Apartment dwellers in big cities are looking to infuse their corners with the great green outdoors. However, it's frustrating when a houseplant's health fails.Your houseplants are living things. They depend on you for their care, similar to a dog or a cat. That means nutrition, water, a supportive home environment and intuiting its needs.

House plants

Invest in plants that suit your lifestyle. A busy person doesn't want to buy a plant that needs to be watered every other day. Different plants require different care regimens. Plant newbies should consider starting with indestructible plants, such as the spider plant, the ZZ plant or the dracaena. However, anything that is alive can be killed, even indestructible plants that can take a lot of abuse and forgetfulness.

Know thyself, know thy space

<ul><li>Yellowed, drooping or dried leaves are your plant's way of screaming for attention.</li><li>Plants tend to bend toward the light source, so that's your cue to move them closer and rotate their containers.</li><li>Overdry soil means not enough watering. </li><li>Soggy soil can't escape through the container's drainage holes means too much watering.</li></ul>The easiest way to pick up on your houseplants’ cues is to enjoy them.

Become fluent in plant

<ul><li>Watering. Never wait for your plants to wilt before you water them. Check your soil first. If it crumbles apart, that's good. If it remains a soggy glob, you're overwatering.</li><li>Potting. You'll need to periodically repot your plant so that it can grow bigger and avoid issues like root rot. If your plant is wilting, it might need more space for its roots. </li><li>Positioning and rotating. Put your most sun-loving plants near windows and plants that prefer less sunlight away from the windows. Ensure to rotate them to prevent overgrowth on one side.</li></ul>

How to look after your plants

Prune yellowed and dried leaves and wipe your leaves down regularly as dust creates a filter between the sunlight and the leaf tissue. Rotate your plants and check their soil to notice any unwelcome bugs before a full0on invasion hits.

Leaf care, soil stuff, and pests

Instagram plantfluencers aren’t the only ones who can keep monstera and snake plants lush and green. You can too, with a few lessons from the pros.

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Science & Nature

Finally, really good advice on how to stop killing your houseplants

There’s something special about watching plants grow and produce life as a new leaf, shoot or stem. When a plant slows down and stops growing, it can be frustrating, especially if there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it. However, it's surprisingly common, and there are several reasons why it happens.

When your houseplant stops growing

The most common reason your plant may have slowed down is that it's not getting enough nutrients, such as natural light or warmth.  When plants are in panic mode, they may drop leaves and extremities, so their food doesn't have to travel far. Other signs include yellowing or thin leaves and a loss of variegation in variegated plants. The obvious solution is to ensure they're getting what they need.

It’s getting insufficient nutrients 

If your plant has suddenly taken a turn for the worse, it could be infested with common houseplant pests like aphids or fungus gnats. Try wiping the plant's leaves with diluted washing liquid, neem oil or Bloombox club's naturally bug-repellent spray.

It’s got pests

After many years in one pot, plants will have exhausted their soil’s nutrients, and their roots may have filled every available space.Your plants are rootbound when:<ul><li>You see roots coming out of the holes in the bottom of their growing pot.</li><li>If you lift your plant gently out of its growing pot, you will see if the roots have taken the shape of the pot or not.</li></ul>If your plant is rootbound, transfer it to a bigger pot.

It’s root bound 

If you can't seem to find any cause, chances are it's just reached its final size. Houseplants can have an upper limit when it comes to growth. Some houseplants are bred to be slow-growing, so they can be used as decor without taking over your living room.

It’s reached its full potential

Having your houseplant stop growing can be incredibly frustrating – especially when it feels like you’re doing all the right things. Here, a plant expert explains why this happens.

Houseplants stopped growing? Here’s how to work out why (and what you can do about it) 

<h3>Clothing choices are a critical component of how we think, behave, and interact with others.</h3> In the shift to remote work, some workers kept their office uniform while others picked comfortable home attire. After two years of working from home, there is still no solution for handling the work-from-home dress code.

Work-from-home dress code

Research shows that clothes influence how colleagues perceive each other and can change how employees think or feel about themselves. It is essential that companies and their workers think critically about the office dress code, and get it right. There's now clear guidance that companies, managers, and individual workers should consider in our new hybrid work reality.

