THE STEEMIT MAGAZINE : LOOK NO FURTHER FOR AMAZING CONTENT FROM THE ECOTRAIN

eco-alex (73)in #ecotrain • 7 years ago (edited)

We are off to a flying start in 2018, and the ecoTrain has been busy crafting some brilliant posts! I am very happy to welcome on board a few new passengers who are already writing some excellent posts. So a big warm welcome to @mountainjewel, @solarsupermama and @trucklife-family , you all make a wonderful addition to the ecoTrain and we hope you will stick with us and be even more inspired ;-) I would also like to welcome back @stillgideon and @icmultitudes who have had a break since a few months and are treating us to their literacy delights again.

Please check out the links below shown in order of popularity according to votes and engagement. I'm sure there is something for almost everyone here, so remember to follow the people you like so you can see more posts that you are interested in on your feed!

@eco-alex

EARTHSHIP SELF BUILD WORKSHOP: DAY 1 THE BEGINNING!

In my last post I shared some video footage of the first day so you could see the faces and the vibe of this workshop. Now I will share the actual story with you! The idea for this workshop came during a chat with the owner of Karuna, a small off grid community and guest house that I live in in India. Nevil needed to make a new labour hut for our workers, and wanted to make something very small, cheap, and with basic functionality. His normal approach to this would be to use mud and stones and make something that is solid, but without much in the way of functionality or climate. The mud huts that I have seen here are very damp, and mold is alway an issue during winter. I used to live in one and I always got ill with a cold or flu during winter, and there was not much I could do to improve it since it was uninsulated and didn't have enough sunlight or large enough windows to heat up the thermal mass. So I very quickly came up with the idea of not only building him a small Earthship Hut instead, but also to do it using Volunteers and to do it in two weeks! It was a very exciting idea for me because teaching people and spreading this knowledge is only really possible when we are actually building something, and that seems to happen so rarely!
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU! MY PERSONAL PARTING 2017 MESSAGE TO YOU

To all my new friends and real connections here on Steemit... you are wonderful pioneering amazing people leading the edge of the new world that we want to see happen. It is US who have seen the light, and are taking action and being courageous, different, and taking on any and all the things that most people choose to ignore or deny. My FULL respect goes out to SO many Steemians.. you Know who you are!

@hopehuggs

How do you Motivate Others to be the Best They Can Be? Face Your Fears

Becoming motivated is intricately linked with taking control of your mind. Once you learn to think about events and different situations in perhaps a different way to which we are accustomed, we begin to see that the power is inside us, not outside. The key is how we choose to react to and interpret events, rather than the actual events themselves. We have the ability to control our fears and stress. A lot of us think and therefore allow ourselves to be at the mercy of our brains, yet we can control our emotional responses.

@stillgideon

No Internet month diary 2017. (Part 1 - Introduction)

Introduction to my 'Investigations into the Internet and Facebook Algorithms, etc.'... (… which is the actual title of this most unscientific of scientific studies...) A study which has been ongoing for about 25 years – since the early 1990's, when I first encountered the awesome, world changing potential of the Internet, which was, at the time, in its infancy. It was my good friend @eco-alex , always one step ahead of the game, who was using the Internet – along with a few other pioneering nerds – in the very first days – long before google, youtube, facebook, ebay, whatsapp, waze, instagram and twitter became part of the vocabulary. There were payphones, but not yet smartphones. Mobile phones of any sort were very rare, expensive, bulky devices. Objects of ridicule. This was in the days when having an email address would still raise eyebrows and get puzzled looks and shaking heads – as if to say 'It'll never catch on.' This was in the days when making an international phone call was an unusual occasion. The further away the person you were talking to, the louder you'd shout. Conversations were kept short. You were charged by the second in those days.

No Internet Month Diary (Part 2 - LSD micro-dosing)

December 1st Just made my usual announcement that I'll be leaving the internet for a month – not that anyone would notice if I did disappear from facebook – but in the vague hope that others might be inspired to do the same – not that it would make any difference... We're too far gone now, most of us, to think about turning back. It's good to turn back the clock for a while, to the year 1992, or thereabouts, before the internet entered our lives and changed our consciousness, our lifestyles and our relationships, but now we depend on it. I don't like being a slave to technology, but the fact is that without it, even for a day, our world would descend into chaos and people would quickly start to die.
No Internet Month Diary 2017 (part 3 - Atomic Energy , Acid and the Internet. Avoiding Meltdown)

December 3rd Micro-dosing on LSD – the effect is remarkable – exactly like the description I read. Increased energy, concentration, focus – without any of the mind-bending effects usually associated with the drug. Quite subtle, it may even be a placebo effect, but I don't think so... [Note: I have edited out much of the following five day's entries, interesting as they may be to some readers, they are mostly long, rambling trains of thought which do not greatly add to the findings of this scientific investigation into the psychological effects of internet use. This much remains...] I've been having this train of thought which relates to my investigations into the internet... It goes something like this: In the last century, there have been many technological advances – so many, in fact, that it would be pointless to list them all or say which has had the greatest impact on human society, relationships and consciousness – but three developments come to my mind which have certain parallels I think are worth exploring, as they are not usually associated in this way...

