Nov 11: Variant identified in Botswana.
Nov 14: Identified in South Africa and Hong Kong.
Nov 23: Designated name B.1.1.529.
Nov 26: WHO Classifies Omicron.
Dec 1: CDC confirms Omicron in the United States.
Dec 2: MDH confirms Omicron in Minnesota.
These Angry Bunnies keep multiplying. 🤩 Had six, now eleven. My Minnesota is showing with all the plaid. Details on each NFT. Saving the last spot for a special one.
Whoever came up with putting grid lines on the back of wrapping paper is a genius. 🤩
Things 4 Good on Endaoment
I had been thinking it would be really cool if Donor Advised Funds (DAF) were open to accepting crypto tokens as deposits. There has been a lot of wealth built up in crypto and it would be very beneficial to create simple means to move some portion of that to non-profit organizations. Shortly after this I stumbled upon Endaoment.
Endaoment describes itself as “We’re a tax-exempt Community Foundation built for decentralized finance and focused on social impact.” Endaoment is a DeFi version of a DAF like Schwab Charitable. This morning, while Ethereum gas prices were predictably low, I sat down to play with this first hand.
Setting up your Fund
I went to Endaoment and connected to my wallet. Easy enough, just like any other Web3 application. I then created my own fund. This was super simple. I needed a name, I chose Things 4 Good. Gave it a tagline. I then associated my name and address. There were no credit checks, no social security numbers, just basic contact information. After this I submitted a transaction that deployed the smart contract for my DAF.
Now I had my own contract associated with Things 4 Good, and it was time to provide an initial deposit to the fund. Endaoment requires a minimum $500 transfer so I sent in 0.15 ETH. When Endaoment receives the ETH they immediately transfer that to USD Coin (USDC). They sent me a receipt for tax purposes for the full value of the 0.15 ETH. Endaoment takes a 0.5% transaction fee, and there are some fees associated with the transactions to USDC, which are taken out after.
With that done, my DAF was fully established on the Ethereum mainnet, funded, and ready to use.
Granting Funds
Now that Things 4 Good was setup I wanted to try issuing a grant. The Internet Archive is an organization I have supported for a long time and I thought it would be a fitting organization to make a first donation to. I picked them off the list of organizations registered on Endaoment. This was fun to me, because this is also on-chain, so to send the grant you interact with the smart contract.
I appreciated this as it felt like a much different level of control than a typical DAF. We use Schwab Charitable and you make recommendations, they send checks, and you get emails saying it all happened but you can’t actually see it yourself. With Endaoment I can see my transaction and know exactly what happened when.
With very little effort I have my DAF setup on the Ethereum mainnet, funded, and already distributed a grant. This is holy crap amazing. 🤯
This seems like a powerful and needed capability as you manage your crypto assets. Plus it is an incredible example of the power of DeFi applications built on Web3 technology.
Deploying Organizations
After chatting with some of the Endaoment team on Discord they showed how you can deploy any existing 501(c)(3) organization. Any user can fund the deployment of the smart contract for that group. So I went ahead and deployed Constellation Fund and Minnestar on Endaoment.
Now that Apple has Shortcuts working on all platforms, I would like to renew my wish list item of having my Mail.app signature be a Shortcut so that I can have fun with dynamic signatures. 🤓
Mazie is making steady progress learning to drive. This is not a view I’m used to.
Extended my registration periods for thingelstad.eth and weeklything.eth so the tokens would be upgraded to the new ENS Metadata Service. Instead of boring colored box, they now have complete metadata. See Lazy profile.
Now that you can register any DNS .com domain on ENS I would love to dual-register thingelstad.com but the gas is beyond ridiculous. The registration is $25, but even at 85 Gwei, the gas fees to cross register would be $1,341!
Booked my appointment for my Pfizer booster shot today. I was surprised that the earliest I could practically get in was three weeks from today. I guess the good news is a lot of people are getting vaccines! 🦠💉
We all enjoyed watching A Boy Called Christmas tonight. Mazie and Tyler had read the book. It was a great new Christmas movie for all. 🎅
Wishing everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃🍁🍽
Thanksgiving 2021 scene of the crime. 🚨
Thanksgiving Turkey out of the oven. Now for the rest.
Making Wassail Tea means that it is officially the beginning of the holiday season for us!
Four Thousand Weeks as Rings
I’ve been reading Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman. The title comes from the fact that if you live to be 80, you’ll have had about 4,000 weeks. Technically it is 4,174 but that wouldn’t make a very good title for the book.
I’m still just in the beginning of the book but as I pondered his focus on the finitude of our time, I couldn’t help but think of how to visualize this! I knew Shortcuts could do the math for me, and then I realized Charty could do the visualization.
- The innermost ring (red) is the current week. It will fill up each day and reset at the end of each week. This ring will fill 52 times for each time the middle ring fills.
- The middle ring (yellow) is the weeks until your next birthday. This ring will fill 80 times until the outermost ring is filled.
- The outermost ring (green) is the weeks you have lived thus far. Hopefully we even overfill this ring.
It strikes me as an interesting visualization. Something to ponder. 🤔
However, I showed it to my family and they didn’t care for it much at all. The common theme seemed to be that “filling ones rings” is seen as a goal, something to look forward to, and filling these rings didn’t seem like a thing to look forward to. 😇
This post is part of the Shortcuts Collection.
Faribault Woolen Mill Tour
We took the tour of the Faribault Woolen Mill today. We learned a ton of interesting things about milling wool as well as the fact that Faribault Mills is the only fully vertical woolen mill in the United States. They have been operating at this location for over 150 years, founded in 1865! The mill is entirely mechanical, almost nothing digital. There are 22 steps that the wool goes from the 800 lb bales to a final product. All happening right there in this one mill.
The mill wasn’t running when we toured so we were able to wander a tiny bit more, and touch the wool at various stages. I would love to go back and do the tour when the mill is in full swing to see everything operating.
Faribault Woolen Mill banner celebrating 150 years.
One of the Carding machines taking the wool directly from the bales and aligning all of the strands into something that can be yarned.
Many of the machines were manufactured 100 years ago and are no longer made so there are parts stored in various places for repairs.
A step in the Carding machine.
You can see the strands of wool on the Carding machine.
The same pins and needles section of the Carding machine free of wool.
Yarning machine that is taking single yarns and making double or triples.
This giant Warper machine takes a hundred or more spools of yarn and turns it into woolen fabric. It takes up to 2 days just to spool the yarns correctly.
Another Warper machine that can do significantly more complicated patterns.
Multiple yarns of wool coming together.
Woolen blankets being assembled.
These are “programs” that the Warper machines can use to create different patterns. They are very similar to what a player piano would have used.
This is the “computer” that can create the “program” sheets for the Warper machine. There is nothing computer about it beyond the typewriter keys.
Workbench for the Warper programming and designing.
Inspection station that all wool produced in the mill goes through. The light allows inspection to make sure there are no defects.
Family selfie in front of multiple bales of wool.
Tyler and I played as a team and came in 2nd in Ticket to Ride Japan. It is a fun variant with the community bullet train encouraging some cooperative play.
The two most important ingredients when making lasagna are:
- Italian Opera
- Love ❤️
Mazie and I made this pan with plenty of love, and the Three Tenors accompanying us!
Tammy and I at Keepsake Cidery enjoying a crisp fall day.
