Image by Hilari, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.
Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:
1. Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk and the co-founder of the meditation app Headspace, has explained how and why mindfulness has been thriving under President Donald Trump. For example: the day after Trump was elected, the app saw a 44% increase in SOS sessions, a feature designed to help people navigate through sudden meltdowns. Numbers like these beg the question: could Trump's reign motivate a shift of global consciousness for the better?
2. New DNA research has shown that contrary to humans' experience with domesticating wolves into dogs, cats essentially domesticated themselves by hanging around humans for thousands of years. In other words, it's not that people put cats into cages—rather, we allowed them to domesticate themselves. Cats were attracted to mice and rats that showed up after human civilizations started producing crops and other agricultural byproducts, and just stuck around. And as a cat lover, I'm really glad they did.
That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.