I Quit Showering, and Life Continued

Consume filtered water. The use of chlorine to eliminate outbreaks of waterborne pathogens in developing nations is a great thing, but many first-world water supplies tend to be overtreated with chlorine. Shower less. Or use soap more sparingly, perhaps only every other shower. The resulting increase in mating scent molecules called pheromones may

it’s because our modern way of thinking about time is so deeply entrenched that we forget it even is a way of thinking; we’re like the proverbial fish who have no idea what water is, because it surrounds them completely.

The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible—the quest to become the optimized, infinitely capable, emot

We’ve built entire industries and massive layers of infrastructure specifically for the purpose of easing the burdens of survival, exposure, and physical movement. But now our success is beginning to look like a Pyrrhic victory; we’ve beaten back the forces of nature, but in the process, we’ve very nearly defeated our own health. This brings us to

I was seeing that the means by which we give over our hours and days are the same with which we assault ourselves with information and misinformation, at a frankly inhumane rate.

I’m being borne forward on the river of time, with no possibility of stepping out of the flow, onward toward my inevitable death—which, to make matters even more ticklish, could arrive at any moment.