Blog No. 275: Fashion Designer Max Alexander, Phone Addiction And What To Do About It, Trude's Flourless Orange Cake Revisited

Max Alexander: Fashion Prodigy

This amazing. orange creation is made from a recycled parachute. Designed by 10 Year Old Max Alexander.

How many 10 year olds have shown their fashion collection in Paris during Fashion week? If you don’t believe in past lives, this might just change your mind.

At the age of four, Max Alexander announced to his family that he was a dress maker and began to create amazing clothing—-designing, draping and sewing creations worthy of any top designer. Just this month, Max made history as the youngest designer to show at Paris Fashion Week, featuring his collection of sustainable clothing shown here in this YouTube video and an Instagram post.

To see his entire runway show inspired by flowers and sustainable materials, crafted from deadstock, surplus, recycled and biodegradable materials, inspired by flowers and sustainable materials. 90% of his collection was crafted from deadstock, surplus, recycled and biodegradable materials. click here.

Phone Addiction: What To Do About It

Photo courtesy Roddy Bleloch

Click image to hear Jennifer Jolly’s podcast on phone addition and what to do about it…

If you are anything like me, we feel we cannot live without our phones. We get mad at ourselves for wasting so much time scrolling, freak out when we forget where we put it, and feel totally naked without it…Simply put, we are addicted big time to these little devices and feel we cannot live without them, even for minutes…46 percent of Americans say they are addicted and look at their phones for an average of 186 times a day! For more detailed statistics on phone usage, click here. Recent studies and the outcome from this week’s Meta/Google court case have made us realize that this addiction is not really our fault. “The systems running on your phone were designed by behavioral scientists and engineers specifically to be as hard to put down as possible.” Much like the tobacco industry that knowingly sold a harmful product that was manufactured for maximum addiction, the tech industry has done the same.

This week they were actually held accountable, in a case that has serious and wide ramifications. My good friend, tech journalist Jennifer Jolly of USA Today and the Today Show (and her own site, Techish) has been covering the California social media court case, one that normally would have gotten much more attention (if there wasn’t so much madness going on in the news these days).A California jury found that Meta and Google's YouTube were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a small child, awarding her $6 million in a rare verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis. And it seems that this case is just the first of many…

But it is not all bad news—there might be some things we can do to at least partially cure ourselves: Researchers at Heidelberg University and the University of Cologne have conducted a study—taking 25 young adults and restricting their cell phone use for 72 hours. They ran MRI scans on them before and after and found that just three days (72-hours) produced measurable differences in brain regions linked to reward processing and impulse control…showing that just that short period of time without a smartphone can significantly alter brain activity, similar to breaking an addiction. So folks, for starters: let’s try to put down our phones more often, and leave them outside of the bedroom. In Jennifer’s Techish newsletter this week, she talks about how going back to an old fashioned alarm clock cut her screen time dramatically and led to an almost instant boost in her energy and creativity. I’m going to find a new alarm clock too and have a good old book on my night table in case I wake up, as I often do, in the middle of the night…Being conscious is the first step towards a cure and I am even trying to figure out a time to go for those three days cold turkey…

Jennifer Jolly is a great source for anything tech-ish—not so much gadgets or Silicon Valley, but as a nationally syndicated tech-life columnist and host for USA Today and a regular contributor to The Today Show, CNN, HLN, Time, Yahoo! and ABC among other media outlets. You can read her very informative newsletter Techish on substack and listen to her podcast Techishly Jenn on Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts.

OK GO Band

With Passover coming up, I thought I would republish the most delicious Passover friendly Orange Cake (in memory of Trude Victor). Incorporating the whole orange, rind and all, you don't have to be Jewish to love it.

Trude Victor’s Orange Cake
INGREDIENTS:
2 large navel oranges
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups grated almonds
1 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt
INSTRUCTIONS:
Boil oranges-organic would be good-  in water to cover for 30 minutes or so. I would let it cool for a while, and then process the whole oranges rind included in a food processor

Beat the whole eggs and then add the rest of the ingredients.

Bake in a greased form (I use a round springform- but I don't think you have to)  for 400 degrees for one hour (that might be a bit long)

Let it cool-  She served it with confectionary sugar on top.

For a slight variation on this same recipe, check out RecipeTinEats with cook Nagi Maehashi on instagram.

Painting of the Week

Pam Smilow. Mandala Series: Plaid Yellow Bird 60” x 42”. mixed media on canvas. $1500

Charity of the Week:
ACLU

Book of the Week

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About The Author

New York City based contemporary artist, Pam Smilow, began writing the creative lifestyle blog “things we love” in an effort to foster a sense of community during times of isolation and reflection. To read more about her and her art, visit her website and check out the essay written by Frank Matheis entitled The Sophisticated Innocence of Pam Smilow.