Category: Reality Hacking

Gilbert Shelton, the creator of the Freak Brother’s comics, created this amazing comic with his idea for a “hurry tax” for drivers that want to change lights green. It’s so brilliant and interesting – we could get rid of the all the debt the country is in overnight! I know it’s not a serious idea in itself, but it is a very cool and interesting idea. Obviously, with wireless technology and no need for coins and dollars – this technology would be even easier to institute. it tickles something inside me for some reason.

Hurry Tax Cartoon

via boingboing

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Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it

By: Bronnie Ware

For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.

People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.

When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.

It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

via youmightfindyourself

That last line, “Health brings a freedom very little realize, until they no longer have it.” really hit me. You are always told live this day like it could be your last, but this bit of description and this line of text made me really feel it’s weight. That could be me sitting there looking back on it all. It really could.

The Parable of the Tigers and the Strawberry


I love Daniele Bolelli and Duncane Trussell. Two awesome human beings. This moment they had together when Danielle explains the Zen story of the Tigers and the Strawberry is so cool. It’s so inspirational and so meaningful. Daniel told this story after explaining about how he and his wife dealt with her terminal illness. It was really touching in that context. Plus Daniele’s voice really lends something to the telling of the story. Please watch it so that it’ll be in your mental arsenal when you need it the most – like in a bad or frustrating situation. Wild strawberries are growing everywhere.

What did the Desert Prowlers do, exactly?


via youmightfindyourself

I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed By Me: Emblems from the Pentagon’s Black World – is a bestselling collection of more than seventy military patches representing secret government projects. Here author/photographer/investigator Trevor Paglen explores classified weapons projects and intelligence operations by scrutinizing their own imagery and jargon, disclosing new facts about important military units, which are here known by peculiar names (“Goat Suckers,” “Grim Reapers,” “Tastes Like Chicken”) and illustrated with occult symbols and ridiculous cartoons. The precisely photographed patches—worn by military personnel working on classified missions, such as those at the legendary Area 51—reveal much about a strange and eerie world about which little was previously known.

Cracking the Scratch Lottery Code


This is an older article that appeared in Wired Magazine, but it just came up at work in conversation and I wanted to post it because I found it so fascinating. It’s about a brilliant guy named Mohan Srivastava that figured out how to crack scratch-off lottery tickets. Sounds like science fiction, but it actually happened. What’s crazy is, he tried to let Ontario know there was a problem with their lottery tickets, and they blew him off at first until he sent them this letter:

In the enclosed envelopes, I have sent you two groups of 10 TicTacToe tickets that I purchased from various outlets around Toronto in the past week… You go ahead and scratch off the cards. Maybe you can give one batch to your lottery ticket specialist. After you’ve scratched them off, you should have a pretty solid sense for whether or not there’s something fishy here.

Mushroom Clouds hold a key to removing radiation from the environment


9/5/2012 EDIT: So I messed up and I confused the ring of the mushroom with the word veil for some reason. Most likely because I was pretty drunk when I wrote this post below. So please, see the correction here and replace the word veil below with “ring” or “annulus”. Mis-identifying a mushroom because you have your terminology screwed up could be deadly. There are lots of deadly ones that look like edible ones – and I would hate for someone to accidentally read this and make a mistake somewhere. Thanks.

So I was thinking about this: Mushrooms have this part of them toward the top, called the veil ring. It’s this part:

This is an Amanita Muscaria. The thing is, mushroom clouds, from a nuclear disaster have a veil ring. Now I know they named them that because they look like mushrooms, but down to the veil ring!?! I mean, check it out:

What I’ve been thinking is, the cloud actually is pointing us to the solution. There have been studies about mushrooms absorbing toxins in the environment – particularly radiation. Paul Stamets is a genius, and he is talking about it all the time and even has plans on how to spread mushrooms all over the Earth to fix the environment. I just think it’s crazy that the clouds themselves are like street signs to the answer.

Kbal Spean butterfly welcoming

via hicockalorum

Ignacio Ayestaran in Cambodia:
After hiking two kilometers in the heat of the morning sun we arrived to the carvings of the lingas in Kbal Spean. Our hopes of refreshing under the waterfall were shatered as the riverbed lay dried but were instead treated to this beautifull site as hundreds of butterflies gathered around us.

There is actual magic in the world. Some people are finding it for us.