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instagram.com/p/Bl7-9QZgea_/

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Seth Crosby’s rural landscape, Iceland (via here)

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PSYCHOLOGY FACT #577

You can “rewire” your brain to be happy by simply recalling 3 things you’re grateful for every day for 21 days.

Read more psychology facts Here

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Yeah so everyone’s like “I never expected park rangers to be leading the resistance” and I’m over here like

LISTEN

I worked with park rangers for six years ok? They are some of the most passionate, most badass individuals you will ever meet. Their commitment to history (since we were in a historical park) was unwavering. They read history books for FUN ok? FOR FUN. They are excellent fact checkers. If they don’t know something, they will find it out. They are unflappable.

When I worked on an island with the rangers there, they were committed to both history and nature. They are caretakers and deeply passionate about stewardship of the earth. They want people to have knowledge. They want to spread information far and wide.

So yeah. Park rangers, man. They are BADASS.

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Source: socalrangeboot

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BOOK OF THE DAY:

Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card

As one of the best science fiction books, Ender’s Game’s writing style is straightforward and filled with intricate and rich conceptual themes. Let us explain. In a near future Earth is threatened by a lethal alien species who is determined to obliterate humanity. Enter, Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, who is drafted at the age of 6 into a rigorous military training program. Talented and brilliant, his skills make him rival to his peers and an idol to his elders. Distant from his parents and his somewhat sinister brother, his only remaining emotional salvation is his dear sister. As a result Ender is completely isolated from reality, he battles with loneliness and fear.

Although the story contains a heavy science fiction plot, its psychological affair is far greater than presume, as it is with most science fiction stories. Ender is brilliant, empathetic and in constant battle of his inner demons and others’ troubles. He painfully understands the world and even his enemy. The faith and survival on the Earth essentially lie on him and his siblings. Ultimately Ender’s Games is psychologically engaging, thought-provoking and ethically intelligent. It poses one of science fiction’s and humanity’s most chilling question: how does the idea of “the other” or “the foreigner” affect us? What is is about the unknown that makes us violent, extreme and paranoid?

Read excerpts from the book here!

[Book Cover Design by Elizabeth Underwood]

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Part of me knows one more day won’t do anything except postpone the heartbreak. But another part of me believes differently. We are born in one day. We die in one day. We can change in one day. And we can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in just one day.

Gayle Forman, Just One Day (via wordsnquotes)

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Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or the last time.

Betty Smith (via wordsnquotes)

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Sometimes we don’t get second chances. Sometimes things just end.

Colleen Hoover, Confess (via wordsnquotes)

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The History of Nikola Tesla

Nikola Tesla was born on July 10th 1856, in the territory of modern day Croatia to his two Serbian parents.

Tesla grew up into bright inquisitive, yet eccentric child, who found himself fascinated by the world around him.

Tesla once tried to fly by jumping off the roof of a barn while holding on to an umbrella. He devised a bug powered motor using Junebugs, but had to abort his experiment after a friend decided to eat some of the bugs (Tesla thought this was gross). He once attempted to generate electricity by rubbing two cats together, which resulted in two very mad cats and a scratched up Tesla.

On June 6th, 1884, Tesla arrived in the United States. He was hired by Thomas Edison to do basic electrical engineering, but moved up to re-designing the direct current generators that ran Edison’s business.

Edison offered Tesla $50,000, or about $1.1 million in today’s currency to make these improvements. After completing this assignment, Tesla asked about the payment for his work. Edison didn’t pay out the money. He claimed that he wasn’t serious about the payment, that Tesla didn’t “understand American humor”.

Tesla eventually left Edison’s company and partnered with George Westinghouse in 1888 to commercialize his system of alternating current (AC). The problem here is that alternating current competed with direct current, which Thomas Edison built his entire monopoly on. Thus begun the “War of the Currents”.

Edison started a massive smear campaign against Tesla and alternating current, trying to scare people into avoiding it’s use. He spread false information about deaths from alternating current, lobbied against it, and went so far as to electrocute a circus elephant in public.

Direct current had plenty of faults, it was the cause of death of countless children, and created numerous house fires. Also, the maximum reach of direct current was about two miles, which meant a substation had to be built to continue the current. They would still be building substations today if they were going to get electricity across the US.

Tesla’s alternating current could go for hundreds of miles. Lights running on alternating current were brighter, unlike the dull yellow lights running on direct current.

Eventually, Edison had to give into the demands of the people, and go with alternating current.

Tesla’s influence goes much further than electricity. He had over 700 patents, and came up with ideas such as

Robots Spark Plugs the Electric Arc Lamp an Xray Device Blade less turbines Wireless communication Electric motors Laser technology Neon Lights Remote Controls Cellular communication The radio An electrical bath to remove germs RADAR Wireless communication And much more

Tesla died from heart failure in a room of the New Yorker Hotel, on January 7th 1943. Despite his fame and influence on the world, he died with significant debts, and all alone.

While Edison is known as the inventor of the century, Tesla is only acknowledged as a paragraph in today’s history books, forgotten, and unappreciated.

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Wonderful

Passing Through – A Beautiful Iceland Timelapse This awesome video by Kristian Ulrich Larsen and Olafur Haraldsson melds the stark but beautiful landscape of Iceland, the words of Nicola Tesla, and cool computer graphics.

The text is from a speech given by Tesla in 1893, where he implies that the world should be conceived as a whole where everything is interconnected.

“Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present.

A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes in Nature. In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider, that in accordance with the law of the conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.”

—Nikola Tesla “The Electrical Review, 1893″