Clothing influences how you are perceived

Enclothed cognition describes how clothing and its symbolic associations affect thought and behaviour. Research found that making small changes to one's wardrobe, such as putting on a lab coat in the lab or wearing a power suit in the office can improve attention or increase one's sense of power. Wearing a suit increases testosterone levels and wearing a nurse's uniform increases empathy.

Enclothed cognition

Research shows that home attire consistently improved authenticity and engagement because workers felt more like themselves and were more engaged and productive at work. Clothing needs to be consistent with the setting in which it is worn. The setting of work matters more for work engagement than the content of the work task. Research shows companies don't have to wonder if they need to end the office dress code. Instead, to help workers bring their best selves to work, managers should encourage workers to wear clothes that fit where their work is being completed.

At home attire

If you’re among those who can still work remotely at least part of the time, you need to reconsider your wardrobe.


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Productivity

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Remote Work

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Career

What to wear to maximize productivity when you’re working from home, according to science

During performance review season, employees are working on their self-reviews and performance goals while preparing to meet with the boss. You may be asked to come prepared with goals to discuss. However, coming up with goals that can help you move forward can be a powerful activity.

Goal setting is powerful

Thinking that your goals are to get that raise, get a promotion, not get fired is too broad and vague to start taking action on. Using the SMART system for goal setting can help you move forward in your career.<ul><li>S - Specific: The goals clarify what will be accomplished and how.</li><li>M - Measurable: The goal can be measured and tracked.</li><li>A - Achievable: Your goal should be realistically achievable.</li><li>R - Relevant: There should be a good reason behind your goal and relate to the job you or your team.</li><li>T - Time-bound. When will the goal be completed?</li></ul>

Performance goals need to be clear

Completing new certifications is a great goal. Ideally, your company will pay for this as part of continuing education. Before the performance review, ensure you have specific certification in mind, including the cost and time frame. Know how the certification will benefit you or the team.

Learn something new (and make it official)

Meetings can be hard, even for the confident. With the rise of online meetings, it's easier to fade into the background but that is not the best thing for your career or team performance. Speaking up is a good goal to set and easy to track and measure. Start by aiming to contribute something to each meeting, even if it's just saying hello. Then, when you become more comfortable, start offering opinions and answering questions.

Speak up more in meetings

Being more focused and productive is always a great goal and something almost everyone needs to work on. Consider carefully what increased efficiency would look like for you, how you'll track it, and how it will benefit the team. For example, if you find that you spend two hours per day on email, you could aim to limit that to one hour per day.

Manage your time more effectively

Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and work with emotions.  Emotional intelligence is in high demand in the workplace. A goal could be to practice the skills that contribute to emotional intelligence:<ul><li>Offering support to team members.</li><li>Offer to help mediate a conflict.</li><li>Share your experience with a struggling team member.</li><li>Provide positive feedback and encouragement to coworkers.</li></ul>

Work on emotional intelligence

Goal setting can be one of the most powerful activities you do this year. Read on to discover how to get over the jitters and come up with some goals that actually help move you forward.

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Personal Development

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Leadership & Management

Why Performance Goals Are So Important (And How to Set Your Own)

The cost to make a movie has little or no correlation to its profitability.
Movies cost so much because of the financial concept known as Parkinson's Law, which means film budgets will continually expand to use the capital available, regardless if the extra cash results in a better product.

Movies and Parkinson's Law

During the mid-2000s economic boom, Wall Street hedge funds partnered with investment banks to push $15 billion into Hollywood films. A new payment structure gave outside investors a slice of a film's total profits over its product's lifetime, such as box office sales, video on demand, DVDs, TV licensing, in-flight movies, product placement and toy licensing. This meant that studios could spend less of their own funds while making more expensive movies.

Why the cost of movies increased

Movie cost is explained in this article. Learn about movie cost.

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Marketing & Sales

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Money & Investments

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Movies & Shows

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Books

Why do movies cost so much to make?