No Internet Month Diary 2017 (Part 4 - Worrying News)

December 8th Got a headache. Don't know if it's because of the gradual build-up of LSD in my brain over the course of this week, or the fact that I had a wisdom tooth pulled out two days ago.. Drinking Georgian brandy in honour of Dr Vladimir, the tooth puller of Carmiel. I'll admit that when I saw him I was quite filled with dread. A massive, towering hulk of a man with huge forearms and the hands of a blacksmith, dark rings around deep, sunken eyes and the expression of one who has returned from the grave – he reminded me of no one more that Dr Frankenstein's monster – I considered running away as his unsmiling assistant arranged the fearsome selection of pliers and they exchanged a few sombre words in Russian... In the event, Dr Valadimir was exceptionally skilled at his job and the immense power in his hands was used with well practised precision and just the right amount of force necessary to extract a large tooth from the place where it was deeply rooted in my head.

@likedeeler

Banksy in Bethlehem

If the three kings were trying to get into Bethlehem coming Saturday, they might have a hard time getting through the Israeli checkpoints and, depending on which direction they would come from, possibly also the Israeli West Bank Wall. Building walls has always been a favorite past time of the rich and mighty, usually as protection against foreign invaders or the poor. As impressive as it looks, apparently the only building visible from space, but some say, even that is a myth, the Great Wall of China in the end did not live up to its purpose, the protection of the Chinese mainland from the Mongols. The USA want to defend their empire against the influx of migrants from Latin America with a wall.
The Internet As Hostile Territory

Today I would like to bring your attention to a group whose videos have always been able to enlighten me in one way or the other, sub.media. Though I´m a bit too old to fully share their juvenile infatuation with riot porn, I had my fair share of the real deal in my anarchist street fighting years myself when I was younger, they still manage to put a smile on my face occasionally and give me a perspective and an insight which can´t be obtained by watching the official channels only. I especially like their videos about the plight and struggle of indigenous communities, fighting against corporate greed and ecocide. And you always learn something new.

A Tribute To @gardenbsquared

I would like to dedicate my first post in 2018 to @gardenbsquared, member of the @ecotrain, whose posts and pictures of birds and bugs have given me so much joy in 2017. When I looked out of my window today, I was greeted by a beautiful sight, a bush with lots of Great Tits (the birds (Parus major), not the female appendages!) and I managed to get this great shot of them.

@vangelov
- A original story about Love by @vangelov
  
  I was thinking about writing an Article about true love, but rather than yapping what is what I remembered someone leaving a comment " You should write some literature " and so I did. Last night I decided to write a small story about love so I can share it with you guys. And here it is.
- Coming back from the UK to a heartwarming Steem Surprise!
  
  Today was a day spent mainly on the go, the entire day was a big travel experience for me as I came back to my home country Bulgaria. You have to love how good and cheap the Airline companies have become.
- My last day in Scotland UK and my thoughts before leaving.
  
  Last night, a few minutes before New Year, me and a friend decided to go up the near hills to take some long exposure shots of the firework shows that could be seen in the nearby cities. Sadly it didn't go that well for the photo shoot, the weather was also very harsh. One thing that surprised me was that there were almost no firework displays, only a big one from the nearby Stirling Castle.
@sharoonyasir
- Untalented Adjustments I made after I found Steemit- A Win-Win Contest by @surpassingoos
  If you have read any of my previous blogposts or have been following me for a while, you may have some or a lot of idea about my story and how I joined Steemit and what it means to me. The phrase 'following me' just brought me immense joy in a couple of seconds because it made me realize that I have a small army of my followers who follow my work and acknowledge it. Yes, a lot of those followers aren't genuine but even if 5 people follow my work regularly, it means like a lotttt to me.
- Day 175- Steemiteducation Homework for Christmas and New Year
  
  This week, @steemiteducation has asked us to write an essay about the meaning of Christmas and the following questions: How do you spread the love during this time of hope, love and giving? Here's my take on the question. Like I mentioned, in fact, elaborately described in one of my previous posts, Christmas has always been a very special occasion for me. I have never celebrated Christmas properly, but have always enjoyed the idea of it and the concept behind it which is why each year when Christmas approaches, I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
- Things I am Grateful for in 2017
  
