Photo: Afanasiev Andrii (Shutterstock)

Vacuum cleaners can get clogged if objects get stuck in the hose or if the container is too full, but most clogs can be easily cleared simply by emptying your vacuum cleaner regularly. However, hair and string tend to wrap around the vacuum cleaner brush and can limit its movement, causing slow death until it stops spinning and your vacuum cleaner becomes unusable. At first glance, it might look complicated to get in and unravel the mess, but depending on the vacuum, it’s probably easier than you think.

How to remove a vacuum cleaner brush

The best way to clean a suction brush is to remove it. Unfortunately there is no universal vacuum cleaner, so remove the brush depends on the vacuum mark. Some require removing the lower grille that surrounds the brush; others have a convenient pull-out lever or button that opens a compartment on the side to remove the brush for cleaning. Most modern vacuum cleaners have this capability.

How to clean a tangled vacuum cleaner

Once you remove the brush, cleaning it up is pretty easy, like TikTok users @ vaneamaro91 Highlights. Take good scissors and cut along the length of the brush, being careful with the bristles so you don’t accidentally cut pieces off. Once the hair and tangled particles are loosened, pull the pieces apart with your hands and remove dirt from the brush. (Can wear gloves if you’re gross.)

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To the deeper cleansing, you can take a cleaning brush, detergent, and some white vinegar. After removing as much hair and dirt as possible, soak the brush in warm water with dish soap and use a cleaning brush to get into the small areas to loosen stubborn dirt. When you’re done, wipe it down with diluted white vinegar to disinfect the brush and remove any debris that’s still clinging to the bristles. Wipe it dry with a microfiber cloth and make sure the brush is completely dry before you reattach it. Congratulations, your vacuum cleaner will spin like new.

Photo: vangelis aragiannis (Shutterstock)

Socrates did not fear death. Although he suffered a gruesome death (he was executed by the state for the alleged crime of corruption of the Athenian youth), Socrates did not flee or plead with his executioner. If we take to heart his beliefs and teachings – that death is an inevitability that might actually be good – we can find greater acceptance in the unknown as well.

How did Socrates see death?

Socrates lived in a time of immeasurable barbarism, when death, war, and disease determined the experiences of the living. But his familiarity with death was strong, even by the brutal standards of the time. He was a soldier – and even something of a war hero; he saved the future Athenian leader Alcibiades during a siege of the city of Potidaea in 432 BC. Chr.– So he was much more used to the inevitability of mortality than most people in the 21st century.

Ancient Greek society thought of death as a spiritual transition into an underworld of spirits, crystallized by the spirit leaving the body in the form of a culminating exhalation. Socrates was less mystical in his interpretation of death and was clearly realistic if not skeptical about it. When the philosopher was 399 BC In court in Athens, Socrates spoke to a jury of 500 male citizens and delivered a speech that captured his thoughts on death on the most appropriate stage imaginable.

He said after the Cambridge University:

Also, remember in the following way that there is much hope that there is a good thing in being dead. Because being dead is one of two things: either it is like being nothing and the dead person has no perception of anything, or it is, as they say, a kind of change, namely the shifting of the soul from here to another place. And if it is indeed a complete absence of perception, like the sleep of someone who does not dream at all, death would be a remarkable gain.

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Socrates had a devoted follower in a young Plato who attended the trial that day. Regarding the behavior of his mentor prior to his execution, Plato noted that Socrates “appeared happy both in his manner and in his words when he died nobly and without fear”. It is an attitude that drove Socrates’ spirits as he drank from the hangman’s cup filled with poisonous hemlock.

How Socrates Can Teach You To Tame Your Fear Of Death

Socrates was in many ways a forerunner of the stoic school of ancient Greek philosophytrying to avoid negative emotions and replace them with an unwavering inner determination. Denying your feelings about death is not necessarily good, but accepting its eventuality can go a long way in taming your fear of the unknown.

It’s a scary concept to be sure but science hasn’t really figured out what it feels like to die beyond the experience of people pronounced dead and later resuscitated. As far as research has established, there are harrowing moments of mental and physical decline, but also hallucinatory reunions with loved ones who have passed away, cinematic moments of your life that flash before your eyes, a state of raptured contentment, and other blissful sensations.

