I Deleted my Facebook Account

April 23, 2018

...my Instagram account, I found that I would have to log back into Facebook to do so and that would sign me back up for Facebook. Should you not want to delete your Facebook you can also deactivate it temporarily to see how things work out. I haven’t missed Facebook one bit. As for book and blog promotion I’m planning on starting a sporadic newsletter that you can sign up for that will also list events and some fun off-topic stuff that I think you m...

Read…

Bonfire of the Billys

Mr. Homegrown

January 27, 2020

Design

5 Comments

...uthor and woodworker Christopher Schwartz’s said in The Anarchist’s Design Book that, “it annoys me when I see an IKEA Billy bookshelf in a woodworker’s house.” Schwartz goes on to explain why, Yes, you get about 15 linear feet of shelving, plus a carcase that is ridiculously unstable. Only two shelves are fixed. So unless you secure the Billy to the wall (or other Billys), it will rack in short order . . . I say this with experience. When my wife...

Read…

Sorting the Digital Photos of a Digital Pandemic

Mr. Homegrown

December 8, 2023

Thoughtstylings

...t fondling. Unlike the Matrix there’s no neat way out of the mirror house postmodernity of the eXistenZ universe. Ariadne has left no thread to escape the maze. The best you can do is to map the territory. Towards that end, instead of a photo sorting app, I’ll leave you with two book recommendations: K-punk : the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher which contains the essay on eXistenZ that inspired this post (I’d recommend reading hi...

Read…

Inside the Internet Archive: A Meat World Tour

Mr. Homegrown

August 23, 2023

Thoughtstylings

...he building, our tour guide showed us the contraption they use to digitize books. He noted that the majority of the books they digitize are sent to the Philippines and digitized with cheaper labor. You can donate books and other materials to the Archive. They have an app that will tell you if they need a particular item and will sometimes pay for shipping. The Internet Archive is a throwback to the heady, more optimistic days of the Internet famil...

Read…

Getting Out of Your Head

Mr. Homegrown

October 8, 2018

Thoughtstylings

10 Comments

...“We need more welders and less philosophers.” Matthew Crawford in his 2015 book The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction proves why it’s important to be a welder and a philosopher. Crawford’s believes that certain unquestioned philosophical assumptions dating from the enlightenment are at the heart of our current malaise, specifically the notion that we are all independent and separate logical beings with the...

Read…