Category: Essentials Week

Essentials Week Games Games To Play Tech Web Culture

In defense of cheating at crossword puzzles

sudshr47 December 22, 2018

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Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

My name is Rachel, and I am a cheater.

No, not that kind of cheater. I cheat at gamesUno, mostly, on family vacations. There was a very sticky incident with a game of Mille Bornes once. And getting caught in the act during a round of Hi-Ho Cherry-O when I was a young kid still shamefully burns in my memory.

Lately, I’ve been engaging in a different sort of cheating. And while I know that my typical illicit game play is wrong, I feel — mostly — no shame about this new kind. Because, for now, it’s justified. Read more…

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Essentials Week Online Privacy private browsing tor Tor Browser

Tor should be your internet best friend

sudshr47 December 21, 2018

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Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

Privacy and internet — sounds like the beginning of a joke, right? Contrary to the popular belief, however, the two really can go together. 

Yes, our data (which, to be fair, we often willingly give away to third parties without blinking) can be at the mercy of huge companies which sell it for advertising purposes or the prying eyes of governments as well as hackers. But there are simple, unobtrusive ways of keeping your data and online activities private in all except the most extreme of circumstances.  Read more…

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Culture Essentials Essentials Week skincare Web Culture

Why micellar water became the internet’s holy grail of lazy skincare

sudshr47 December 20, 2018

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Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

Micellar water should be your new best friend. 

Skincare is kind of a cult: You stumble across one subreddit and suddenly you’re stocking up on sheet masks, researching acids, and agonizing over each pore. 

Layering serums and testing AHAs/BHAs can be wildly overwhelming, especially if you’re just getting into skincare or a functional member of society who doesn’t have the time for a full Korean 10-step routine. That’s where micellar comes in — the cleanser is like a shortcut for skincare. It’ll take the gunk off your face, and you don’t have to wash it off after.  Read more…

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Apps Consumer Tech Essentials Week Journal Tech

DayOne is the last diary you’ll ever need

sudshr47 December 20, 2018

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Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

There they sat on the groaning shelf, looking like a rebuke to the entire digital era: years of handwritten journals. Some were slim notebook folders, but most were hefty tomes — half-scrapbook, half-angsty accounts of my school and college days, or bulging clips of magazine bylines. All were annoyingly irreplaceable pieces of personal history I’d carted around from house to house over the years like a ball and chain. 

So far, they had flagrantly refused to digitize themselves. But I wasn’t sure if I should digitize them, either. The reason sat next to them: folders full of printouts, equally unique.  Read more…

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Culture Essentials Week Food Food And Drink

Everyone should keep a jar of minced garlic in the fridge

sudshr47 December 19, 2018

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Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better.

I remember the crackling the most — then comes the smell that sits in the air for hours, clinging to your clothes. In my grandmother’s kitchen, chopped garlic frying in an olive oil bath was almost always on the stove. 

If she was making white rice and black beans, she’d fry garlic and onions in olive oil as the rice boiled. To start her tuco, a red pasta sauce popular in Argentina, she’d drop olive oil and garlic in the pot. For meatballs, she’d toss tiny specks of the pungent white stuff in a bowl of ground beef, eggs, and breadcrumbs, mixing the squishy mixture together with her hands.  Read more…

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Blanket Culture Essentials Essentials Week Self Care

Believe the hype: Weighted blankets have an online cult following for a reason

sudshr47 December 16, 2018

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Essentials Week spotlights unexpected items that make our daily lives just a little bit better. 

From Twitter to Reddit to Instagram, tons of internet folks are raving about a glorified tarp. 

Weighted blankets, also known as gravity or anxiety blankets, gained the attention of the self-care community late last year and have been picking up widespread (and emphatic) support ever since.

Purported to assist with stress and sleep, weighted blankets are exactly what they sound like — blankets with added weight, typically around 10% of the user’s body weight. As you slide under the heavy, comforter-like fabric, you will likely experience a therapeutic sensation, one that I would compare to that extra sip of wine taking you from conversationally relaxed to full-blown tipsy.  Read more…

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