The insight from Socrates’ meditations is that there is nothing to fear in the unknown. In addition, the opportunity to lead a virtuous life combined with the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom should open the doors to fulfillment while you are living. Before the jury, before his execution, Socrates made his most forward-looking and lasting statement: “Untested life is not worth living for man.” What one should do to combat any fear of death is to put oneself in the Investigate the present, suggested the philosopher.

Using the philosopher’s point of view as a guide – that people should seek beauty, strength, and health, tempered with the pursuit of knowledge – will help you ground in the present. Hopefully it fills you with a state of contentment so that death is not so much a morbid ghost haunting you as it is an insignificant aspect of your life.

Adobe recently announced that Photoshop Sketch and Illustrator Draw, two great free drawing apps available on the iPad, will be removed from the Apple App Store (and Google Play) on July 19th. Fortunately, the apps get a free replacement in Adobe frescothat combines the features of Photoshop Sketch and Illustrator Draw in a single app – but there could be a better choice for you, and now is the perfect time to find out.

You don’t need to make any changes as existing users can continue to use Photoshop Sketch and Illustrator Draw as long as the programs are installed on their devices by July 19, but the apps will have limited support until they are fully retired January 10, 2022.

However, Adobe Fresco is honestly a much better app than Photoshop Sketch or Illustrator Draw ever were. (Adobe also offers iPad versions of Photoshop and Illustrator, but they’re locked behind a Creative Cloud subscription and lack many of the features of the desktop versions.)

The best other drawing apps for iPad Pro artists

And if you don’t like Adobe’s iPad apps and want to change something, there are plenty of other great drawing programs out there for the iPad Pro – maybe too many. To help you find one that suits your artistic needs, we’ve put together a shortlist of the best drawing apps for iPad Pro artists of every level. There are free and paid apps on this list (although the former are affordable options, we promise), but each has its own unique set of features and capabilities – whether it’s precise vector graphics, bold lines, or digital painting.

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Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

Procreate is a powerful app specially designed for iPad and Apple Pencil. The user interface is streamlined and easy to navigate, and it’s packed with professional features like custom brushes, layer blending modes, perspective grids, gradient maps, and more.

Procreate lacks some of the bells and whistles you’ll find in full-fledged desktop programs (I really wish it had Photoshop’s layer effects like “inner glow” and “outline”), and it’s one of the few apps on this list that isn’t available on other devices, but it’s linked to iCloud and Google Drive and supports PSD, PDF, PNG, TIFF, JPEG and its own .procreate file types, among others, so you can easily export Procreate images to other programs.

In fact, Procreate has been my favorite drawing and painting app for years – I use it more than any other app on this list, and it quickly replaced Photoshop when I discovered it a few years ago. It’s a paid app, but dropping $ 10 on a one-time purchase gives you lifetime access and all future feature updates, which is a much better deal than paying a monthly fee for a subscription-based app.

Screenshot: Autodesk

Sketchbook used to be a paid app, but Autodesk now offers the full version for free on the Apple App Store. It doesn’t quite have the same depth of functionality as Procreate or Clip Studio Pro, but it does include key features like custom brushes, layers, and gradient maps, and Sketchbook’s myriad perspective grids and drawing guides are great for creating engineering drawings and design work. It also converts pictures of hand-drawn sketches to pictures using your iPad’s camera. There are free Mac and Windows versions of Sketchbook available This is also useful for those who want to use a single program with a consistent user interface and functionality across multiple devices.

Screenshot: Brendan Hesse

Clip Studio Paint is popular with comic and manga artists who work digitally. It has robust brush customization settings and comes with built-in comic book page layout templates, animation tools, and even a library of 3D reference models – a great addition for anyone learning anatomy (and no, using them isn’t “cheating”).

Clip Studio Paint is available on iPad, Android, and desktop and comes in two versions: Clip Studio Paint Pro for $ 50, which includes all of the above, and Clip Studio Pro EX for $ 219, the advanced manga and Offers animation functions. Fortunately there is a Three month free trial available for all platforms so you can try it out before you buy, and monthly usage plans if you don’t want to pay full price at once.

Screenshot: affinity

Affinity’s digital art apps on iPad are more like professional desktop programs than streamlined mobile apps.

