Waxed Cloth Food Wrap (Made in a solar oven for bonus self-righteousness points)

...didn’t get too hot. I put the tray in the oven, closed the lid (no clips, making the heating is less efficient on purpose) and waited about 10-15 minutes. The temp would quickly rise above 150F and the wax would dissolve, then I’d take it out before it got any hotter. Fast and easy! Again, the reasons you want to keep the temps low is because 1) you might get discolored wax if you let it bake for too long above 185F and 2) in the very unlikely ev...

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Adventures in Extreme Making: The White Rose

For reasons I can’t fully articulate, I often think about an obscure film by the artist Bruce Conner called “The White Rose.” Conner’s film documents the moving of a huge and mysterious painting by the artist Jay DeFeo. The painting is so large that the moving company had to cut a hole in the wall of DeFeo’s second second floor apartment to get it out. Perhaps the appeal of this film is the problem solving or the obsessiveness of DeFeo. Or maybe...

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Saturday Tweets: Bird Eyesight, Making and Marginalia

Clear-cut tropical forest revitalized with industrial orange peel waste https://t.co/tGl1sbVvif — Root Simple (@rootsimple) September 2, 2017 Support A Skid Row Bike Lane – Sign the Petition! https://t.co/dLzwO0MFXk via @Change #bikeLA @lacbc — Colin Bogart (@ColinBogart) August 31, 2017 Right so I was researching bird eyesight and can someone explain why these feel like really obscure memes pic.twitter.com/qXkJg16iCV — max ✨ (@naxxramen) August...

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Making Mistakes and an Update

A big thanks to Erik Volkman who let me know that I had accidentally re-released episode 127 of the podcast (an interview with Fr. Mark Kowalewski on apocalyptic thinking) instead of episode 128 (an interview with James Heard and Ashton Hamm of UXO Architects). I’ve fixed the problem but due to the kludgy way that podcasts propagate your podcast app may still play the audio from episode 127 instead of the interview with the architects. You can he...

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Misadventures in Laser Cutting

...l wood box. Laser cutters can also cut entirely through thin materials so that opens up more possibilities to do things that would be difficult to do by hand. I’m intrigued, for instance, with the possibilities for making three dimensional folding paper cards. You could also use the laser cutter for screen printing, making stencils, wood inlay or marquetry. Many thanks to the knowledgeable staff of the Octavia Lab!...

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