Lifestyle
Alongside taking care of other people and the planet, make sure you take good care of yourself. The Lifestyle section at the Optimist Daily has solutions for everyday wellbeing on topics like food, beauty, fashion, and the latest trends. Curious about caring for houseplants, eating plant-based, or parenting tips? It’s all in there.
Economics professor turns to crowdfunding to pay salary
A professor of economics has turned to crowdfunding to pay his salary because universities “no longer provide the time and freedom they once gave to original thinkers”. Steve Keen, who is currently employed full time at Kingston University but expects to remain there next year on a Read More...
Achieving mindfulness at work, no meditation cushion required
Meditation is simply one of several tools for achieving mindfulness, and in the context of work it may not be the most suitable for many people. For those who, like me, can’t seem to get the hang of meditation, there is good news: You don’t have to meditate to become more mindful. There are two Read More...
How will the rise of crowdfunding reshape how we give to charity?
Last September, a Chicago resident named Joel Cervantes Macias spotted an 89-year old man named Fendicio hawking Mexican ice pops–they’re called “paletas”– out of a street cart. The man looked too old to be working, but Macias only had so much spare cash (and so much Read More...
How to use meditation to beat social anxiety in 5 minutes flat
We've all been there: a social situation where our nerves get the best of us, and we find ourselves at a loss for words. We racked our brains, but we just couldn't think of anything worth saying. It might have been meeting a new potential friend, a client, or love interest. Or maybe it was trying Read More...
This psychologist recommends 5 simple ways to improve your self-esteem
Self-esteem is a wonderful but delicate thing. When our self-esteem is high, we feel more resilient, we're less vulnerable to anxiety and rejection, and less cortisol, or the stress hormone, is released into our bloodstream. The positives are obvious, but actually improving our self-esteem can be Read More...
Study: Having sex doesn’t make you happier, it’s the snuggling, during, and after
People who have more sex are happier. Numerous studies attest to that. One even found that having sex once a week, as opposed to monthly, boosts spirits more than earning an extra $50,000 per year. But it’s not the orgasm. New research makes clear that sex itself isn’t what makes us happier, Read More...
How blockchain applications will move beyond finance
To understand the transformation that’s being brought about by blockchain technology, it’s useful to start with its largest implementation to date: bitcoin. In the fall of 2014 my colleague Catherine Tucker and I conducted a large-scale experiment at MIT, in which 4,494 undergraduate Read More...
Five years on equity crowdfunding has become the new normal
How Crowdfunding Took On Private Equity And Won was the headline on Forbes following the latest edition of The Deal, Beauhurst’s recent report on equity investments in private UK companies. Yet, when I recently took part in a World Economic Forum roundtable on financial innovation, the host Read More...
Apple's new campus partially built with green bonds
A year after Apple issued the largest green bond by any U.S. corporation, the tech giant is providing a closer peek at the projects the $1.5 billion issue has helped fund so far. Its first Green Bond Impact Report (PDF), which highlights the projects funded in the 2016 fiscal year, shows that Apple Read More...
A brief history of blockchain
Many of the technologies we now take for granted were quiet revolutions in their time. Just think about how much smartphones have changed the way we live and work. It used to be that when people were out of the office, they were gone, because a telephone was tied to a place, not to a person. Now we Read More...