Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Counterfeit Food – The Horse in the Cow
DNA sampling of 27 commercially available meat products had horse DNA in them. One product had a third of horse meat in it.
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The Man in the White Suit – Telling Truth like Is
Introduction Every once in while you come across a piece of media that succinctly articulates the ideas you ponder upon. Recently I watched just such a movie called “The Man in the White Suit”. Don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard about it because its quite old – it came out during 1951. That’s a…
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I Read 37 books last year due to the Lockdown.
Last year in 2021, I read 37 books. This is quite a substantial number for me because firstly, I don’t like to read and secondly, this is way above my average of 10 books per year. The scope of books that I’ve read has drastically increased and my appreciation for wide range of subject matter…
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Veganuary 2022 – It’s Growing
Veganism is about not consuming any animal products. To the uninitiated this does seem quite daunting at first, but it’ quite easy to do. Usually people don’t know where to start, what to do, what to eat, and how to proceed. That’s where Veganuary comes in.
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World Day for Laboratory Animals
As a guy cosmetics are something that I don’t really concern myself with too much, but a Vegan I’ve slowly come to realize the the horrors that underlie the industry. These horrors are unnecessary, unwarranted and very destructive.
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Vegan for Earth Day
When I think Earth Day, what comes to mind is people spending the day enjoying the world. I envision people spending time in the forests, swimming in the oceans, climbing in the mountains and simple enjoying what nature has to offer.
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Get Ready for Veganuary
The idea behind the Veganuary campaign is that people pledge to stick to a Vegan diet for the month of January.
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International Day of Animal Rights…more Important than you Realize
International Day of Animal Rights – by definition we ourselves are animals. Looking at it through this perspective we have a deeper connection to our animal brethren on this planet.
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Jobs of the Future : Humanity Required
Artificial intelligence, robots and software simply do our jobs better than us. I’ve experienced this first hand. At first technology automated the agriculture, then it automated manufacturing and now it’s automating white collar work.
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Central Bank Digital Currencies will Pump Privacy Coins
The world as we know it is in flux. This is very true of the financial system. It’s inertia has led it to point where it has to has change or collapse.
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Top Five Must Read Books about Veganism
I am constantly amazed by the incredible perspectives the vegan philosophy encompasses, and perhaps the best way to get this insight is to read books about the subject.
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International Cheetah Day
The Cheetah has top speed of 70 mph, and can go 0 to 60mph inside of 3 seconds. It could even give a Tesla with insane mode activated a run for its money. Interestingly cheetahs have non-retractable claws. So in that sense it’s more like a dog than cat.
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World Wildlife Conservation Day
The craziness of 2020 has put World Wildlife Conservation Day into perspective for me. Until this year it was a day I never really paid attention to. Now I’m starting to realize that wildlife needs more than just our attention. After all, the scientific consensus says that it was an abused pangolin that carried the…
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Exactly how Smart are Plants?
Having been a Vegan for a while now, I’ve come to see plants in a different light. I think they’re incredible and my wonder of these amazing forms of life only keeps growing.
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Vegans should own Bitcoin
Vegan and Bitcoin are two words that you’ll never find in the same sentence. Even though these ideas seem quiet disparate I reckon there’s quite a bit of overlap.
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Why Flat Earthers are Good for Science
In a world that is so polarized I think that is very important to understand other peoples viewpoints. More important than that I think we need to understand the context in which ideas emerge. This is paramount because it helps us communicate better.
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Veganism and Shaolin
Ten minutes into “The Shaolin Temple” Jet Li is contemplating the ethics killing a worm to feed to an injured sick bird. His master sets him right teaching that it’s never right to take a life. I was left pondering quite a bit over that scene.
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When Robots can Feel, Humanity will Experience the Pain
My beliefs are constantly being challenged and in many cases I have had to drop a belief or change it completely. Technology is a massive instigator of this.
