• Maria von Trapp: The Preeminent Manic Pixie Dream Girl

What I’ve learned after 10 years of quantifying myself – Medium – I’m tempted to try out Eternity myself. Here’s my conundrum though: there’s lots of evidence that the act of tracking something – food, goals, exercise, time spent – produces results even if you don’t seriously analyse the results. But what happens when “tracking” becomes effortless? It seems like there’s a point at which the results drop off. If I were using a manual pedometer and logging my steps each day, I suspect I would be fitter and more motivated than I am when my Fitbit just handles it all for me (and sometimes I forget to even look at the results).

How Bad Are K-Cups for the Environment? – The Atlantic – Two things I found fascinating: 1) Singapore doesn’t have K-Cups. Huh. Another tick in Singapore’s favour, as far as I’m concerned! 2) Keurig actually argues that their machines are more environmentally efficient because non-Keurig machines waste too much coffee (since rarely to people measure out exactly the proper amount), and coffee uses a lot of water to grow. That would be interesting to try to quantify. I know that the Snook (and I) thinks that the coffee he produces by grinding fresh beans and using an espresso machine at home is far superior to K-Cup taste… but judging by the coffee grinds all over the counter top each day, there’s definitely some wastage and inefficiency. (Not to mention when somebody – *cough cough* – forgets and leaves the machine on all day…)