Jill Redwood lives in East Gippsland, Australia where she built her house almost 30 years ago.
She prefers to be really self-sufficient, having an orchard, a garden with vegetables and an animal farm which provide almost everything she needs on a daily basis, without having to frequently drive one hour and a half to the nearest town.
Moreover, with regard to energy and water supply, she uses solar panels and a waterwheel.
Living entirely off-grid, on around $80 a week and surrounded only be animals, Jill happily says: „what more do I need?”…
My only medical concern is high blood pressure. Need to monitor that more consistently.
I follow the high crimes and misdemeanours of Trump. The world seems to be getting worse, not better. … BUT my own life is unaffected. I don’t worry about an unexpected health care emergency as so many Americans do.
5. And, most important, what were you most grateful for in 2019, and how can you take that into 2020?
Good health. Myself and my family.
I ran more in 2019 than I have since at least 2008. Should run an hour a day at least 45 days of 2020. Enter at least 3 races in 2020.
In the final chapters he gets angrier, and the book becomes even more interesting.
He points out that even rich Americans die younger than the average-income European because of diet, obesity and America’s anomalous, hyper-expensive and iniquitous healthcare system.
Bryson was born in Iowa but has made his home in Britain, and relates with barely disguised horror that the average American eats two entire cheesecakes-worth of calories more than the average person in Holland or Sweden, every week.
Americans shoot one another more often than anyone else, drink and drive more than “almost anybody else” and wear seatbelts less frequently than anyone but the Italians.
Insulin, the patent for which was donated by its discoverers for the good of mankind, is six times more expensive in the US than in Europe. …
I hate vaping less as the second hand smoke is not nearly so bad.
And vaping legal product is much safer for the user than cigarettes. (The U.S. deaths appear to be mostly due to illegal product.)
More than 40 million people around the world now vape, up from just 7 million less than a decade ago. In the U.S., roughly 1 in 5 high-school kids vape. …
It wasn’t long before a vaping champion was crowned: Juul Labs, founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco.
… By 2017, Juul was the U.S. leader in market share, selling one of every three e-cigarettes. …
Why did Juul become so much more popular than its rivals? Michael Siegel has one answer.
Juul has a very different nicotine formulation that makes it much more addictive. …
… the U.K. has regulated these products. And most importantly, there is a limit on the amount of nicotine that’s allowable. You can only have up to 20 milligrams per milliliter of nicotine …. In the U.S., there’s no limit at all.
So Juul comes along, they put 54 milligrams per milliliter in their product …
The bigger problem in the USA is NOT the deaths, but rather the high percentage of youth who are not smokers taking up vaping. In 2019 it’s still considered cool.
One thing North America has done right is to reduce smoking.
I hate visiting Europe for this one reason.
Eduard Benko. Romania, 2009
According to the World Health Organization, 21.9 percent of Americans smoked tobacco in 2018. In comparison, the average smoking rate for Europe was 28.7 percent.
When you look at the approximate number of cigarettes smoked per person per year, the picture is even more striking. Out of the 20 countries that smoke the most cigarettes, 15 of them are entirely or partially in Europe. The United States is 68th on the list. …
From U.S. surgeon general warnings to campaigns by groups like the American Cancer Society, the messaging has been clear since the 1960s: smoking cigarettes is bad for you. And it’s worked. About 96 percent of Americans believe smoking cigarettes is at least somewhat harmful to your health. …
I’ve never been a serious runner. But in Bermuda I usually run as it’s difficult to cycle the narrow roads here.
Day-by-day I built up distance until I reached 10km.
At that point I tried to reduce time to hit the goal of 10k in one hour, a pace I’d done a number of times in the past.
My last full day in Bermuda I walked to the Rail Trail to avoid the one big hill I’d been running.
Pushed hard to stay under 6 minute splits on the kilometre. That worked for the first 7km … then I got tired. A big push on #10 at 5min 34sec got me to the goal.
reality check – That is from my Strava app. … But my Apple Watch workout app says I missed by 46 seconds. I believe Strava is correct. Apple watch less accurate.
Our power went out for about 14 hours. During peak winds in our home bunker, we played Mexican Train dominos.
Next morning we surveyed the damage. Some gas leaks, nine medical incidents and three structural fires. One roof blew off.
Bermuda rarely sees storms as big and powerful as Humberto. Only 21 hurricanes have passed within 100 miles of the Atlantic Ocean paradise over the past century …
Rick McCharles 