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Workers still being killed in Meatpacking plants
Still to this date we’re seeing numerous cases and COVID-19 deaths in the food system, but it’s horrendously bad in the meatpacking sector. Its so bad that it leads the pack by orders of magnitude.
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Central Bank Digital Currencies will Fail
There’s been a lot of talk around central bank digital currencies lately. That’s not surprising given that the world is experiencing massive financial turbulence. In fact world powers are looking for any way out of their current financial woes.
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Artificial Intelligence CEOs Needed
By now I think we’ve all felt the impact of automation and artificial intelligence in our lives. In its’ simplest form we’ve dealt with something like Siri, an AI that can answer questions for us, and at its’ most complex we’ve seen an AI beat the most talented GO player in the world.
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Bitcoin vs the Rand Currency
During the late 90’s I remember that I could buy a pack of cigarettes for about R4 ($0.25). These days if you want to buy a pack of cigarettes you’ll pay’ll around R50 ($3.12).
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Cronometer – Tracking my Vegan Nutrition
When you first go vegan, the power, speed and performance you unlock is incredible. You automatically become lean, you hit your BMI targets and you’re physical more capable.
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Why you should Read Old Books
It’s very hard to travel to another country to get to see how people live. It’s even harder to spend enough time in a foreign land and see how people think. But with books you can do all of that, and even see how people lived and thought way back in the the day.
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Why CryptoCurrency Adoption is Slow in South Africa
I believe in the transformative power of cryptocurrency. I think that it can fundamentally change our society for the better.
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The Black Plague Returns – Do we really Need another Pandemic?
The Black Plague also known as the Black Death has killed more people than any other pandemic in the history of the world.
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The Science behind why Vegans are Happy
If you’ve been Vegan for a fair amount of time, you will find that you’re more chilled. You will find that you’re more calm and your mind is settled.
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Breakfast is the Simplest Meal to Veganize
It’s pretty clear that more people are intrigued by Veganism. It’s obvious why; you save your health, you save the animals, you save the planet and it prevents pandemics. The advert writes itself!
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Support Workers and the #BoycottMeat Movement
News reports around the world highlight that we are failing to get the COVID-19 pandemic under control. In fact, things are getting worse.
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Jack Vettriano – The Singing Butler
I absolutely adore this painting. It’s a painting by Jack Vettriano – it’s called The Singing Butler and it was produced in 1992.
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Anarchism – The Best Form of Democracy?
I see the term Anarchism popping up more and more lately. But what does Anarchism mean? What’s it all about?
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Guys should do Yoga.
It makes sense for us guys to do Yoga. The foundational benefits it’s provides are profound and significantly enables other physical activities. Beyond that the benefits it provides to our state of mind and immune system are incredibly useful.
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World Meat Free Week 15-21 June 2020
Our meat free options for meals are increasing in leaps and bounds. Everywhere you look there are alternative meat products. Even the most ravenous carnivore would be satiated by the delicious wonderful tastes and aromas of a meat free dish.
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I went Vegan Overnight – Here’s how I did it
The 28th of August 2016 is a very important day for me. That’s the day I went Vegan and I’ve never looked back. Many people think it’s crazy that I went Vegan overnight -but honestly it’s not a big hassle.
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Is your Retirement Policy Safe?
This week I decided to check in on my retirement policy and see how it’s doing. After all with the stock markets being so volatile our policies could fluctuate drastically.
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Deep Fakes Dystopia and how to Solve it
Technology has been moving at a breakneck speed providing a myriad of advancements for all of us – but at the same time some very disconcerting pitfalls have emerged too.
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Massive Growth of Veganism is because of One Rule
I am perpetually startled at the massive growth of Veganism. What once was a fledgling idea has now spread to all corners of the world and is now in the public consciousness. It’s no longer dismissed, but instead taken quite seriously.
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Jitsi – My Favorite New Video Conferencing Software
Lockdown has changed everything about the way we work. In particular it has changed how we communicate. Since we are now working from home, we have all become accustomed to using Zoom, Teams, Discord and a myriad of other video conferencing software.
