Taking a Risk With Relationships!

‘With any Relationship will come Chance! I Hindsight is a fantastic issue – specifically on the subject of associations! On the other hand, ‘love is blind’ because aged adage moves, especially when is embarking on a new romantic relationship. You want ‘things’ to see, and though there may be indicators right away, we quite often…

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Make Things Better

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/positivelypositive/positive/~3/HA2t2LunOOo/

I’ve come to realize that this is a controversial statement for some people.

Two issues, it seems:

  1. Better implies that what we have right now is imperfect. Better requires change, and change is scary. Better might be in the eye of the beholder. Better is an assertion, one that requires not just the confidence to say it, but the optimism to believe that it’s possible.
  2. Make implies that it’s up to us. Someone needs to make it better, and it might just be you. In fact, if you don’t enlist to produce better, you’re part of the status quo, which is a problem.

I’ve seen that there are pockets of our culture where both of these ideas are difficult to embrace. That authority pushes us to fit in, not to seek improvement, and deniability encourages us to whine instead of doing something about it. Power enjoys passivity in others.

Power doesn’t want you to get uppity, doesn’t enjoy your dissatisfaction, doesn’t want to be on the hook to continually upgrade all of its systems. And so power has sold a cultural norm of acceptance, deniability and ennui.

And yet…

Everything in our built world–the water we drink, the food we eat, the place we live–if it’s good, it’s good because someone, a generation or two ago, decided to make it better. And if it’s not good, or not good enough, only our action is going to make it better.

We can see the world around us, and if we try, we can see it becoming better.

It might be a podcast or a political campaign, an engineering insight or a more inclusive policy. It probably involves finding and organizing others on a similar path. It definitely takes guts.

I’ll reiterate my belief that we each have a chance to assert. To announce our vision, to propose a change, to do the hard work to make things better.

It’s on us, right now.

Make things better by making better things. @ThisIsSethsBlog (Click to Tweet!)

*Originally published on sethsblog.


Seth Godin has written eighteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership, and, most of all, changing everything.

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Image courtesy of Spencer Davis.

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How to Speak Mindfully

There are two components to communication. There is the speaker and there is the listener. So when we talk about mindfulness in communication, we must remember that attentive listening is equally important , not only wary speaking. Since we have treated mindful listening in a previous pole, today we will cover mindful speaking. Just like…

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Researchers tested 14 types of masks — some worked great, some are worse than useless

(TMU) – In the strange “new normal” of the coronavirus era, protective face coverings have become a new staple of our daily wardrobe, as essential as underwear and crucial in helping to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic – especially as economies increasingly reopen.

Because of the heightened demand for masks, online marketplaces and retailers are offering myriad options including cotton and neoprene masks, disposable or reusable options, and masks with valves and filters.

And while it has been months since public health bodies issued guidance urging U.S. residents to always wear a cloth face covering in public, it’s become clear that not all masks are created equal – in fact, some masks are useless or worse when it comes to preventing person-to-person transmission of COVID-19.

According to a new study from scientists at Duke University’s School of Medicine comparing 14 types of masks, facial coverings like gaiters, bandanas and knitted masks are among the worst face coverings for preventing the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, the gold standard for preventing the transmission of respiratory droplets during normal speech remains fitted N95 respirator masks used by health care professionals.

Other good options to help reduce the risk of saliva-related transmission are three-layer surgical masks and cotton masks, either of the homemade sort or those sold by retailers, the Duke physics department found.

For the study, researchers used a simple setup utilizing a laser beam and a cell phone camera that gauged the efficiency of masks by analyzing the spread of respiratory droplets during regular speech. A computer algorithm then counts the droplets in the video recording.

“We use a black box, a laser, and a camera,” study co-author Martin Fischer told CNN. “The laser beam is expanded vertically to form a thin sheet of light, which we shine through slits on the left and right of the box.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeEBn4ttZZY?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

While bandanas might look neat and allow you to flex your gangsta cosplay skills, they are nearly useless in terms of offering protection – and the same goes for that nice knitted mask your grandma made for you.

In the case of neck fleeces or gaiter scarves, which are usually worn by runners and bikers – as well as your favorite Major League Baseball players – not only are these totally ineffective but they actually boost the spread of respiratory droplets, making gaiters worse than going without a mask entirely.

This was because the material in fleeces or gaiter masks break larger droplets down into smaller ones. Rather than the droplets falling to the ground, as they would without a mask, the smaller particles of spittle float through the air easier.

“We were extremely surprised to find that the number of particles measured with the fleece actually exceeded the number of particles measured without wearing any mask,” Fischer noted.

“We want to emphasize that we really encourage people to wear masks, but we want them to wear masks that actually work.”

While some have recommended gauging the efficacy of masks through methods such as the “candle test” or the “lighter test,” the simple setup used by Duke is a low-cost, effective testing method.

However, the researchers are not recommending that people unfamiliar with lasers set these tests up at home due to the danger of permanent eye damage. Instead, they hope that companies, museums, and community centers can use the test to show people which masks work best.

“This is a very powerful visual tool to raise awareness that very simple masks, like these homemade cotton masks, do really well to stop the majority of these respiratory droplets,” Fischer said.

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