<ul><li>Thales is best remembered for his metaphysics which argued that everything originated from water and that water somehow constituted all other elements. He left no writings.</li><li>Thales devoted time to astronomy and was the first person to predict a solar eclipse accurately. </li><li>He was a noted mathematician and is said to have measured the height of the great pyramid using the length of its shadow. </li><li>He was credited with discovering magnetism in the west and used it as the basis of his theory of Panpsychism. </li><li>While many of his inspirations and sources were mythic, Thales is said to have moved beyond myth and towards naturalistic explanations of the world. </li></ul>

Thales

<ul><li>Pythagoras was a Greek mathematician, philosopher, and mystic. He is best known for the similarly named theorem.</li><li>He did most of his work in southern Italy and wrote nothing down. </li><li>Pythagoras was a sage who founded a small religion of devoted followers.</li><li>While he probably didn't prove the theorem that bears his name, he is said to have known “the truth of the theorem" and made an enormous sacrifice to the gods in honor of the discovery. </li><li>His mystical approach to numbers also lead him to discover the relationships between harmonic notes in music and attempt to describe the world regarding math; an activity science carries on to this day.</li></ul>

Pythagoras

A philosopher active around 500 BCE, that wrote a book; this gives us a direct path to his thoughts. He felt that wisdom should be earned, he wrote obscurely, so much so that his book was challenging to read.He developed a cosmology. His cosmos has no beginning or end and is fundamentally made of fire. This fire can transform to become water, earth, and air. It is always in flux but keeps the elements in proportion. This constant change was the way of everything and was needed to keep the world stable.

Heraclitus

He was one of the most influential pre-Socratic thinkers.Parmenides argued that change was an illusion based on our faulty image of reality. He explained that nothing could be created or destroyed and everything was really “one being." That is, all substances are part of the same larger whole.As he thought that it was impossible to conceive of “nothingness" he also argued that empty space was an impossibility. This lead him to declare motion to be impossible, as any movement would require empty space to move into.

Parmenides

He was a pioneer of the reductio ad absurdum argument. Aristotle credited him with co-inventing the dialectic method of philosophy.He is best remembered for <a href="https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/paradox-zeno/">his paradoxes</a>. His best-known paradox suggests that movement is impossible. He asks us to imagine a runner on a track. He notes that before the runner can run the whole length, they must first run the first half, then a quarter, then an eighth, and so on.Several potential solutions have been put forth to his paradoxes and debate continues to this day. The potential answers to his paradoxes have influenced discussions about time, space, and how we perceive reality.

Zeno of Elea

Diogenes founded the Cynical school of philosophy, a school dedicated to simple living and virtue. Advocating a simple, disciplined, self-sufficient life, Diogenes lived in a large jar and owned nothing but a cloak and staff. He begged for food and avoided luxuries like the plague. He is said to have written a few (lost) essays but is better known for using actions to educate. He would walk down the street backward in an attempt to make people question why they walked forwards and begged from statues to show that he was not concerned with rejection.

Diogenes of Sinope

The founder of the Stoic school of philosophy, Zeno was heavily influenced by the Cynics.Initially a wealthy merchant, he became interested in philosophy during a trip to Athens and grew to be a highly regarded teacher. Stoicism is a philosophy dedicated to helping its students live the good life. The ancient Stoics believed the universe had a rational, perhaps divine, structure to it and held that while the laws of physics dictated what happened externally, we were still free to choose how we would react to it. They argued that a rational man should strive to live virtuously, and devoted a great deal of time to the question of ethics.

Zeno of Citium

You've heard of the big Greek philosophers. Now, read about the ones who inspired them.

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Philosophy

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History

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Problem Solving

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Society, Arts & Culture

7 Greek philosophers beyond Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle

The concept of Lady Justice is very old, dating back to ancient Greek and Egyptian times.<ul><li>Themis was Greek goddess of justice, law, order, and good counsel. Themis uses the scales of justice to always remain balanced and pragmatic.&nbsp;</li><li>Ancient Egyptians had Ma’at of the Old Kingdom, who represented order and justice carried with her a sword and the Feather of Truth.&nbsp;</li><li>However, the modern concept of Lady Justice is most similar to the Roman goddess Justitia. Justitia has become the ultimate symbol of justice in Western civilization. In Roman art, Justitia is often depicted with the sword and scales alongside her sister Prudentia who holds a mirror and a snake.</li></ul>

The History of Lady Justice

<ul><li>The Sword symbolizes enforcement and respect and means that justice stands by its decision and ruling, and is able to take action. The unsheathed sword means that justice is transparent and is not an implement of fear. A double-edged blade signifies that justice can rule against either of the parties once the evidence has been perused.</li><li>The Blindfold: This first appeared on a Lady Justice statue in the 16th century; its original significance was that the judicial system was tolerating abuse or ignorance of aspects of the law. In modern times, the blindfold represents the impartiality and objectivity of the law.</li><li>The Weighing Scale: signifies that Lady Justice can decide is through a thorough weighing of the evidence and claims presented before her, with no speculation.</li><li>The Toga: is used to signify the mantle of responsibility and high-level philosophy that accompanies those who practice law and enforce justice.</li></ul>

The Symbols of Justice

One of the most prominent figures and allegorical personifications to ever exist is Lady Justice, the supposed moral compass across all judicial systems.

