Sadness’ Yet another gender reveal party disaster Denver destroyed by cars A fight over worms and moats San Francisco’s crosstown trail What the year 2000 was really like...

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Acedia, iPhone Addiction and the Noonday Devil

...ditation, manual work, contemplating of the shortness of our lives, taking time for work and time for leisure uninterrupted by work (something developed in Josef Pieper’s book Leisure the Basis of Culture which also mentions acedia specifically). Philosophy professor Brandon Dahm has a detailed explication of acedia and some practical solutions in an article Correcting Acedia through Wonder and Gratitude that’s well worth reading. In short, wonder...

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Root Simple Reader Survey Results

...t on the blog in a positive way. Unfortunately, the podcast takes a lot of time. We have to book guests, conduct the interview and spend, on average, four to five hours editing. It looks like we could step back to one podcast every other week instead of every week. That will give us more time for the blog. It would be a lot easier for the Root Simple PR department if we just stuck to one topic like, say, chicken health or DIY lotion making. That’s...

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