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Weekend Thoughts - 6.10.17

Image by Ed Schipul, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Image by Ed Schipul, courtesy of Creative Commons licensing.

Happy Saturday y'all! Below, I have rounded up some things for you to think about this weekend:

1. Although gardening can be a rewarding experience, identifying and pulling weeds is not always fun. That's why the creators of the Roomba are hard at work developing the Tertill, a robot that automatically weeds your garden for you. After placing protective collars around your plants, the solar-powered device will use sensors to identify small weeds and chop them down. The company, Franklin Robotics, will be launching a Kickstarter on June 13th to raise funds for this project.

2. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to settle a digital rights privacy case that will determine whether police will be required to obtain a warrant to get access to your cellphone location data, which is archived by wireless carriers. This will be an interesting case to follow, as it will decide once and for all whether a police officer can request access to private details of our lives without a warrant.

3. Dubbed "Subway Libraries", the New York Public Library has outfitted 10 MTA subway cars with downloadable ebooks that will be available to riders for free during the next six weeks. I'm all for encouraging reading, and if I was a New Yorker I would be all over this!

That's all for this week's edition of Weekend Thoughts. Until next week, keep thinking wilder.

Support 'Secret Drugs of Buddhism' Kickstarter

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I wanted to take the time to promote a Kickstarter campaign that I found out about just yesterday that was created to raise money for the print release of a book titled Secret Drugs of Buddhism: Psychedelic sacraments and the origins of Vajrayana, written by Mike Crowley. This is a perfect cross-section of topics for the readers of Think Wilder, because this blog has a strong focus on Buddhism and psychedelics. The book focuses on the historical use of psychedelics in Buddhism, and although I haven't read it yet, I immediately backed the campaign and wanted to put the word out to my audience in case anyone else would feel inspired to donate as well. Please visit the campaign for more information and consider acting fast because it is going to expire in 22 hours!