Lady Justice – Symbolism and Meaning

<ul>
<li>On 19 April 2021, NASA's helicopter Ingenuity took its first flight on Mars. A video, taken by the Perseverance rover, showed its entire flight, from take-off to landing.</li>
<li>Ingenuity rose about three metres above the ground before landing again. The 40 seconds in the air was of a similar level of significance as the first successful powered flight on Earth - which lasted for 12 seconds.</li>
</ul>

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity makes history

Ingenuity's flight is a technology and engineering achievement.
<ul>
<li>Flight requires lift. On Earth, with an average air pressure of 1000 millibar, a helicopter blade spins at a rate of 400 to 500 rotations per minute to create lift. On Mars, gravity is about one-third of Earth. Ingenuity's blades had to rotate about 2400 times per minute to provide lift, a significant advance in propulsion technology.</li>
<li>Ingenuity doesn't have rear rotor blades for steering, and commands cannot be given in real-time. It takes 20 minutes for a command to reach the planet.</li>
</ul>

The importance if Ingenuity's flight

The maiden flight of Mars helicopter was a significant advance in propulsion technology.

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Technology & The Future

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Space

Mars: how Ingenuity helicopter made the first flight on another planet

Success is like that proverbial tasty-looking sausage, which is less appealing once we know how it is made. 
Success in anything is made up of a daily grind and is a sum total of small wins.

A Little Win A Day

Entire books can be completed by simply writing ‘two crappy pages a day’, but do remember that the ‘first draft of anything you write is shit!’
Sudden success, if any, is a flash in the pan, and a tree whose roots aren’t deep cannot stand tall for long.

Building Success

A business statistic shows that just a 10 % improvement across seven categories of business results in a doubling of profits for the company. Small changes spread wide, resulting in big wins.
Small tweaks in our lives, our email subject lines, our handwriting and art, decreasing our procrastination time, saving money time and energy can have an overall profound impact.

Win Bigly

“Each day, acquire something that will fortify you against poverty, against death, indeed against other misfortunes, as well and after you have run over many thoughts, select one to be thoroughly digested that day.”

If we stick to our rules and keep progressing in small steps, we reach our destination, if the direction is right. 
All we have to do is improve a little bit every day.

Small Steps, Right Direction

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Habits

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Time Management

All You Need Are a Few Small Wins Every Day

Being a high achiever with impressive external accomplishments doesn't necessarily translate into fulfilment and true self-worth.
The lack of self-love or low self-esteem is central to any mental or emotional distress that makes us unhappy. We feel separated from the true Self (the Source) whether we are aware of it or not.

Achievement is not the same as fulfilment

You are far greater than your ego, but your ego does get in the way. Not that your ego is the enemy. The ego helps you to realise your greatness and break the illusion of separation.
Becoming aware that "something is missing" is a developmental stage (self-actualisation) that comes when the lower-level needs have been met. When you reach this level of development, you have to turn inwards for further development. You have to connect with your true Self, which means you are dissolving your ego.

You are not just your ego

Reaching an outcome is one thing, but if you don't feel fulfilled, you might be on the wrong path that will not lead you towards the next level of growth.
According to the existential theoretical framework, your whole purpose in life is to know your greatness or self-transcendence. Your passion, desires, and achievements guide your journey towards your greatness.

Growth is fulfilment

Internal satisfaction triumphs over achievements. Focusing on busy work may prevent you from having true joy and fulfilment of work.
Your reality starts with self-love. You feel the lack of love because you feel separated from your true Self. You can realise your greatness by simply loving yourself.

Self-love = fulfilment

Here is what you can do to feel fulfilled in life as you achieve great successes.   

Finally, really good advice on how to stop killing your houseplants

Houseplants stopped growing? Here’s how to work out why (and what you can do about it)

What to wear to maximize productivity when you’re working from home, according to science

Why Performance Goals Are So Important (And How to Set Your Own)

Why do movies cost so much to make?

Hamish Joy