Sunscreen and Solar-powered servers

Between the long weekend, getting back into marathon training, and playing with the new Fitbit Air this week went by surprisingly quickly. Despite that, (sportsball warning for people who don't care) I'm so ready for the weekend. Mainly because Arsenal have a chance to win the Premier League AND the Champions League.

in this issue:

☀️ Low Tech Magazine

🧴 Shiseido sunscreen

📘 Words of Radiance

☀️ Low Tech Magazine

I have many dreams and goals for this little Cool Supply thing that I've been doing, and now I have another one to add to the list. I came across Low Tech Magazine a few days ago and found the idea intoxicating. Not only does this internet magazine have a bunch of cool articles about solar-powered home projects you can do yourself but there are also a ton of pieces about how to be more sustainable in general.

The icing on the cake is that they really practice what they preach, because even the website itself is hosted on a solar-powered server based in Barcelona. Yeah. So the website literally might go down if the weather is bad for a long enough period of time. It's wild and I love it! I'm going to read all of these because running a solar-powered server sounds like such a sick project.

🧴 Shiseido sunscreen

We had a small heatwave here in NYC a few weeks ago and it quickly reminded me that I need to be better about putting on sunscreen. Especially because as I train for the marathon I'm going to be spending way more time in the sun, and having burnt cheeks is never fun. My go-to for the last year or two has been this Shiseido sunscreen which I use specifically because it comes in a stick like deodorant instead of a cream.

I hate the sunscreen creams because they always leave gross residues but this one is clear and easy to apply. The only downside to this brand is that it's expensive as hell but it's the first time I've actually stuck to a habit of applying sunscreen in my life, so it's working for me at least.

📘Brandon Sanderson Words of Radiance

I might be preaching to the choir with this one or just recommending something so obvious that most people skip it, but if you consider yourself a fan of the fantasy genre at all Brandon Sanderson is required reading. He has so many stories that it's a little intimidating when trying to figure out where to start, but after many hours of research the internet told me to just start with the Mistborn trilogy. So that's what I did and now I'm halfway through Words of Radiance, which is book two of an even longer series.

I took a break from it for a few months to read other books, but I woke up the other day with a burning curiosity to know how this is all going to end so I'm reading it again and I'm hooked. If you know nothing about Brandon Sanderson, that's kind of his trademark. He builds up the story, the magic system, and the characters in a slow but interesting way for most of the book, and then BAM. You're in it. There's a point in every one of his books where he decides that you're not going out tonight. You're not going to clean the apartment like you wanted to. You're just going to sit there and finish this book. And it gets me every time.