Hi! I'm Micycle_the_Bichael! I'm a pretty passionate local environmental activist. Short summary: I think climate change is bad, but even if climate change wasn't happening the way we interact with nature is still gross and leaves a lot to be desired (ex: over fishing, whaling, landfills). While there definitely needs to be governmental action on corporations on climate change, there are still changes that can be made in your daily life to help make the world a better place! Enter the year of the planet. This is a community group for making one small change a month to help the environment. Some may be things you're already doing, some may be new. For example: the January goal is to start using a reusable coffee cup when ordering coffee at a cafe since most paper coffee cups are lined with polyethylene and thus not recyclable. The biggest difference for me between this and many other (very great and valid) projects like it is that it heavily emphasizes building a sense of community.

The group who organized this is The Good Empire, who describe themselves as:

"Year of the Planet is an initiative of Good Empire. We’re makers of startups and projects for good.
Inspired by and aligned with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, we bring ideas to life that are good for the world. We help change the things that need to change.
And most importantly, we’re a tribe. A global community of good people, united in purpose, to help create a better and more sustainable future for all.
Good Empire is not a registered charity, but we partner with registered charities in everything we do.
We will take no management fees from Year of the Planet, nor will any of the funds raised come through us. All donations will go directly to our charity partners."

Some of those partners being Wildlife Emergecy Fund and the seabin project which is a project close to my heart along with the ocean cleanup project

This post has been what feels like a really long rant on a couple of groups and causes that I'm very passionate about. I'll probably DM one of the other Tildes members who does scheduled posts and see about making a bi-weekly environmentalism thread to discuss what people are doing to make a positive change not only in the local environment, but in their community (a lot of good environmental initiatives also make your neighborhood/local community nicer and happier places :) ), struggles people are having, questions, products they have found, etc. and we'll see if it sticks or if it is just me shouting into the void.

My personal picks would be the whole of Chinese history between the opium wars and communist rule (or the century of humiliation as it is called), and most especially the warlord era, given that this was effectively how European powers, Japan and many internal revolutionaries managed to bring down the greatest economy in the world to civil war and then total warlordism for 40 years. For a vague concept, my pick would be the great divergence, the period where the US and European nations rose above the rest of the world and became the predominant world powers and colonized most of it, along with the many potential causes of this.

… essentially Cube 2: Hypercube. It's even written and directed by Vincenzo Natali, the man behind Cube. I didn't dislike it, in fact I liked it. But seriously, am I the only one who noticed that?

Also, Harrison Gilbertson has big Aaron Paul energy. Especially in the voice.

I would like a current active user Count for the whole site. I find them very useful for knowing when people are on I’m not a fan of group specific ones but one that said how many people where currently on I would like

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their weekend.

If you have any plans, things you want to get done, things you have done, things you haven't done, or even if you just want to talk about how you're doing this weekend, this is a place for casual discussion about those things.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this weekend?

Is there a good smartwatch/simile that monitors sleep and has excellent battery life (measured in weeks not hours)?

I use the Withings (ex-Nokia) Steel HR, but it … kinda sucks. The bluetooth pairings very often lose sleep data, it's very inaccurate, the reporting sucks for non-24s, and the leather bracelet is of very poor quality, keeps breaking.

I really don't care for the fitness/step tracking which, as someone else here put it, thinks typing on a keyboard or eating is a step.

I also briefly tried an Oura (https://ouraring.com/), but I never got it to work and had to send it back.

I also don't care much for any of those "sleep quality" trackers that try to detect if I snore and what not. I can do sleep studies in my own time, I just want to have accurate stats on whether and when I am asleep.

What drives you to create or do something new? Even seemingly straightforward motivations can have a pretty complex interaction of history and emotion behind the scenes.
What are the rates at which your motivation waxes and wanes? Does it come and go in a matter of days, weeks, or months? Or does it stay fairly consistent?
What steps would you take with the factors in an effort to increase your motivation?