Month: May 2017
Sustainable modular structure exposed in Milan, Italy
This very particular design, located in the city of Milan, Italy and covering an area of 50 square meters, was created by SO-IL in the year 2017. Even from a distance, the modern structure looks striking and attractive, inviting us to approach and admire it from up close. A modular metal structure comprises the basic framework of the home, and a flexible, light-permeable outer skin of purifying fabric creates the..
The post Sustainable modular structure exposed in Milan, Italy appeared first on HomeDSGN.
Take the road less traveled to Capitol Reef National Park. For…
Take the road less traveled to Capitol Reef National Park. For Michelle Olmstead, Capitol Reef is her favorite Utah national park because it’s possible to solitude that can sometimes be lacking in other parks. “After hiking all day we were rewarded with this beautiful golden-hour light hitting the red rock as we were leaving. I feel very grateful to be able to experience these beautiful public lands with the ones I love.“ Photo courtesy of Michelle Olmstead.
Are Online Relationships Better Than Offline Ones?
When it comes to dating, you have many available options. You can join an online dating website or simply do it the old-fashioned way. Although you make the usual rounds to the bars and laundry mats hoping to “bump” into someone of interest, you may have better luck dating online.
The expert opinion on online dating
Dating experts argue that while online dating is helpful, it might not be that better than seeing someone offline. One thing they all agree on, however, is that subscribers should take their relationships off of the internet after a reasonable amount of time.
As they complete surveys and studies, dating services are implementing social media and online dating formulas into their business mock-ups. They are finding out that one size does not fit everyone because people don’t always have the same goals when it comes to relationships.
One person may want a long-term relationship with the possibility of marriage while another may desire friendship only. In essence, this means that there will always be advantages and disadvantages to dating online.
Online Dating vs Offline Dating
Pros and Cons of online dating
Used as an introduction, online dating is effective. However, way too many online daters are extending their experiences to having long-term online relationships. This is not the intent of matchmaking services.
Let’s take a look at a few of the most popular reasons to date online coupled with the reasons why people prefer not to rely on it.
Pros to dating online
- You’re not alone. More than 40 million single daters have joined an online dating service. Numerous people are successful finding a match and more people are getting married because they subscribe to one or more dating sites or single groups on social media.
- Dating someone who lives in another state is possible due to online dating. Because online dating is worldwide, you can meet the match of your dreams even if they live in another state or country.
- Access to an online dating service is never an issue… they don’t close.
- Many online dating services use scientific matchmaking tools so your best possible matches are sent directly to you.
Cons to dating online
- Tons of people have joined but only a fraction are active.
- People don’t tell the truth about their marital position, income, age, etc.
- It can become an obsession for some and they never take the relationship to the next level.
- Many online daters search for singles only in their immediate area or income range.
See Also: 5 Tips for Effective Online Dating
Knowing when to go offline
When you’re serious about meeting someone, whether it’s for a hook-up, friendship or with marriage in mind, you must start somewhere. Dating services are available in every form imaginable. There are sites made specially to help you meet your relationship goals. However, at some point, you must take your relationship offline.
Again, keep in mind, the point of online dating is to meet someone special and although you have met them online, it’s not the same as actually having a face-to-face meeting. Keep reading to find out why it might be a good idea to take your relationship offline.
Pros to dating offline
- The possibility of knowing a few of their friends and feeling safer because of it.
- Determining if there is chemistry happens a lot sooner.
- Dating offline means you don’t have to judge their profile.
Cons to dating offline
- You won’t meet as many people.
- Some people are shy and won’t come out to mingle.
- It’s not easy to decide on where to go to meet like-minded individuals.
Only take the relationship offline if you are truly ready. If you decide you want to quit the relationship, you should be upfront with the other person as soon and as painlessly as possible.
See Also: 4 Dating Mistakes You Could Be Making (And What To Do With Them)
Conclusion
Spend time communicating online, developing trust and establishing the first base. Once you’re ready to move to second base, you can do so comfortably.
The idea for dating online is so you can take it offline and not remain in the cyber community forever. You can build an online relationship but you should make it a point to meet in person. The sooner you do that and the sooner you realize that the other person isn’t for you, the better it will be for both parties.
If this should be the case, don’t let one spoiled online dating experience prevent you from taking the opportunity to meet other people online in the future. Keep a positive attitude and keep it moving! Good luck to you all!
The post Are Online Relationships Better Than Offline Ones? appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
Imposing House in Vietnam with Internal Vertical Gardens
This wonderful structure, which was designed to have a vertical shape and be a place where gardens and glass walls meet between the two main concrete façades, is a magnificent idea that improves the microclimate, giving not only abundant natural light, but also adequate ventilation to each of the rooms that comprise it. This project, which is located in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam and covers an area of 321 square..
The post Imposing House in Vietnam with Internal Vertical Gardens appeared first on HomeDSGN.