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The Green King – A Book about Greatness
There are many novels that have an incredible story, compelling characters and big ideas. But there are few that do it so well.
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I Need One Bitcoin to get to Mars
This is the week that SpaceX will be taking two astronauts to the International Space Station. It is a pity that launch was cancelled on Wednesday due to bad weather, but it’s looking really good that on Saturday 30th of May, astronauts Robert L. Behnken and Douglas G. Hurley will reach the International Space Station.
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“I’m out of a Job” – The First Time I saw a CMS
The first time you utter the words “I’m out of a Job”, there is a panic and horror that overcomes you.
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The BDS Movement and Veganism
As I continue my Vegan journey, I learn more about the nuances of it. I learn about deeper definitions of the term, I learn about the philosophy a behind it and I in particular I learn about how it’s connected to other ideas.
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Is a University Degree Useful?
I completed my degree in 2007. It was a BCom Informatics specializing in Economics. I choose this degree because it had a good balance on Information Technology and Business Subjects. This seemed like it would be very useful for the future.
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Is your Money Vegan?
You eat vegan food, you wear vegan clothing, your household is vegan, but have you considered if your money is vegan??
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Inspiration vs Grind…What Wins?
A question was posed to me recently – “Where do you get inspiration from?” I thought about it for a second, and was going to answer the usual stuff like; from comics books, movies, art, science, math, etc, etc. But then I stopped and realized, I actually don’t think like that anymore. I don’t even…
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Who let the Dogs out
I thought this was quite innovative when I first saw it. I suppose I can’t be surprised that an Asian country came up with this idea. They’re using the robot from Boston Dynamics to walk around the park and warn people to maintain social distance.
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Your Taxes down the Drain – Dairy Farmers Dump Milk
We all remember seeing those terrible photos of dairy farmers dumping milk down the drain. The first thing that many people said is “why don’t the dairy farmers just give the milk away”. We couldn’t understand why during crisis farmers would let food go to waste. As it turns out there’s a number of reasons.…
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Protect Our Workers
A good few weeks ago we started getting reports that workers in slaughterhouses and meat plants were getting rapidly sick with COVID-19. Many operations all across the United States by companies like Tyson, Smithfield, JBS and Cargill began experiencing massive upticks in the amount of workers that were getting sick.
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Be the Cause, not the Effect
I was chatting to a friend recently, and he is always talking about things he is doing to improve himself. Sometimes what he mentions sounds totally weird, but many times what he mentions is totally Brilliant.
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Tokensets – Automating Trading
I am a holdr, but the one thing you learn real quick with holding your stash is that you don’t get interest from it. The value of your crypto really depends on whether the price of it goes up or down.
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No Meat May starts Today
It is the absolute perfect time to start trying out a Plant Based Whole Foods lifestyle. It has never been easier. No Meat May, just as the name says is all about people refraining from eating any animal based products for the month of May.
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Starlink – Internet for the World
Starlink has been in the news more and more lately. For those that don’t know, Starlink is the latest venture by SpaceX. It’s goal is to bring high speed broadband internet to the farthest reaches of the world. That is something that is sorely needed in the world.
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The Best and Only way to get your Protein
In this post, I’ll give an example of what I eat in a typical day with the associated protein intake. The current RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance) for protein ranges from country to country, but 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is typical for many countries, including the US and Canada.
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Experiencing the Story of your Life
I just finished reading the short story “Story of your Life” written by Ted Chiang. All I can say is Wow!!! This is an incredible piece of writing, and it’s definitely one of the best things I’ve ever read. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I hate reading! However I have read a…
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Arthur C Clarke knew the future would be Vegetarian
Arthur C Clarke is a renowned scientist who is familiar to every nerd and film buff. As a nerd you know him because of his stunning contributions to science that informs everything from radar to global communications. As a film buff you know him because he wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, the greatest film ever…
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The Absolute Easiest way to get a Masternode
As much as I am knowledgeable about the cryptocurreny space there is still a lot I don’t know about it. There’s also a lot that I am aware of but never got around to working on. One such thing happens to be masternodes. Now that COVID-19 has freed up some time, I’m looking more into…
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Saving Money versus Making Money, Which is Better?