Affinity Designer is a vector graphics program, making it a solid alternative to Adobe’s Illustrator apps. It includes popular vector graphics tools like curves and precise shape creation, and is a good match for the well-known pen and pencil tools from Adobe Illustrator. Affinity Photo, on the other hand, is more similar to Photoshop and focuses on digital painting and photo editing tools. Both programs are known for their smooth, fast performance on iPad (although their exact performance depends on your iPad model) and their support for Apple Pencil.

Both apps cost $ 50, making them two of the most expensive options on this list, but you only have to pay for them once – which is still better than paying for a monthly subscription to Adobe’s software. You can buy too Mac and Windows versions every app.

Screenshot: Apple App Store

Our final highlighted selection is Linea Sketch, another completely free app. Compared to our other free selection, Sketchbook, Linea Sketch isn’t as sturdy, but its simplicity is part of its appeal.

Linea Sketch is a straightforward drawing and painting app that, unlike many of the cross-platform apps mentioned above, is designed specifically for the iPad and Apple Pencil. It’s a great beginner program too, thanks to its helpful color picking tips that offer a choice of complementary colors.

Other standard digital graphics features like line support, transform tools, perspective grids, built-in page layouts, and multi-layer support are also included (although I should note that the app only has five layers per drawing). If you want to edit your Linea Sketch drawings in other programs, you can export them as PSD, PNG or JPEG.

And much more

As I said earlier, this list only covers a fraction of the really useful drawing apps available on the iPad. I’ve mainly focused on apps that I use (or have used), so it’s likely missing some that other digital creators swear by. If your favorite isn’t on the list, leave a suggestion in the comments. If they turn out to be hugely popular, I’ll add them to the list in a future update.

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Until very recently, I avoided the world of barbecue. Getting up early? Being outside? Asking men for advice? None of this sounded all that appealing, but here I am, showing you pictures of some pulled pork I smoked for my family, and I fully “get it.” Getting up early mean you get a little bit of peace and quiet, and smoking gives you an activity that needs your attention—you can fiddle and futz with it throughout the day without being too stressed out. I get why dads love smoking meats, is what I’m saying.

There are a lot of fancy smokers out there, but we’re going to be focusing on a simple charcoal setup using a Weber Kettle (or similar grill) equipped with an external digital thermometer. Other than that, you’ll need some briquettes, some wood chips, a drip pan, and a bone-in pork shoulder (also called a “butt”).

My first piece of advice? Don’t be intimidated. Though smoking can seem kind of complicated at first, smoking a pork shoulder is one of the easier large-format meat projects you can take on, even on a simple charcoal grill. It’s a forgiving cut that’s hard to dry out, thanks to a large amount of intramuscular fat. I’m sure you could dry it out if you completely ignored the next 2ooo or so words, but you’re not going to do that. You’re going to do just fine.

Buy a dual-probed thermometer

Sorry, but there is no way around it. You must buy an external temperature-taking device, and it should have at least two probes—one for taking the temp of the meat, and one for taking the temp of the air inside your grill. As I have mentioned several times, the little thermometer that sits on the dome of your grill is wildly inaccurate, and it’s impossible to control the temperature if you don’t know the temperature. There are many fancy-boy thermometers with bluetooth capabilities and such, but a $30 model will work just fine. (I have an older model of this one.)

Start small(ish) and give yourself plenty of time

Pork shoulders can get kind of big. The bigger the shoulder, the longer it will take to smoke and reach the end point. This seems obvious, but trust me when I say that you’ll be tempted by larger shoulders at the grocery store. All of the shoulders I’ve smoked were nearly eight pounds, and all took at least 11 hours, and burned through a lot of charcoal. (I had to add a little extra at the end of my first one, and it was a pain in my butt!) Each shoulder is different in terms of fat and moisture content, but you’ll want to allow 1-1 1/2 hours of cook time for each pound.

Five is an excellent size for a beginner. You’ll get plenty of meat off the thing, and you’ll have to get up early, but not so early that it’s unbearable. To calculate how early you should get up, multiply the poundage by 1.5, then add an hour and count back from your meal time, keeping in mind that dinner still might be a little late. Pork will not be rushed, but it is worth the wait.

