Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with simplicity

What to do with too much coconut

ruelle — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 11:46:04 -0800

I have copious amounts of coconut cream and coconut shavings. What food-item (ie: not 20 galleons of piña colada) can I make with those ingredients that would require as little additional ingredients and effort as possible. And if you would have a bare-bones recipe at hand, it would be very much appreciated. :) I was thinking perhaps something along the lines of simple coconut cookies...? Does anyone have an idea for a simple recipe?

Simplicity: The big city - or the small town?

Gerard Sorme — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:16:00 -0800

Simplicity means different things to different people. In general, do you think it is easier to live a simple life in the city - or the country? An urban environment - or a small town? Does anyone know of any studies done on how stress is raised - or lowered - by simple living in the city versus small town life?

Which language would a lazy Martian linguist learn?

greytape — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 04:27:14 -0800

Are some languages objectively harder than others? If so, which ones? This has been bothering me for a while now. Obviously Japanese is harder to learn than French for us English speakers, because French and English are related languages. But what about Japanese compared to, say, Mayan?
When I was in Malaysia a few years ago I learnt that Malay had no tenses, which farely amazed me, but also led me to believe that it was a simple language. Now I'm not so sure, as I've noticed that all languages tend to have hard elements and easy elements. For example: French has a difficult conjugation system, but a relatively small vocabulary, whereas in English the situation is reversed. So I now tend to think that there was probably some other aspect of Malaysian that was crazy difficult.
Does the human mind adapts language to an approximate level of complexity, so that all languages are of a fairly similar objective difficulty, or are there any natural Toki Ponas out there?

Help Me Scale Back My Digital Life

Gerard Sorme — Sun, 02 Jul 2006 13:54:24 -0800

Help! Lately, I have found that technology has truly become a burden rather than something that is fun and productive for me. I have multiple email addresses, domains, Flickr accounts, del.icio.us accounts, Bloglines, on and on and on. It has got to where I am so deluged with information that I have found my mind going to mush. It's almost scary......no, scratch that....it IS scary. However, I think the above may be the reason. Good old, "information overload." I know that sounds so cliché - but it's all too real for me. Can MeFites help and offer ideas to scale back and maybe offer ideas for doing as much as I possibly can through the interface of ONE SITE? I'm slowly going crazy trying to "keep up," proving, for me at least, that less is probably going to be more. Thanks in advance.

How to pick a simple cell phone?

eaglemoon — Wed, 17 May 2006 09:27:57 -0800

I am tired of being connected and available all the time. To that end I have decided to drop my Treo PDA phone and just get a simple phone that will give me access to my calendar and contacts - but no email - no web - mobi-video - just plain old POTS. Any recommendations for simple cell phones?

Advice for clearing literary clutter

matildaben — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:27:21 -0800

Suggest practical and creative systems for reducing the number of books I own (rather long exposition inside). Hopefully this is part 1 of an ongoing decluttering and stuff-organizing project. I am really feeling more motivated to get rid of more stuff nowadays. I've read a lot of the decluttering threads and my issue is very specific and practical, and hopefully does not require therapy.

The vast majority of my possessions by weight and volume consists of books. I would like to develop a system for getting rid of them that will have a very practical, behavioral, methodical approach to the emotions that compel me to keep them.

One category of books is the ones I haven't read yet. This is pretty large. One thought that I had for dealing with them in a mostly scientific way was to arrange them in piles according to a 1-5 assessment of how likely I would be to read them (forcing myself to answer honestly for each one), and keep only the 5's. If there's still too many 5's left, I might break it down further by asking myself what my reasoning is for why I might want to read it (e.g., would I learn something valuable, keep up with a favorite author, be entertained, etc.). For partially read books, the question would be similar, "how likely am I to finish this?" So, I pretty much have a system for this category, and mainly am interested in hearing about similar strategies that have worked for you, or refinements or gotchas to this system. For instance, how does one estimate likeliness to read? What sort of questions does one ask oneself about motivation to read a yet unread book?

Books that I have read break down into several categories. The first is books that I have kept just because I enjoyed them when I read them, will probably never read them again, but they gave me pleasure so I keep the book around to honor that. Again, here, I think reason and logic can prevail if I just put them in a pile and say "I honor how much I enjoyed you when I read you" and then let them go. But that will probably be more painful than it sounds. For this category, advice, strategies, tales of similar efforts, and gotchas are welcome.

Books that I have read and may read again are a much smaller category, and once I have determined which ones those are, I can probably use a similar system as with the unread books to weed them out.

Then there is the large, amorphous category of books I hold on to for some sentimental reason - I read them in a great college class, I know the author, etc. I don't want to be too brutal here and rule them out completely merely because they are sentimental tokens - I want some kind of clarity on what questions to ask myself to determine which ones have a meaningful enough sentiment to hold onto and which ones are just emotional baggage. This is probably the toughest category, and the one where I'd probably benefit the most from hearing about "hacks" that have worked successfully for other people who operate in a similar fashion.

Living normally on the cheap

Jaybo — Mon, 11 Oct 2004 01:18:23 -0800

What is the cheapest you could live and still maintain a fairly normal lifestyle?