It’s always easy to find tons of information about how to make money, and it’s always easy to find tons of information on how to save money. But rarely do we find information that discusses the subtle relationship between these two. And the distinction is indeed quite important.
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Have your Cake and Eat it
A big challenge in growing wealth, is that the assets you acquire only have single purpose utility. You can use it for one thing and one thing only.
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Three Generations of HipHop and Veganism
It is so inspiring to see three generations of HipHop Legends sitting down to discuss Veganism. I never would have considered seeing it in my life, and yet there it is. More than that, I was really surprised that it was Youtube that brought this to my attention, and I’m quite happy about it. For…
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How to Convert ETH to 1UP with Uniswap
I think Uniswap might be a the best Dapp I’ve seen to date. Mainly because you can easily swap an ERC20 token with any other ERC20 Token. I’m going to show you how to swap ETH for 1UP.
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Earn Crypto-Currency and Donate it to Vegan Causes
Luckily there does seem to be something you can do to aid your Veganism whilst we’ve have all this downtime : Earn Crypto-Currency and Give it Away to Vegan Causes and Businesses.
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Taking on a Leadership Role : Lessons learned as a Toastmaster Treasurer Part 2
First off, this role is actually pretty easy. It’s much easier than you initially think, especially when you approach it with the right mindset which is get your tasks done early. In this article, I’ll take a brief look into the Treasurer role itself in Toastmasters.
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Taking on a Leadership Role : Lessons learned as a Toastmaster Treasurer Part 1
Typically I don’t like stepping up for leadership roles of any kind, but I must admit, not only did I find this enlightening, it grew me faster than anything else before. Leadership roles shows you what you’re capable of, broadens your vision and shows you what more you can achieve.
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My Bitcoin dropped 40 percent in value because of meat!
The past few weeks have been rough. The COVID-19 virus has been spreading surprisingly quickly, financial markets are in turmoil, stocks have tumbled, governments are taking drastic action and crypto currencies took a beating. We’re getting whacked from all sides.
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How to maintain your Optimism
There are so many things happening in the world right now that are scary and downright frightening. The uncertainty weighs heavily all around us. In times like these its more important than ever to be able to have a positive outlook. It becomes so critical to be able to control your mindset and focus on…
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Why I like BAT, and why you should too
Browsers are broken! Furthermore, the way we consume content is broken. If you go on to Facebook, and you browse around, then many nefarious things are happening to you. You are being tracked, your data is stored, and it is sold to advertisers who in turn use that information to sell you stuff that you…
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Elon Musks’ Grand Plan
Elon Musk has interests in a myriad of stunning ventures. Everything from electric vehicles to artificial intelligence. With this vast array of successful businesses, you’ve got to ask yourself; what’s it all for? where’s it headed? and are these ventures all interconnected? Everything from electric vehicles to artificial intelligence. With this vast array of successful…
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Will Epidemics drive an increase in Veganism?
The very last reported case of Listeriosis in South Africa happened not too far from my farm. Even though that happened in 2018, it’s something that is still fresh in my mind. If you don’t know, Listeriosis is a mild to deadly bacterial infection you can acquire when consuming meat and milk. Over two hundred…
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How to give a Toast that you’re Proud of
Whenever I watch a movie and I see a Toast being made for an occasion, it always seems so bland. It seems uninspired and lazy. Even in real life I don’t believe I have never witnessed a Toast that has been compelling…other than at Toastmasters. After all, this makes sense. It’s right there in the…
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If Corporations Invest in Art, Shouldn’t You?
I have worked in a number of corporations throughout my career, and I found it quite odd that many of them had these remarkable art galleries. It really took me by surprise, but nevertheless being an artist myself I was extremely happy to explore them. I never really enjoyed working in corporations so the opportunity…
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How one Generation can help another
A few weeks back I bumped into an old retired gentleman in a cafe. He was South African Indian like myself and we got to chatting. I really like chatting to older folks because they have interesting insights about the world and how they lived their lives.