Trim some fat

Photo: Claire Lower

The intramuscular fat that lives within the muscle will melt and moisten your pork, but that big fat cap on the end isn’t all that helpful. Not only does it hang out on the outside, never making its way into flesh, it has the audacity to sit there and prevent both your salt and your rub from permeating and flavoring the meat, and the meat is what you’re going to be eating. To get rid of it, slide a thin, sharp knife under a thick corner of fat to create little “fat tab,” then pull on that tab as you slice fat away, so you can see the pink flesh. (Don’t get obsessive; a little bit is fine.)

Salt before you rub

Salt is a small molecule, and it permeates the meat with ease. Most of the flavor molecules in a rub, however, are much larger, and they cannot penetrate deep into the meat. (According to AmazingRibs.com, most rub ingredients only make it around an 1/8th of an inch below the surface.) That’s fine. In fact, that’s exactly what you want a rub to do—sit on the surface and create a beautiful bark of complementary flavors, but it does mean you should treat salting and rubbing as two different flavoring steps. Add salt 12-24 hours beforehand to give it time to draw out moisture, dissolve, and make its way into the muscle; then apply your (salt-free) rub right before you start smoking.

If you are using a salt with a small crystal structure—and I’ve been using Morton Natural Sea Salt, which is the size of table salt but iodine-free—you’ll want to aim for at least 1/4 teaspoon per pound, though I usually end up sprinkling out a little less than 1/2 a teaspoon per pound. (I used a full 3 teaspoons on my most recent 7 3/4-pound pork shoulder, and it was perfect.) If you’re using something with a larger crystal, you can use a larger volume of salt—Meathead Goldwyn uses a ratio of 1/2 teaspoon of Morton coarse kosher salt per pound, and it seems to serve him well.

Snake your charcoal

Photo: Claire Lower

“The Snake” is a charcoal stacking method where you literally snake your briquettes around the outside of your grill, then light one end and let the coals slowly burn throughout the day. (Yes, you could “just get a Slow ‘n’ Sear,” but I think knowing how to do this without that particular attachment is valuable knowledge.) There are a few variations on this theme, but I found that a rough 24 briquette-long snake of coals, stacked two high and two wide, with some single coals along the top of the snake, was just—and I mean just—enough to fully cook my nearly eight-pound pork shoulder. I will probably add a little more next time—there were no unburnt coals remaining when I opened my grill, and that last bit of cooking was done with the pure residual heat.

In addition to charcoal, you’ll also need some wood chips. I used applewood, and placed 3-4 smallish chips in between the coals on top of the snake, with the majority of the wood at the beginning of the snake, and more space between wood piles towards the end.

Photo: Claire Lower

Once your snake is all settled, fill your chimney about 1/3 of the way full with charcoal, and get those babies going with a lighter cube or some newspaper. (If you need a refresh or primer on the chimney, give this a peep.) Once the coals are mostly ashed over, dump them at the beginning of the snake (the side with more wood chips), then set a drip pan in the center of your snake, and fill it about halfway with boiling water.

Photo: Claire Lower

Set the grill grate over the snake, apply your rub to your meat, and set the pork shoulder over the drip pan in the center of the grill. Stick one thermometer probe in the thickest part of pork that’s at least an inch away from the bone, and another on near—but not touching—the shoulder (your thermometer should come with a little probe clip that keeps it off of the grates). Close it up, with the exhaust vent opposite from the hottest coals, and start smoking.

Photo: Claire Lower

Control the air

As you probably know, there are no temperature control dials on a charcoal grill, which is one of the first things you have to get used to when grilling with charcoal. A lot of people have a lot of opinions on exactly where you should set your intake and exhaust dampeners, but it doesn’t really matter, as long as you find a setup that keeps your internal grill temperature between 225℉ and 250℉.

I like to start with the intake dampener (the one on the bottom) completely open, with the exhaust dampener (on the top of the lid), about halfway open, then close it to just a sliver once the ambient temperature inside the grill breaks 200℉.

This is where my exhaust went was when the temp stabilized around 240℉.Photo: Claire Lower

You’ll probably have to fiddle a little more than that, but try not to fiddle too much, and wait 30 minutes in between adjustments. About halfway through the cook, you may be tempted to open the grill and take a peek to see “how things are going.” Don’t do this! You’ll release a bunch of heat and moisture. Remember: If you’re looking, you’re not cooking.