Paul Krugman: It’s All About Trump’s Contempt
"The mother of all sucker punches":
It’s All About Trump’s Contempt, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: For journalists covering domestic policy, this past week poses some hard choices. Should we focus on the Trump budget’s fraudulence — not only does it invoke $2 trillion in phony savings, it counts them twice — or on its cruelty? Or should we talk instead about the Congressional Budget Office assessment of Trumpcare, which would be devastating for older, poorer and sicker Americans?
There is, however, a unifying theme to all these developments. And that theme is contempt — Donald Trump’s contempt for the voters who put him in office. … He is … betting that he can break every promise he made to the working-class voters who put him over the top, and still keep their support. Can he win that bet?
When it comes to phony budget math — remember his claims that he would pay off the national debt? — he probably can. …
The bigger question is whether someone who ran as a populist, who promised not to cut Social Security or Medicaid, who assured voters that everyone would have health insurance, can keep his working-class support while pursuing an agenda so anti-populist it takes your breath away. …
So what did [Trump voters] think they were voting for? Partly,… they … believed that he was a different kind of Republican. Maybe he would take benefits away from Those People, but he would protect the programs white working-class voters … depend on.
What they got instead was the mother of all sucker punches.
Trumpcare, the budget office tells us, would cause 23 million people to lose health insurance, largely through cuts to Medicaid… It would also lead to soaring premiums — we’re talking increases on the order of 800 percent — for older Americans whose incomes are low but not low enough to qualify for Medicaid. That describes a lot of Trump voters. Then we need to add in the Trump budget, which calls for further drastic cuts in Medicaid, plus large cuts in food stamps and in disability payments. …
So many of the people who voted for Donald Trump were the victims of an epic scam by a man who has built his life around scamming. …
Will they ever realize this, and admit it to themselves? More important, will they be prepared to punish him the only way they can — by voting for Democrats?
The Unmistakable Sign of Having the Right Career
Do you want to know whether you are in the right career? Do you want to know whether you are at a place where you can be your best?
I have been following many successful people over the years. These are people who have overcome great challenges to thrive in their fields. These are people who have made an impact on the world.
They come from different backgrounds, but somehow they give similar advice when it comes to career. It’s as if there is a key to success that these people have found.
In essence, this is what they say is the unmistakable sign of having the right career:
You are having fun doing it.
Yes, you are having fun doing it. And the fun doesn’t come from the money or the reputation you get but from the work itself.
This is the way Warren Buffett puts it:
“I had fun when I was in my twenties, my thirties, and now I am 86 and I am having fun.”
That’s a great way to live, isn’t it? That’s how our career should be!
Now, how can we find such a career? Here is Buffett’s advice:
“I advise students, as much as possible, look for the job that you would take if you didn’t need a job.”
Let’s pause and think about that for a moment: what job would you take if you didn’t need a job?
When you look at the way Warren Buffett works, it’s obvious that he is having fun. How else can you explain reading 500 pages a day for years? Remember, he is his own boss. Nobody forces him to do it. I can’t think of any other explanation of his intensity except that he enjoys doing it.
There is a good reason why having fun is essential for career success: it makes you go further at it than other people. What may feel like a chore to someone else is a joy to you, so you will do more of it.
Here is how Stephen King puts it:
If there’s no joy in it, it’s just no good. It’s best to go on to some other area, where… the fun quotient higher.
Again, similar advice, and there is a useful term here: fun quotient. I think that’s a good way to measure how good a career is for you: how high is the fun quotient?
Mark Cuban puts it this way:
It’s really easy to know if you are in the right job. If it matters how much you get paid, you are not in a job you really love.
I can give you more examples, but you get the point.
There is something you should be careful about, though. You could start what you do for the fun of it, but over time you could lose the fun and it would just become a job.
I know this because it happens to me. I started this website because of the fun of doing it, but over the years there were times when I worked on it simply because it’s my business. It’s no longer the fun that motivated me, but what I would get out of it. Needless to say, this isn’t good. Realizing this pushes me to get the fun factor back.
So here are two questions you should ask yourself:
- Do you do your job because of the fun of it or because of an external reward (like money)?
- If you used to have fun at what you do but not anymore, how can you get the fun back?
Take time to answer these questions. They can help you have a great career.
Recommended Book Summaries
- Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life
- How to Find Fulfilling Work: The School of Life
On A Journey To Build A Dream School Together In Austria
I am a Community Manager and, as part of the job, I talk to our users a lot. They tell me all sorts of stories, from what they enjoy the most about our product to how they recently traveled to Greece for a 10-day vacation. If you’re going to listen to them, you’ll surely feel inspired to start chasing and building your dream.
But, there is one that really caught my attention.
It’s a story about a group of people who were passionate and brave enough to build their dream from scratch– all by themselves.