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3 Foods to Boost your Vegan Athleticism
When I went Vegan I very quickly noticed a surge in speed, power, performance and endurance. Having always been a contrarian, rather than go to the gym, I saw this a reason to never go the gym. After all I was getting gains for free! I’m lean forever and I never need to workout; Sold!
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Toastmaster of the Day – Lessons Learned Part 1
Introduction The Toastmaster of the Day role terrifies people. I know it definitely terrified me. The thought of standing up in front of huge crowd for an hour can leave you in a cold sweat. I was even more intimidated by the role because I’ve seen so many phenomenal Toastmasters handle the role deftly with…
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Why the World will be Vegan-ish
There are a lot of arguments for going Vegan. Off the top of my head I can think of five; climate change, animal welfare, enhanced health, addressing income inequality and spirituality. But there is another reason that doesn’t get touted enough. I believe that this reason hands down dictates that the world will be Vegan-ish.…
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Have you Perfected a Skill?
There is a strong relationship between perfecting a skill and freedom. Many people don’t see it, but it’s there, and it’s important. In fact it’s so important that if we fail to master a skill or even just come close to it, then we will fail to unlock some of our biggest opportunities. This is…
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ParkRuns and Plant Powered
I hate running! Or at least I used to hate it. All I recall about running is pain inflicted upon the body and mind. My sole thought after my first 5km run was : “Now I know why people invented cars!” However this opinion of my mine has radically changed over the past few months.…
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3 Ways to get the Most out of Toastmasters
Toastmasters is perhaps the greatest organisation on the face of the planet. I am consistently amazed at what this organisation does. Its goal has always been to help people become better communicators. After 95 years in existence it is still going strong, with a massive bright future ahead. It pleases me to think of all…
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The BDS Movement and South Africa
Freedom day, the 27th of April 1994 is a significant date in South African history. This is the year that South Africa become a free democratic nation. After enduring three decades of the Apartheid regime people were free to live their lives, and all were allowed to vote in free and fair elections. The struggle…
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I Started off 2020 Right – This is what I did
Usually when a new year rolls around I’m still in bed recovering from the festivities. Starting off a new year with a dull headache and reflexively hitting that snooze button doesn’t bode well for all of my best intentioned plans for the year. However, not only is this a new year but a new decade,…
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Always Keep Going
I learned a long time ago, that life is not a bed of roses. Many times it seems as though everything is against you. But all those bad thoughts, you’ve got to put out of your mind, and just keep going. And if you keep at it, sooner or later things are going to come…
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Seriously…One Password!!
We’ve all done it; we’ve all used the exact same password multiple times. We know we shouldn’t, but it’s just so easy. It’s just so comfortable sticking with the familiar, however, with so many personal data breaches taking place, my paranoid mind is compelling me to be more proactive about taking security seriously.
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Veganism, Training and the 80-20
As a kid, I always wanted to be big. Arnold big! So going to the gym was a given and it’s wonderful when you see those size results coming. However, somehow I got the notion that if you’re working hard in the gym, then you can eat whatever you want. I abused this notion wholesale.…
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Radical Declutter : Streamline your Life
Modern day consumerism has had the unfortunate effect of straddling all of us with unnecessary stuff. We now have masses of stuff that we don’t need, that’s outdated, out of vogue and just plain useless. And this is a pity and bane because it actually consumes not only our time, effort and money, but also…
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The Opportunities of Open Source
Open Source mainly refers to software. It’s this idea that code for software is freely available and open for modification. Hence the name Open Source. Ergo, it also means that the software itself is freely available too. Yet Open Source software still hasn’t reached mass adoption; and I honestly wonder Why.
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The Princess of Mars
Every once in while I read an old book that is at least a century old. I like doing this because it gives me insight into how people wrote and hence how people thought along time ago. You can get a feeling for what the sentiment and thinking was like back then.
