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Life Hack: Incentivize your Good Habits with Bad Ones

So there I was, minding my own business, when the Digital Wellbeing app on my phone decides to inform me that I’m spending an average of 15 hours a week on Tiktok.

Sir, I think at the app, how could you say something so controversial, yet so brave?

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article, blog, decision Salimah Ismail article, blog, decision Salimah Ismail

Why do you support a genocide?

Nicholas Epley, a Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago, once wrote “Your brain’s greatest skill is its ability to think about the minds of others in order to understand them better.”

So, I decided to exercise that skill to understand why someone would support the genocide occurring in Palestine. Here are the reasons I came up with…

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Testing out a Roulette Strategy

Determine a fixed amount of money to gamble (e.g. $1,000).

Pick which color to bet on (e.g. Black)

Start by betting the minimum bet (e.g. $5)

Every round, increase your bet by $5, but continue to bet on the same color.

Stop play when either of the two events occur:

• You’ve doubled your total cash.

• The amount of money you have is less than your next bet.

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operations, python, professional, article, habit, blog, decision Salimah Ismail operations, python, professional, article, habit, blog, decision Salimah Ismail

Saving to Text Files Through the Command Line (A Python Shortcut)

As I near the end of my Automate the Boring Stuff course, I’m learning some very useful tools - especially as a Windows user. In order to synthesize my learning, I decided to do a little project combining a few new python functionalities I learned.

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Teaching Financial Literacy… for Fun!

A few weeks ago, I was listening to a special episode of the Teacher’s Off Duty Podcast with Daymond John and they were talking about teaching kids financial literacy. One idea they mentioned was having an in-class economy, where students earn classroom currency and then have to budget their money accordingly.

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My 2022 Cinema Recap

In order to maintain my Platinum status at Cinemark, we have to watch 25 movies within the year. What I didn’t realize was that the free movies I get as a benefit do not count towards that total. So, here is a recap of the 28 movies I saw in theaters this year with their rating on the Negative 5 to 5 scale (starting with my least favorite).

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health, blog, article, operations, decision Salimah Ismail health, blog, article, operations, decision Salimah Ismail

Learning How to Unsarcastically Self-Soothe through Marathons (and maybe Triathlons?)

Approximately this time last year, I posted how I signed up for my first marathon which occurred in January of 2022. Although I made it through with a time of 5 hours and 35 minutes, you can see from my pictures that I was having a rough time. See, there is this thing called the Runner’s Cry where you push yourself really hard and begin to lose control of your emotional regulation. This happened to me at around mile 20 when my watch stopped providing accurate readings and I had hit some sort of mental wall.

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