  I was without my laptop for the last 5 days and could not use Steemit properly from phone so I felt really lost without Steemit when I wanted to use it. I got my laptop yesterday and felt alive again. Although I did create a blogpost from my phone about 30 hours ago, it wasn’t as fun as it is to post using my laptop. So when I did not have my laptop and wasn’t blogging properly, I was reading the posts of many different people on Steemit. It was my way of staying connected to the forum even if I could not actively participate in stuff.
@ecoinstant
- Some New Years Goals - Programming, Data Science and Team Building!
  Happy New Year again! We are now into Day 3 of 2018, and @ecoinstante and I are still in a contemplative mood, considering carefully all of our goals for this promising new year! We both definitely want to write more, and we will be continuing that goal from last year by using the Steem blockchain. To continue to take pictures and, maybe more importantly, to do interesting things that are picture worthy, as well as write about what we did and saw, will be high up on our list
@trucklife-family
- BE THE SOLUTION, NOT THE PROBLEM
  What is happening in the world today? War, famine, deforestation, adverse weather conditions, life threatening illnesses and disease. We ask ourselves why? Yet others distance themselves from this reality, try and block it out. But we can't ignore what is happening, we are all connected this effects us all. We need to change what we can in our own lives, live more in harmony with the earth. We live in a time where we have become obsessed with cleanliness. In order to keep ourselves and our homes clean we are in fact dirtying our environment. We are using products that are polluting the rivers and streams, that our damaging the ozone. These same products are toxic to us, to our families. We are willingly bringing poison into our homes.
@mountain-jewel
- Adventures in Starting a Raw Juice Bar featuring a Delicious Horchata Recipe!
  In recent years, the rise in public health consciousness has created a demand for many businesses to serve the growing number of health seeking folks. Cold pressed juice bars have become popular in many urban areas, offering the highest quality juices made fresh on site to customers seeking vibrant and nourishing fare. Back when we were living in Taos, New Mexico, I was asked by a former coworker if I’d be interested in helping start a raw juice bar. From years of experience as a health conscious vegan, I had a solid grasp on creating and crafting foods from plants. I had also worked on a production wheatgrass operation and on farms where I experimented juicing copious quantities of extra produce. When I was asked to build the menu and set up wheatgrass production I was really excited!
@clara-andriessen

DIY shikakai shampoo that survived the test of time

Hi all you homemade people ;-), I am writing this post today especially for @Kariaantonoviche, a fellow steem blogger, who wrote a post about cheap, environmentally friendly shampoo alternatives. To be found here: https://steemit.com/product/@kiaraantonoviche/product-spotlight-series-12-coconut-milk-shampoo-bar I promised to introduce her to the Indian way of making shampoo, that has been practiced as long as ayurveda is around, which is for thousands of years. Indian women are known for their silky smooth, long, black hair and they have been using a certain fruit from a tree to wash their hair with, for all those generations. This fruit is even named for its use, its called fruit for hair, which is the literal translation of Shikakai. There are a few ways to make shampoo with shikakai:
Gratitude: Yuletide

Dear human, I am so grateful for time to heal, time to sink away in layers of soft blankets, nothing to do but stare at the fire and pet the cat. Eating a simple meal with my hands, while looking at the trees sway in the wind. Maybe I am not whole, but I feel like I am, in these moments where I am allowed to be broken. Love Clara
Welcome to the new year: Still Yuletide.

Hey you! Did you have a nice new years eve? What did you feel like when you woke up this morning. Yeah, I know... probably coffee, but appart from that and appart from what you have thought of in your mind as a new years resolution. It was a new day, the first in fact, of the new year, what did you feel like? Tell me about it.

Yuletide: Dance to integrate and let go for the new year!

Hi everyone, Hope you are doing fine. This morning I felt like dancing and I came across this wonderfully soothing track while I was looking for some new Five rhythm dance music on youtube. Five rhythm is a method for dancing as a meditation, mapped by Gabrielle Roth, I'll do a post on that sometime in which I will explain it more.

@gardenbsquared

The Sloth Wellness Centre also houses anteaters - An Interview with Monique Pool, founder and director part 3
In recent years, the rise in public health consciousness has created a demand for many businesses to serve the growing number of health seeking folks. Cold pressed juice bars have become popular in many urban areas, offering the highest quality juices made fresh on site to customers seeking vibrant and nourishing fare. Back when we were living in Taos, New Mexico, I was asked by a former coworker if I’d be interested in helping start a raw juice bar. From years of experience as a health conscious vegan, I had a solid grasp on creating and crafting foods from plants. I had also worked on a production wheatgrass operation and on farms where I experimented juicing

@ecoinstant

Happy New Year to All - Welcome to 2018!
Hello to all of my friends, family and followers! I've been away for a few days with the Holidays, I just didn't get around to making a post for the last few days. But here we are in 2018! And I can already tell its going to be a great year!

@icmultitudes

My First Time Applying to a Local Art Show - Wish Me Luck!!!
I've been engaging with shapes and colors my entire life. I never think I'm good enough to be an actual artist, but a friend who works at a little cute community gallery and education space, mentioned this thing for Emerging Women Artists. I decided the bar might be low enough for me to jump in. Anywhay, here are the three pieces I submitted. The first is a collage I made a few years ago. It's kind of a sentimental journey record of my experience of Israel after a many years of being away.