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McKinley Valentine

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The Whippet #177: The key to lasting happiness is cdeispnili

I am increasingly of the belief that your brain doesn't really understand that you have taken an action unless you move your body and/or other objects around in physical space.

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The Whippet #176: Smeared across time

Most predators sneak up on their prey and surprise them, because most prey is fast and if you don't catch it by surprise, you don't catch it. But cheetahs are the fastest (land) animals in the world. They can outrun anything.

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The Whippet #175: Buttery soft conspiracy

The Whippet #175: Buttery soft conspiracy

Hello, so I've started noticing something that's driving me crazy, and I bequeath this curse to you, dear readers. It's the term "buttery soft".

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When forming a new habit: consider not starting small?

When forming a new habit: consider not starting small?

The 'tiny habits' theory works by drastically reducing the amount of effort. But miniscule-effort for zero-reward is still maths that works out to "not worth it".

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Making new friends in adulthood

Making new friends in adulthood

Framing it so you give a reason as to "why am I asking you now, when I never have before?" and lowers the emotional intensity

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The Whippet #174: Extending my physical influence

The Whippet #174: Extending my physical influence

I'm very interested in ghosts, as a cultural phenomenon and metaphor. I don't spend much time thinking about whether they're 'real' or not, that is not so interesting to me – as the priest says in the excerpt, "what matters is that people are seeing them"

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Getting a refund on online shopping when you missed the returns deadline

Getting a refund on online shopping when you missed the returns deadline

This isn't a 'hack' it's just, sometimes people will help you if you ask nicely, but you might not have realised this is something you can ask for.

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The Whippet #173: Heavy Business Pigeon

The Whippet #173: Heavy Business Pigeon

For this project, scientists attached weights to some scrawny pigeons as a social experiment. Those pigeons became more aggressive and shot up the pecking order

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Giving first aid / CPR does a lot of good, even if you don't save their life

Giving first aid / CPR does a lot of good, even if you don't save their life

If your loved one died, I think you would care a lot that someone was with them, trying to save them, vs finding out that no one attempted to help.

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The Whippet #172: Skeuomorphic Ghosts

The Whippet #172: Skeuomorphic Ghosts

It occurred to me the other day that a ghost is a skeumorph. Specifically, the reason they look like this in pop culture, is because Europeans used to bury their dead in white shrouds.