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The Simplest Way to go Vegan
You’ve watched “The Game Changers” or “Cowspiracy”, or you’ve just read the latest IPCC report on Climate Change or maybe you’ve even been intrigued by some Vegan friends. And now you want to give this Vegan thing a go. But where do you start, and how do you start in a meaningful way so that…
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Greening the Planet
Seven years ago I was very fortunate to partake in a local version of a broader global initiative called the FoodisFree project. I joined a meetup group that was trying launch one of these community gardens in the area. It was so cool to engage with a diverse set of like minded people who wanted…
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BIC Art Master Competition : Africa 2019
At the beginning of this month I was really pleased to see a post about an art competition in my Instagram feed. The competition was by BIC to produce some artwork about Africa. This really piqued my interest on so many levels. Competitions are cool because they give you the opportunity to push yourself a…
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V-gang : Exploring Sci-fi, Veganism and Ethics
I’ve just released my very first brand spanking new Comic Book called V-gang. I’m thrilled to have completed a long ambition of mine to combine my artistic skill and thoughts about some very important matters concerning us all today. I’ve currently released the book on Amazon https://amzn.to/2P2HJ6r. Soon it will be available in paper format.
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Leveraging the Gig Economy : AirBNB
AirBNB has indeed been a massive boon to me. It has allowed to me increase my income, and it has taught me a lot about running a business, being a great host, and even how to maximize the use of my property assets. In this day in age, where costs are running rampant and traditional…
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Digital Portrait Drawing of Mya
When old techniques reach their limits, then new techniques must be tried. This current drawing technique based on the Russian Soft Bruch technique has many benefits and the results are showing.
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Getting Started with Bitcoin for Beginners in South Africa
It’s a very odd thing, but even after a decade of it’s existence, when Bitcoin comes up during a discussion I still get a lot of people asking me how they can acquire it. I always wonder if this is a uniquely South African thing, or that I take it for granted that everyone knows…
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Maslow’s Hierarchy Redefined
I often look upon this pyramid of Maslow, and consider the vast potential it contains. Right now, as it stands, it is a model of human needs, but I think it better serves us to highlight what we should aim for. We should strive for the pinnacle of pyramid “Self Actualization”, rather than struggle at…
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One of the Best Speeches Ever :”A Time for Choosing”
This is perhaps the best speech I’ve ever heard, and even today its resonates as powerful. Whatever you may think of Ronald Reagan, you have to admit, he was great speaker.
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The Sun Exchange, Retirement and Investing for a Solar Future
The Sun Exchange will launching a new solar panel investment for a retirement home in Cape Town. This is a great idea because as a younger generation, we need to look after the older generation, as this demographic is going to have a massive impact on our nations very soon. More than we could possibly…
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A Portrait of Tizina
This drawing is of one of our newest members at our Midrand Extraordinaires Toastmasters club. There’s been some very good improvements in my drawing techniques, but still there’s a lot more practice to do.
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The Culture Trap and How to Escape it
Its quite astonishing to realize that modern day culture has supplanted many valuable aspects of older cultures. This has been so effective, that GenXers and Millennials find these valuable aspects of the older cultures to be outlandish. This is the culture trap, and we need to escape it.
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The 15 Hour Work Week
The economist Joseph Keynes posited a hundred years that we would all only need to work fifteen hours per week by the year 2030. I believe we can get there, however through a different mechanism than he thought of.
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How Veganism solves Social Inequality
Using Maslows Hierarchy of needs as a starting point, we see how we can use Veganism to reduce food costs which is one of the major household costs. Reducing these food costs, its the biggest step towards financial stability and then social equality.
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Acquiring my Tesla stock for ‘Free’
Technology is opening up possibilities and breaking through boundaries across the board, all to the benefit of us citizens of the world. What’s even better is that all these technologies are starting to work together quite seamlessly.
Got any book recommendations?
Jae Subramoney 