Posts

Where did all the Indians in the Puget Sound go?

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Longhouse Chiefs Tulalip News. (2018, July 27). The Treaty of Point Elliott: A living document. Tulalip News. https://www.tulalipnews.com/2018/07/27/the-treaty-of-point-elliott-a-living-document/ It was May of 2023, I was about to go on a road trip with my best friend Steve . I was waiting for him to finish work so that we could start the drive to Portland and drive the coast of the Oregon. Before we left, I stopped at a bookstore in Silverdale, WA and I bought a book, "Plants of the Pacific Northwest". This book has become my bible and ever since that road trip, I have developed a relationship with flora like never before and I appreciate the numerous benefits and wisdom offered by plants, mushrooms, and the forest. The book outlines how to identify, use as medicine, and the historical use of the many plants it indexes. Learning all about indigenous uses of shrubs, trees, flowers, and other plants had me wondering: What even happened to all of them? There must have been such...

My Deep Dive into UFO's, extraterrestrials, and their history

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A deep dive into UFOlogy  The Calvine UFO (also known as the Calvine Sighting) was a reported sighting of an unidentified flying object (UFO) near the hamlet of Calvine in Perthshire, Scotland in August 1990 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvine_UFO Introduction Where to begin on a topic that is as ellusive and muddied as UFO's  Most people don't really care in general, don't care unless they are literally being abducted, dont believe in UFO's, or just don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes. Clearly, something is going on here. It is deeply frustrating to research a topic like this one because it is extremely interesting and equally crazy. As one descends down the rabbit hole, things get weirder and weirder and it becomes more difficult to discern what is real and what is fake misinformation spread by disinformation campaigns created by the CIA to muddy the waters and create doubt - similar to tabacco or oil companies creating doubt about their products unhealthin...

How I made Gum from Douglas Fir trees using an air fryer

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    The gum from trees is not only free but there are also medical benefits to doug-fir needles as well as the resin. There are also benefits to chewing gum, especially gum is hard to chew like this one, which strengthens jaw muscles and the muscles of the face which then make the breath-ways expand, leading to more effective breathing anyways, according to a chapter in one of my favorite books, Breath the science of a lost art , by James Nestor. There are a few things you need for this: *Note: Anything you use will get a bunch of resin on it and it is very difficult to remove, so it is best to use stuff and keep it for making tree gum  Douglas fir resin A knife to collect the resin (it is very sticky and I do not recommend touching the resin before you cook it) A container for the resin (in my case a small glass jar) And then for cooking/heating the resin and straining the debris (insects, bark, lichen) out of the resin  A means of heating it (i.e. airfryer, oven, c...

Book Reflection - How We Live is How We Die

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How We Live is How We Die, Pema Chodron (2022) The six realms: Gods realm Human realm Demi-god realm (Asura)  Animal realm Hungry ghost realm Hell realm 2 Sentence Summary The title implies the whole book, how we live is how we die. Living with few attachments, compassion, and awareness will allow one to die in the same manner and, as Chodron puts it, come back to the mother being like a child returning home. Disclaimer This book's uses a Tibetan Buddhist's perspective. I respect all views on what happens after death and the things I will discuss here I acknowledge may be incorrect but I do find them to be reasonable and probable based on my current understanding of the spiritual experience and reality. The Buddha always taught to be skeptical of ideas, saying to experience things for oneself through meditation. About metaphysical ideas like this, the Buddha said that it does not contribute much to liberation. More information can be found here .  Overall Summary:   ...

Free workouts and workout plans

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 Free workout programs from ChatGPT4 with a focus on my interests of calisthenics, HIIT, rock climbing, and running. Greetings peaceful people. This blog post is about my workout goals, it includes a link to my Notion page where I document workouts that I do that are given by the PhD workout coach on chatGPT4 The Notion Link: https://peach-catcher-2c2.notion.site/AI-Generated-Workouts-c28b71e88d9d497caf4634a9ba9199e6 Working out makes a healthy body and a healthy body is one part of being overall healthy.  My workout priorities are currently: 1. Perform an unassisted handstand for 30 seconds 2. Run 5 miles without knee pain the following 2 days 3. Increase general rock climbing skills. I want to be able to consistently climb v4's and 5.11+ 4. Perform a muscle-up 5. Other calisthenics skills (planche, single arm-pushup, single-arm pullup) You can follow me on Strava here: https://www.strava.com/athletes/61622439

How to change your relationship with math

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How to change your relationship with math Introduction :  Having any problem - whether with math, your car, or your personal life -  is really a blessing, not only because of how great it feels to have solved it afterwards but because of the deeper understanding of the world that results from it afterwards. Math has been an exceptional tool for me to cultivate a growth mindset where we learn from our mistakes and appreciate them rather than fear them. Its also important to know that most people are not born to be exceptional at mathematics but its like any other skill that needs to be refined over time.  One thing that helped me is to just study math for fun, don’t enroll in a course or anything, just read a math book or try to solve some math puzzles.  Here is one of my favorites:      Can you try to count to 16 with just 5 fingers? (hint: think with a different number system. Maybe like a      computer?) Using math for meditation: ...

How to deal with stress

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Stress and anxiety are normal parts of life.  There is the type of stress that we experience on a daily basis and if left unnoticed, it can pile up and up as we develop the habit of getting into negative thought patterns that materialize themselves in generalized anxiety for the world. We identify with our stress and get addicted to the thought cycles. Through the practice of mindfulness, we don't ever make stress go away, we just change our relationship with it. So, maybe when we start our practice of mindfulness we still fall into the repeating thought patterns that cause stress - or allow moments of stress to linger with us throughout the day. As we continue our practice, we start to see form a third person perspective our relationship with it and we can smile at ourselves. Continued practice allows us to break the cycle that our minds and habits may try to keep us in.  Breathing in with the stress Breathing out, releasing the stress Breathing in, Breathing out.  Notic...