Clean as you go (the ash trap, that is)

Your charcoal will turn to ash as it burns, and that ash will accumulate, blocking the flow of air and suffocating your coals. This will result in a drop in temperature, which you do not want.

Luckily, the solution is simple. A few quick back-and-forth swipes of the little cleaning blades—the same ones that control the air flow through the bottom vents—is all it takes to clear out the ash and get you back on track. (Just remember where you had them set so you can put them back where they were after cleaning.)

About the stall

If you’ve read anything about smoking meats, you have heard of “the stall.” The meat hits a temp of around 150℉, and refuses to climb anymore for hours. According to AmazingRibs.com, the culprit is water, and there are a few tactics you can take to combat the stall:

That’s [the stall] because the moisture evaporating from the surface is cooling the meat at the same rate as the hot air is warming it, and the internal temperature stalls. You can just ride it out, or you can bust through the stall by cranking the heat to about 300°F or by wrapping the meat tightly in foil.

I don’t know why, but I have never encountered a major stall. I certainly saw a slow, but my pork never got stuck at one temp for more than an hour and a half. If you encounter such a dreadful pause, I recommend just waiting it out or, if you’re in a time crunch, opening up the vents and letting the heat rise to the aforementioned 300℉. I would not recommend wrapping your shoulder in foil, as that can fuck up your beautiful bark, and the stall actually helps create that bark.

Let’s cook the thing.

Now that you’ve read all that, it is time to cook. To smoke your very first pulled pork on a charcoal grill, you will need:

• A bone-in pork shoulder in the 5-6 pound range
• Salt, 1/4-1/2 teaspoon per pound, depending on the crystal size (Use a larger volume of salt if the crystals are large.)
• Salt-free rub of your choice. (I have been using Rocky’s Rub because the people at SnS sent it to me for free, but any nearly all of these will work if you omit the salt.)

The day before you plan to smoke your shoulder, take it out of the fridge and trim the fat as described above. Salt the pork on all sides, set in pan, and return to the fridge for 12-24 hours.

Photo: Claire Lower

Remove the pork from the fridge and start setting up your grill. Arrange your charcoal in the snake formation as shown above. Your snake should be at least 24 briquettes-long, stacked two high and two wide, with some single coals along the top of the snake. Add your wood chips, a few every couple of briquettes, with most of them towards the beginning of the snake, and fewer on the latter half. Fill your chimney about 1/3 of the way full with charcoal, and light a lighter cube or some newspaper underneath the coals. Once the coals are mostly ashed over, dump them at the beginning of the snake (the side with more wood chips), set a drip pan in the center of your snake, and fill it about halfway with boiling water.

Set the grill grate over the snake, apply your rub to your meat, and set the pork shoulder over the drip pan in the center of the grill. Stick one thermometer probe in the thickest part of pork that’s at least an inch away from the bone, and another one near—but not touching—the shoulder. Close it up with the exhaust vent opposite from the hottest coals, open the intake dampener fully, and the exhaust dampener halfway.

Once your grill temperature reaches around 200℉, adjust your exhaust dampeners so they’re opened just a sliver. Let the temp stabilize, and adjust more if needed. If you need your temperature to rise, open the top vents a little more; if you need it to fall, close the bottom vents a bit (as you probably cannot close the top anymore with closing them completely). Keep an eye on the temp and make small adjustments as needed to keep things between 225℉ and 25o℉.

Smoke until your pork reaches an internal temperature of at least 194℉, rotating the lid every once in a while to keep the exhaust vent on the opposite side from the burning coals. (You won’t be able to see exactly where the coals are burning, so just move it a couple of inches every hour and a half or so.) Temp-wise, I know some people like to go higher, but none of my shoulders have ever broken 200℉, and all have been incredibly tender, juicy, and delicious. As long as that bone feels loose, you’re good.

Once your pork is done, remove it from the grill with a big spatula or meat claws and get it on a cutting board or in a pan. It will look burnt, but it is not. It is smoked, and that black exterior is your delicious bark. Remove the bone, and shred the meat with two forks (or BBQ claws). I like to shred the meat as I go, rather than shred it all at once, but either way is fine. Serve with buns, coleslaw, your favorite BBQ sauce, and maybe some pickles, and be prepared to receive many compliments. You did it, and I am so very proud of you.