Cold as ice

Good morning Staker! Here’s what’s cookin’ today. Exploring the Italian paradise island Palmarola, next moon mission delayed, what on Earth is house burping, and understanding the 3 ways we procrastinate 🕜

Let’s get into it!

Roughly 45 nautical miles from the Italian port of Anzio lies Palmarola, a pristine and highly remote island that tourists rarely hear of and Romans rarely visit.

For those visiting Italy wanting see a place that’s devoid of politics, infrastructure, the internet, and mobile phone service, then the seaside cliffs, draping palm trees, untamed forests, and the valleys of Palmarola may just be the place to go.

To get there from Rome, you have to travel to Anzio and take a ferry to the nearby island of Ponza, where you’ll have to find a private mariner willing to take you to and from the remote paradise that was once frequented by cavemen looking for black obsidian stones to craft into weapons.

There are no cars on Palmarola because there are no roads; in fact, there are just a few footpaths for hikers or visitors of the island’s lone restaurant, O’Francese. It serves fresh fish daily, and rents rooms fashioned out of old cliffside grottoes for 150 euros per night.

“There’s so much, and so little, to do,” says Maria Andreini, a 44-year-old remote IT worker from Treviso. Maria, her husband, and their 15-year-old son visit the island every summer.

“We spend our days snorkeling and suntanning on the restaurant’s front beach, made of pink coral pebbles. At night we lie on the beach and stargaze, we walk around with torches. At dawn the owners wake us up to take us on a hiking trip to the isle’s highest peak to admire the sunrise. It’s stunning.”

NASA’s Artemis II launch window will now open on Feb. 8, pushed back a few days due to the frigid weather that rolled through the Florida Panhandle area over the weekend.

The space agency expected the cold air would impact the launch window but not the mission itself. It said the weather would likely “violate launch conditions,” which need to be warm enough for certain components of the rocket to function properly.

It’s been 40 years and six days since the Challenger space shuttle exploded 73 seconds after launch. Investigators later determined the explosion was due to the failure of an O-ring seal, which ceased to function properly when temperatures dropped beneath 53 degrees Fahrenheit. It was 31 F the day of the Challenger disaster.

NASA isn’t taking such chances with the Artemis II mission, which will be the first crewed spaceflight to the Moon since 1972. With the inclusion of Col. Jeremy Hansen, it will also be the first lunar mission in history carrying a Canadian astronaut.

Getting fresh air circulating in the home is important, but especially so in the winter when heating appliances tend to pump and recycle hot and dry air throughout the house or apartment.

In Germany, there’s actually a word for this exact household maintenance tactic: lüften. In the United States, it’s described as “house burping,” and it refers to opening windows throughout the house in a way that allows your living space to form its own little jet stream of fresh air.

In Germany, the practice isn’t just encouraged, but it’s often required in the case of rental units. Mold removal is the responsibility of landlords, which means tenants must sign agreements to practice lüften regularly, and throughout every season.

It doesn’t mean the house has to be exposed to frigid air in winter or sweltering humid air in summer throughout the whole day; the air simply must be exchanged for a few minutes at a time, letting the old out and the new in.

Science supports the idea of staying on top of lüften. According to a 1985 study conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency, 12 organic pollutants were found to exist at levels “two to five times higher inside homes than outside, regardless of whether the homes were located in rural or highly industrial areas.”

According to neuroscientist Anne-Laure Le Cunff, PhD, procrastinating doesn’t have to be something to be ashamed of, just understood better.

For Le Cunff, the origin of putting off a task almost always comes down to one of three places: the head, the heart, or the hand. These form the basis of her “triple-check” method.

If it’s a head issue, you probably don’t rationally think the task is something you should be doing right now or at all. If it’s a heart issue, maybe you’re not emotionally invested in its completion, or you have an emotional predisposition against completing it.

“If the problem is coming from the hand, it means that at a practical level, you don’t believe that you have the right tools, the right skills, or the right support network in order to get the task done,” Le Cunff says.

Procrastination is the result of one of these three signals; reflecting on whichever one it is can help you get “unstuck.” If its a head problem, ask yourself what doesn’t logically add up about doing the task, and if you can’t make the equation work, maybe the task really shouldn’t be completed.

If you don’t have the practical tools available to get the job done, then go get the tools; if your heart isn’t in it, ask yourself what would make you feel emotionally invested, and decide what to do from there. If you care, you’ll act; sometimes, even just wanting to care will help move the needle.

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