A school at the foot of the Alps
Situated at the foot of the Alps and in a quiet and beautiful place in Pettenbach, Austria, there is this tiny school right next to a forest- Schule an der Alm (School at the Alm).
In that school, students choose what they want to learn and when they want to learn.
Many classes take place outdoors as children aged 6 to 14 years old concentrate on their subjects of interests in small groups. They climb trees in a race to the top, experience living in a teepee, go skiing, ice skating and sledging during winter.
They have a lot of special activities, too. One particular activity that children excitedly look forward to is Creative Day.
On Creative Day, they have the opportunity and the freedom to go wild with their imagination. They can work with wood to craft their own mini houses or use the sewing machine to design their own clothes.
What makes the school even more unique is that it is built by parents, teachers, and children together!
The start of the dream school
It all started about 10 years ago.
Two young women, together with parents like themselves, had a dream to build a school for their children so they could be educated at their will.
Gudrun, one of the teachers at the school then, worked in a normal primary school before.
When it was time for her second son to go to school, “My son should not be educated the same old way I did,” she told herself. “He should not sit in front of a desk for more than 5 hours a day when half of the time, it’s just his teacher talking.”
With such belief, she and the parents she met at Kindergruppe (children’s group) who share the same ideas, took action and founded their own school.
Michael, a gentle, loving father of two from the Kindergruppe, was Gudrun’s neighbor at the time. They decided to start the school at his home where his 13-year-old son later enrolled as well.
“I already know Gudrun and how she teaches, so did my son. We just like the people and how they worked,” Michael told me during my interview. “And I believe, real good learning has to come from following one’s own interests, something the school believes in, too.”
It was bold and brave of Gudrun, Michael and the other parents to be different and to fearlessly hop on a journey to help children educate in nature, out of their own nature.
And it is a one-of-a-kind dream they did not easily give up or compromise.
“Children should have the right to choose what, and when they want to learn, at their own speed.”
— Michael Praschma, a 62-year-old copywriter and one of the parents
It was not until too many children enrolled that teachers, parents, and students started adapting their new school building, constructing classrooms and school backyard.
The adults were responsible for countless duties like cutting the wood, painting the walls and roughing in electrical wiring. Children, on the other hand, were helping them to carry objects from one location to another.
The role of technology in the school
School at the Alm is like a big family and every single person in the school needs to be involved. Every parent needs to spend at least 100 hours helping out with different tasks every year. And it becomes more each year!
If both parents have a job or if their children have to be looked after, a discussion on which tasks are absolutely necessary or not is a must.
In the early days, they tried to do this via emails, a service everyone is used to. However, it later became difficult for them to tell who was responsible for what, how much of something has been done or what decisions have been made.
“Honestly, emails just resulted in a tsunami. So, we spent about 20 hours looking for a solution,” said Michael, who is responsible for keeping everyone on track.
For me, it was quite surprising how such a “hand-made” school actively looked for and embraced “tech” apps to help them move things along smoothly.
The solutions they found recently are Quire, Doodle, and appear.in.
Quire is a central place for task management, where they break down tasks to smaller subtasks for collaboration and tracking. Doodle, meanwhile, is used to decide a meeting time and appear.in is for arranging video calls in meetings.
“Doodle and appear.in, they very much enhance the Quire tool to help us get things rolling,” said Michael.
After 10 years
School at the Alm has now grown into a primary and secondary school. Currently, it has 32 students, ages 6 to 14, 58 parents and 6 teachers.
Before they welcome the new school year which begins in September, the school will be busy- super busy.
An open house day will kick off in May and everybody will be playing a part. Every parent, teacher and, of course, student will be responsible for different tasks. They will be making sandwiches for the buffet, preparing presentations for the information stand and attending little children’s corner to play with and supervise kids.
This is the story about the school at the Alm.
After reading the story, did it inspire you to make a difference in the world? Did it awaken the giant in your heart? Did you feel inspired to start building your dream? Just go for it!
The post On A Journey To Build A Dream School Together In Austria appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
Links for 05-26-17
- Romer Slaughters Kittens – Paul Romer
- Growth, import dependence, and war – VoxEU
- We Have the Façade of Competition – ProMarket
- Don't get rid of rules that could stop the next financial crisis – Bair and Volcker
- Poverty, ambition & reference levels – Stumbling and Mumbling
- How Markets Work – The Baseline Scenario
- Agricultural policy after Brexit – OUPblog
A Unique Opportunity to Visit an Airship at the DOX Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, Czech Republic
Have you ever dreamed of going onto a giant airship? Well, now’s your chance! This airship was designed by Martin Rajniš from the Czech architectural firm Hut Architektury. It measures 138 feet in length and is docked on top of the DOX Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, Czech Republic. And don’t think this airship is merely decorative! The installation serves as the museum’s new reading and meeting space. So..
Sig Nordal 