I've been liking Eden Reforestation (https://edenprojects.org/), which employs local populations to plant trees in deforested areas. Ecosia is listed on their Partner page, so I'd assumed that's how it works under the hood.
I'm interested in hearing about other projects, too.
Agreed regarding sit/stand desk. The prices of these things are off-putting, but I was able to get a new workstation for around $600.
I ended up ordering a base [0], and bolted on an 8'x3' melamine sheet from Home Depot [1] (they chopped off 1 foot, lengthwise, in the store).
Three extra things I had to do to make this work:
1.) I had read that unsupported melamine will sag. I bought a thin steel beam [2] to add support in the middle. They chopped it in half in-store and it fits nicely between the base and the top.
2.) Iron-on edge banding [3] will "finish" the sides.
3.) I failed a couple times at getting the adjustment console attached to the bottom of the table. You have to pre-drill some holes near the width of your screw, and you have to make sure your screw isn't so long that it comes out the other side(!). The diameter of the head matters too. You'll see why when you see the console. Order the base first, and when you go to Home Depot take the console thing with you to find the appropriate screws.
Now I have a sturdy, 8 foot(!) adjustable desk. If it starts sagging in a couple years (and it very well might), I can spend $25 for a new top. I should point out that I'm not that good at building things, and this wasn't too bad. The hardest part was getting an 8'x3' board from Home Depot back to my house (they'll rent you a truck for like $20 if you need it).
At the same time, I switched my chair to a red exercise ball ($30 at Target). I think this was a really good idea (even if one doesn't change their desk), if only for the fact that when I'm standing on a conference call I have this giant ball to mess around with, now. Others might be able to speak to health benefits.
I also had to ease into standing, like others have mentioned. I started with standing for two half-hour chunks a day, for maybe three days, then bumped it up to two 1-hour chunks a day, etc. Now I'm at about two 3-hour stints a day, which is probably where I'll stay.
In three months with this setup, my back feels 10 years younger and I'm much better at standing (both the state of standing as well as standing up from a sitting position*), getting out of bed and bending down to pick stuff up (most notably shoes and small family members). I also walk taller and have better posture.
I've used myself, friends/family, a lawyer, my CPA firm, and one of the cheaper national services out there.
The best was my CPA firm, because they handle mail like clockwork and contacted me through email when I got something, even attaching a scanned copy. When it was a yearly report they'd even fill it out for me ($) and send it (after asking, of course).
I think some mom-and-pop mailbox stores might also do this (the ones that make it look like you have a real address and not a PO box, which I found helpful), so if you're looking to use them for a mailing address it might make sense to ask them about that as well.
With government paperwork, I've learned that "no news is good news". Unfortunately, that's entirely predicated upon the reliability of receipt of any news headed your way. The cheap service I used (LegalZoom) appears to have not forwarded me a couple forms. Granted, I should have been watching for the forms, and filled them out myself when I noticed I'd not been forwarded anything, but the whole episode still got my status set to "REVOKED" with that Secretary of State ($$$$).
I've also noticed that the business branch of my various Secretary of States (CA, CO, IL, IA, NJ, MN) have always been sufficiently helpful over the phone. They've given me plenty of advice and helped steer me through their respective jungles of paperwork. Yours might also have an opinion about any RA service you're considering.
Likewise. I spent 18 years there and hadn't known about Vanport. When I encountered racism I'd usually classified it as random, vestigial pieces of the past, or perhaps redneckery (while we're judging), and I do remember a few encounters with skinheads. But this paints a much more damning picture of institutional racism. The bit about the schools at the end paints a hopeful picture, though.
I've written off aesthetics my entire coding career (15 years), blaming color-blindness, but exactly in the way you speak. I often wonder whether design is even a thing I could get better at. I'm reminded of a Dummies book I read about Real Estate that essentially said a Real Estate agent with 10 years of experience could be turbo, or they could have just repeated the first year ten times. It's nice to see articles like this that tear down some of the mystery.
Another force here, using your example, is that someone pushing themselves from Algebra to Trigonometry might not be as valuable to them as someone who repairs Honda Civics studying how Ferrari's are built. I've seen people shut down to new concepts hundreds of times, but there's some solace in the idea that maybe they're improving their lives in other ways that they find meaningful.
Yep. I'd add delusion to your list of echo-chamber-friendly conditions. Faith/Religion are one case people like to yell about, but you have plenty of nibiru/reptilian/fema-camp/bill-gates-is-a-eugenicist people who are ready to believe whatever the internet tells them, all the while believing everyone else is guilty of intellectual laziness.
